To ask how those of us who were smacked

[ButThisIsMyHappyFace]

Feel about it now?

Apologies if this is a stupid or triggering question but I’m re-evaluating a number of things from my childhood, trying to figure out why my relationship with my DM is so difficult. One of those things is smacking. She smacked me repeatedly, in anger. I never understood what I had done that was so wrong. She has never apologised, although I know she thinks it’s wrong to smack children nowadays. I know that very many kids born in the 80s and earlier were smacked - it was normal. I’m not asking if it’s wrong to smack. I know it is wrong and I will never smack my DC. My question is: those of us on here who were smacked as kids - how do you feel about it now? Do you feel it was abusive? Or is that not really a helpful way of looking at it anyway?

Misguided rather than abusive, and highly ineffective. I remember being 6 and my dad smacked me because I stuck my tongue out at him. I remember thinking what an idiot being so upset at my tongue poking out.

I absolutely don’t smack my kids.

This ^ - what my father did to me in the name of punishment would be called GBH today - I have physical and mental scars. I wasn't a naughty child, in fact I did my very best to stay out of trouble out of fear, but his moods would change and what he wanted previously would also change and if I didn't / couldn't follow or anticipate his new wishes, I would be punished severely.

I'm heading towards retirement age, it still affects me. My mother did nothing to protect me, as an adult I realise it was because it meant she got a break from his violent behaviour while he was punishing me, but I have never forgiven her.

I wasn’t smacked and don’t hit my own kids but tend to think other people’s assessment of their damage or lack of tends to be pretty reliable? My husband was smacked and I would quanitify his not having been harmed as… mentally healthy, good relationship with parents, good dad. He seems pretty fine and says he’s fine so… why doubt that?

You are very welcome to ignore discussions that you find irritating.

My earliest memory is holding my arms up to my face to defend myself, as I knew I was about to be smacked. I must have been four or five.

I remember standing next to our dining table when this happened, looking up at my Dad who seemed enormous, and waiting to feel pain.

This experience feels far more prominent in my mind than any other from my childhood.

I was smacked very very rarely and only for doing something dangerous. I don't think about it as an adult. I have never smacked DS (now 8).

I was smacked for misbehaving not beaten.

Father was the disciplinarian, we were never as close to Dad as we were to our mother, she was the softie.

I don't think I feel any resentment. It did scald ATT, hard male hand, we weren't as close for other reasons.

I can count the amount of times and technically was misbehaving 4 out of the 6 times.

I was smacked by both parents as a child. Wouldn't say I'm traumatised by it but I remember 2 occasions where I was wrongly punished. I don't smack my DD and can't imagine that I ever would. My dad (and recently passed mother)would never put a hand on their grandchildren.

My father never touched me. My mother beat the shit out of me. (1960s).

I wasn't an easy child and my father was a charmer. And a complete waste of space and mostly absent. She was on her own, had no support and I think she couldn't cope. It's no excuse but it was a different era.

We had a difficult relationship, not because of that but we had very different personalities.

I was smacked - but it must have been a rare occurrence because I only remember one time and my mum was definitely in the wrong then as it was unfair. However, because of the 'I tell you once. I tell you twice. The third time you will have a smack' rule, I knew the ball was in my court. I could choose to behave badly and have a smack or behave well and not have a smack. And I was never beaten or abused and am amazed that so many people seem to think that a quick smack after warnings is child abuse. I had a great relationship with my mum until the day she died because I knew she loved me. I still miss her.

What some people aren't seeing is that, while perhaps they personally consider themselves unharmed - particularly if smacking was light, rare, and for an identifiable reason - this still contributed to the societal belief that corporal punishment was OK and left an open door to physical punishment that would be considered a serious assault in modern times.

I was smacked and it made me mistrust my mother. I still do. I think she was stressed and under a lot of pressure, but hitting a child was not the solution. Yes, it made me do as she said more often. But there's a little part of me that still disdains her. I feared being hit but it never felt just.

We were never smacked as kids 70/80s childhood but my dad would pile me and my friends in the back of his van to go to parks,no seatbelts just 10+ kids in back 😳

Same.

Born in the late 60’s. I was smacked by my mother, often slapped across the face. Never hit by my father who was a gentle soul.

Mother was physically and emotionally abusive, she had a temper. I knew from an early age I would never have children for fear of treating them the way she treated me.

