To assume this about people who hit their kids...

[NotDisciplineJustAbuse]

That they're probably not above hitting their wife/husband/partner etc or indeed their pets.

I don't buy into the 'discipline' crap as there are just far better ways of dealing with things. I'm sure smacking my husband every time he forgets to replace the loo roll could work but I was thankfully raised to use my big girl words and not rely on violence which will inevitably breed more violence.

I was smacked loads as a kid. My dad would sometimes go too far and I did resent it.

My mum was a leg slapper, she'd call it a "hot leg" I hated it but it did me no harm and we have a great relationship.

I don't condone smacking but I do think that without that level of discipline, future generations are behaving much worse.

I have never smacked my child

What I didn't like about smacking was the way my clothes were pulled down so they could do it in my bare bottom. It made me feel very ashamed. Degraded. I was being sexually abused by a relative at the same period in my childhood though and completely blocked it out at the time, only to discover as an adult that my sibling remembered it happening to both of us in the same room very clearly. So maybe I was more sensitive about nakedness from that ? I was quite a sensitive child, took things to heart.

My otherwise wonderful parents smacked me twice during my childhood. For literally years afterwards (into adulthood) I would sometimes lie in bed or stand in the shower and think about what happened. I can vividly remember those two occasions like I can remember hardly anything else in my life. No memory of what I did wrong, but the feeling of shocked betrayal, that the people who were supposed to love me most in the world would treat me like that stayed with me for a very long time.

So many people who smacked their kids are so blasé about it, saying their kids are fine and don't care etc. but my parents don't have the first clue how pervasively it impacted me. I'm sure they would say the same.
They really were great parents. Except for that. I will never ever make my daughter feel like that. I will never give her those memories to carry with her.

Smacking is culturally normalised child abuse, psychological as much as physical.

I too come from a time when it was normal in the UK.

I am very glad that this is how I was disciplined. It was never out of anger.

This was also how I disciplined my children, but it won't be how I discipline my grandchildren - times have changed. That is not to say the old way was wrong and the new way right.

I hate hearing parents shout at their children - far worse, and far more damaging in my opinion than a short, light smack. Smacks do not have to be delivered in anger, but shouting always does. Smacks take a second, but shouting takes hundreds of times longer!

I expect the time will come when out culture embraces smacking again, but looks at horror at the parents who shouts, and labels them abusive and bullying.

The very worst and most abusive thing is no discipline at all, and that is seen all to commonly these days - this amounts to serious neglect, and the detrimental effects can last a life time

I got a smacked bum as a kid. I also followed my dad temper wise, I only realised this as my DD got older, I did give her a smacked bum once when I lost control of trying to ‘gentle parent’. Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to shock and seeing her upset was awful and made my chest hurt. It made me realise that it doesn’t work, yes they stop in that moment. But they stop because they fear the person who is meant to love them unconditionally. Never again. It’s also made me see my parents differently in a way. Because I had a few smacked bums as a kid and I just can’t imagine how they weren’t phased by doing it.

I do still lose my temper, and I feel myself making this really angry face that I don’t like and I’m still working on it, but I’d never smack their bums again; I learnt my lesson. I don’t want to bully my children into fearing me. As much as I think the full gentle parenting thing is a little unrealistic at times.. communication and creating a good understanding really does work better than any physical discipline.

🙄

So sorry you went through this xxxxx

I have always considered verbal and emotional abuse to be extremely soul destroying and I hate the wayi sometimes hear kids being shouted at by their parents for nothing. It makes you wonder if they will bother having contact with their parents once they grow up.

Hitting a child it so very wrong. Yes my parents smacked me as a child and I vividly remember it making me angry and afraid to ever share things with them. I love them dearly, they were 1980’s parents so it was a tragic ‘norm’, but I run a ‘no smacking’ home for my children.

It kept me and my siblings out of trouble. We knew the consequences if we did anything stupid like get involved in drugs, involved in crime, police etc.

@fullbloom87 I think every generation fantasizes about how when we were younger people respected their elders... like the lyrics in baz lurman sunscreen song! Even in Victorian times they were saying the kids are out of control with permissive parenting..

I'm so sorry you went through that x

That's awful @Hivaluegirl I hope you now have a happier life. I am lucky because my dad was only occasionally violent to my mother and siblings . It was nasty when it happened, I used to be so very afraid he would kill us and as an older child I used to fantasize about suicide, running away and did self harm a lot. I felt there was no escape. I was afraid of men, and believe I had no future.

But I have to put it into perspective and remind myself I am lucky because it didn't happen daily (not the actual violence ) and most of it was more like threats, yelling, name calling. I've had a fortunate childhood for the most part and I know I need to remember that occasional violence is not the same as real systemic abuse. I can't imagine what that would feel like. I used to think I did, and felt very sorry for myself most of my life, but now I realise I wasn't seriously harmed by it in comparison to some.

I agree with your distinction, but I don't think that people who use hitting as purposeful, thought through punishment are ALL using carefully the minimum amount of force/pain required.

In fact, I think that is quite unlikely - since using pain to punish is supposed to be a deterrent, part of that is meant to be fear, with the idea that the fear of being punished, being hurt, is what will keep the person in line. So I think that they are intending it to hurt (maybe you meant not actually injure?). Especially if you think about discipline like the old school canings, or Asian countries with beating as part of their justice system, or some of the fundamentalist Christian beliefs in parts of America. People administering/deciding on those punishments are totally calm and believe they are being measured and reasonable and logical. I have no problem in believing that someone who feels that this is a reasonable and logical step would also think it reasonable to take that step with absolutely anybody that they felt was lower than them in some kind of hierarchy and was not properly respecting that position.

And I don't think that you can necessarily know, as a parent, if your children find being hit and intimidated and frightened into compliance traumatic. Certainly many adults who have grown up with discipline of this type report that their parents think they did nothing wrong but they disagree. I do agree that corporal punishment isn't always and necessarily traumatic, and there is apparently some research suggesting that if everyone around you is getting hit and it's a cultural norm then it's less likely to be traumatic, but that also doesn't mean that it's never traumatic in that situation. People are simply going to experience things differently.

I also think it's very very possible (and probably extremely common) for otherwise good parents to occasionally lash out and hit a child maybe once or twice ever in their life, never hit anybody else and not be a danger to anybody (even, really, that child). Especially in the preschool/toddler years, young children can test your patience like really nothing else I've ever experienced before or since, and I think a great many good parents have a moment where they do something that they know is ultimately unhelpful.

@LadyMaryTalbotCrawleysEyebrows just to pick up on what you say below about personality disorder being no one's fault and nothing to do with childhood.. again this isn't true. They're not something that people are born with like, say, autism (although autistic women are often wrongly diagnosed with borderline personality disorder but that's going really off topic here)

Personality disorders are a trauma response, usually develop as a result of attachment problems and living with chaotic caregivers, such as abusive or erratically neglectful households. We are social animals and the way in which we relate to each other has big impact and when this is messed up it can result in conditions that we give names to like personality disorders. I would urge you not to be so dismissive of the person you're talking about as there may be a lot of truth to what she's saying but it's likely she will be chaotic and not a 'good reliable victim' in that sense.

Ok, thanks. Just I have same diagnosis (EUPD) as her and we are very similar in some ways but didn't have any significant attachment issues at all, had a wonderful mum. Very gentle, hardly ever raised her voice at me. But I can see that maybe some people can go through stuff and be really scarred by it , I was not. I guess I'm fortunate.

I've overheard mums and dad's blackmail their children, empty threats and unnecessarily/not age appropriate conversations about behaviour.

An example was when a small boy was lying on the floor in a shop with his feet up and kicking and screaming. His father kept talking to the room "there's other children around you who are watching you. I'm going to pick you up now before you hurt someone" and lots of conversations that were just simply not the time or place.

Yet people are concerned about a sharp smack, correcting behaviour at the time and moving on?

Animals also correct their off spring's behaviour with quick snappy aggression and move on.

@LadyMaryTalbotCrawleysEyebrows sorry didn't realize you had the diagnosis too so you will understand how it impacts you more than most. My understanding is that childhood trauma can be all sorts of things- it sound like despite having a loving mum you have had some tough times too and been let down by other adults in your life that should have kept you safe.