And yes I still think about it occasionally, the sheer injustice of it. I was a quiet, well behaved child, my mother behaved like a psychopath.

There was no legal requirement to wear a seatbelt even in the front until 1983, and in the back not until 1991.

Ironically, though my parents were happy to beat the shit out of me, they were very safety conscious and retro-fitted rear child seatbelts to the family Datsun in 1980.

I feel you. One of my earliest memories from about that age is running from my mother, screaming, while she chased me down the hall to smack me. The absolute fear I felt. The rage and determination coming out of her. I never ever want my own child to feel that way.

I was ‘smacked’ - I’d call them beatings - almost constantly for everything. I can honestly say I was a well behaved child (too scared not to be) who tried my best to not annoy my mum but unfortunately never seemed to be able to manage it. All it did was make me scared of her and as I grew up, our relationship struggled. I hated her. We had a few years of no contact and only managed to have a relationship once I had my first child. She was the best grandmother.
I’ve never smacked either of my children.

My dad never laid a finger on me or my brother, and very very rarely raised his voice, despite being an older dad for our area in the eighties (in his thirties working class east London) and having grown up in a Catholic family with a slipper and being caned and lashed at Catholic school by nuns, my mum was shoutier and I recall being smacked once or twice but fairly half heartedly definitely no marks, and that stopped when she did her childcare qualifications and went on to run a nursery. She did launch a hairbrush in my general direction when I was about 14, I remember just laughing at her in the dismissive way of a teen who's pushed their mother to the edge, I was a bit of a handful.

If dad was cross it was worse because he so rarely was and I always felt like I'd let him down, he was very vocal about how proud he was of us.

I don't really feel any kind of way about it, it was very normal at the time, and I certainly wasn't subject to done of the physical abuse I know my peers were. I also now see my parents being completely soft with DC.

It made me hate my father and resent my mother.
The last time he hit me I was about 17. I have hardly spoken to him since and I'm now almost 48. He battered me. There is no justification whatsoever.
I have two children now and I would never Kay a finger in them

I was smacked, but don’t remember it happening. I can remember my mum telling me that, if I didn’t stop, I would get a smack. The threat was usually enough. Once we were old enough to be reasoned with, or sent to our rooms, that’s what happened. Smacking was done to me as a toddler, when words didn’t really work. Mum says we always got a warning first, and clearly after a while, that worked as I have no memory of ever actually getting that far. I probably wasn’t a particularly difficult or resentful child though, so I suspect that makes a difference.

I think it all depends on degrees and whether there is plenty of love and reason, alongside any punishment. I suspect what the punishment is, so long as it doesn’t go to extremes and is used judiciously and not in anger, probably doesn’t matter all that much.

My gran was a nursery nurse and was on local BBC news in the very early nineties talking about smacking. She said that only adults who couldn't control themselves hit children and if you can't control your temper in her view you shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of a child. It was quite controversial then! She's in her eighties now and still a lot more liberal than a lot of her generation

I am 38 and I was smacked, slapped and caned.

I also had objects thrown at me.

My mother told me a couple of years ago that I have a scar on my back (I was never aware of the scar) from when she threw a fork at me as a 3-year old.

I don't know why she told me - maybe a bad conscience?

I was born in the early 90s and remember being smacked occasionally - happened very rarely I think and only if I had been very very badly behaved. I don’t remember ever feeling fear and certainly hasn’t affected me long term at all. I knew I was very loved.

My mum and I have spoken about it since I’ve been an adult and she said it was wrong to do and she was sorry and she wishes she hadn’t done it. She came from a bit of a broken and abusive family and hadn’t been shown good examples of parenting so she was learning as she went along and think she did a very good job for the most part considering the abuse she had experienced.

Born 1971. I was hit violently by my mother. Because she had a horrible temper and was extremely volatile. I was the most quiet, terrified, law-abiding child - not naughty at all. I look at photos from the time and see how frightened I was: I never knew when it was coming.

And then she’d leave me to sob. I felt bewildered so much of the time, not knowing what I’d done wrong.

I think there were homes where ‘smacking’ was administered in a more ordered way, not because the parent had lost their temper- ie with warnings first etc. I don’t know whether that would have a lasting effect?

In my case I have been left with severe anxiety, panic disorder and I suspect ptsd although I can’t afford therapy.

But the hitting was part of a bigger pattern of neglect and abuse, so I can’t isolate it as a cause.