My dad used to smack me when I was a child and did something bad. It was never aggressive, he had a level headed manner about it, never in a rage. It wasn’t even to hurt us, just to sting a little and teach us a lesson. He’s never been violent to anyone and is a well respected man, it’s just how he was raised and that was normal discipline. I haven’t carried that practice through to my children because I felt it is outdated and unfair, I know a stern word or a conversation would’ve worked just as well to discipline me as a child and are easier to forgive if the parent got it wrong and the child wasn’t the one who misbehaved and it was perhaps a sibling or someone else that should’ve had the punishment. I don’t think smacking is okay, I think it’s lazy discipline and avoids the real lessons that should be taught and it is cruel, but I don’t think people who use it are inherently bad people. It’s how they were brought up and no one has shown them that there are better ways that work. Yes there will be some violent people who use it as an aggressive reaction, but for so long it was the norm (and you could still get the cane in UK private schools until the 1990s) that people don’t even consider that there’s anything wrong with it, especially the older generation. In the age of technology where there is a wealth of information about it and how it can affect development and mental health etc, there’s no excuse for it in modern society, but I don’t think everyone who uses physical punishment is a violent person and I think it’s unreasonable to assume that they are, just my opinion

I'm sorry I didn't make that clear earlier. It may be true that my friend was abused, the reason that I was sceptical is she gave an example of herself as a 10 year old girl stepping on a little snail out of spite and her father stepped on her foot to show her what the email must have felt like . That definitely doesn't fall into the category of abuse because she was acting up (she was bored and wanted to upset her dad because he was making jokes about her being a bit chubby). Her foot was a bit bruised at the time but I'm not sure whether that would count ? Not being goady, I don't claim any expertise in this area, but yeah I was a bit like "that isn't real abuse, it didn't traumatise you, you know well you were being naughty and unkind"

My pet hate is parents who don't use the word no to their children. Wtaf?

TBF, I think this one is really weirdly misrepresented or misunderstood.

The idea behind it is to avoid sentences like "no running" "no hitting" "stop throwing your food" and replace them with the instruction of what you actually want them to do, like "wait, we're by a road" "come over here and play with me"

This is because if you keep saying "no doing this, stop that, don't do the other" well it's like saying "don't think about an elephant" - it gets you exactly the result you don't want.

It's more effective to tell somebody what you DO want them to do, and this is especially true for young children, if you say to an adult "don't touch that" they can instantly fill in the blanks - oh, it must be something precious, private, it might be dangerous/unstable, and they would automatically stop before they ask why. But a young child has much less developed impulse control. If you tell a 4yo "don't touch that" they will quite frequently continue to touch it WHILE asking why, because they haven't got that inhibitory control down yet. Whereas if you say something like "hands on your head" (especially if you've trained this like a game) they are already not touching whatever you want them to stop touching, so you're ahead of them and then you can either steer them away or block access or start to explain the why if you need to, and this is much nicer and more pleasant of an interaction than one where you get annoyed with them and bark at them because they haven't instantly stopped.

Also, we know that praise/reward is way more effective in cementing habits than fear of punishment is, so if you want something like that your kids don't run in the road, the most effective way to do this is to remind them/ensure that they stop at the edge and hold hands and praise them for doing that. This is much more effective than waiting until they have already run in the road and then smacking them for it.

The other concept around not saying no is about being more accepting and positive in general. It can be really easy to say no all the time to requests to play, to have something, to do something that requires effort on the parent's part and if you make an effort to say yes more often to these things then you can end up having some really lovely experiences that you might not have had otherwise. (This won't be right for everyone. I think there are some parents who already say yes too much and should say no more, instead - it needs to be a balance.)

But anyway in both of these concepts it's not a total ban, it's more of something to try and do less and do the alternative more. If people are taking it to an extreme then that's really on them, but I don't think it's ever been recommended by any expert.

Snail, not email!

Breed more violence? I was smacked as a kid (not much at all really) and I haven’t grown up to be violent! People complain about how teenagers behave nowadays, some people say that is because they didn’t get smacked!

Your first ‘category’ sounds exactly like a perpetrator’s excuse for domestic violence. Made me wince.

@Notamum12345577 I feel one of the reasons is because children/teenagers are not disciplined effectively in some families. They are reasoned with at the age of 2 which is impossible, and are never told 'no' and everything is so gentle does it. Sometimes kids need a good telling off and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.