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?

Smacked? I was leathered

Smacked often and hard, always in anger, often out of the blue (if we saw it coming, we’d run). This was the 70s. You used to often hear adults threatening to pull their kids pants down and smack their bottoms. It was all about control and humiliation, outrage that children had wills of their own, annoyance at normal childlike behaviour (noise, squabbling, dysregulation). It taught me to fear my dad (he got harder and was a lot quicker to anger/more difficult to predict) and to disrespect my mum (she couldn’t move fast enough to reach us as we ran, and it would be my dad who followed through later - the classic ‘wait ‘til your father gets home’). I loved my parents, but I’m sorry, their parenting was crap and I will never understand how a grown man can grab a child by the back of their collar and whack them because they don’t like how they’re behaving/the tone of their voice/the look on their face. It may not have ‘done me any harm’, but it definitely marred my childhood, if not my love for them, and it wasn’t until well into adulthood that I was able to let go of my anger towards my parents. What amazes me, is that we were out playing for so much of the time, out from under their feet, demanding so much less of them (in terms of time) than kids today expect. Parenting was so much less intense back then, yet parents seemed to have such short fuses, such an inability to control their anger and irritation. It baffles me.

1970s.

My DM smacked me very infrequently, and the one time I clearly remember it, I 100% was being a wilful little pain in the arse who had ignored several warnings.

I would always run away crying, and within 5-10 minutes she would come and find me, we'd make up, and it was over.

When she smacked me it was always clearly linked to something I had done, and always for something fairly major. She and I had an excellent relationship up until the time she died. I still really miss her and have no hard feelings towards at her at all. She was an excellent parent, very loving, encouraging and genuine, and I don't feel that she was abusive in the slightest: my school still had the cane and the slipper, rarely used to but known to be in the headmaster's study.

My father on the other hand was vindictive and very heavy handed. He regularly threatened me with being hit over quite petty things, and seemed to enjoy scaring me. Was he abusive? I would say yes, but physical punishment from him wasn't straightforward punishment for misbehaviour, it was part of a wider pattern of bullying and control.

What pieces of shit.
Fucking nuns for condoning it and your dad for doing it in the first place.

My Mum claimed not to believe in smacking but did smack me, more than once at a time, on several occasions, usually for nothing. The hypocrisy made it worse. Once, when I was 6, she said that I'd played a note wrong on the piano, and I said I hadn't, and she said I wasn't allowed to contradict her when she said I'd played a note wrong. A few minutes later, she said I'd played a note wrong when I knew I hadn't, and I instinctively said I hadn't, and she chased me up the stairs, threw me on my bed and smacked me several times. She'd engineered the whole situation to assert dominance.

Once, when I was about 14, my brother and my Dad were away, she hit me because I'd used up a roll of toilet paper too fast (?!), so I hit her back and we ended up having a full physical fight, which she won. Of course she did, she was a very physically fit adult and I was a weedy 14 yo the size of a 10 yo who hated all sports. She will never back down from an argument, even if she knows she is wrong.

It was usually when my Dad wasn't around, although he did give me the odd smack- in fairness it was always when I was being a terror and behaviour most kids would have got smacked for in the 90s. At least he owned it and didn't give sermons on why smacking was wrong.

I remember going through most of my childhood being scared of her and for a good portion of it I hated her. It wasn't just smacking, she was highly controlling and came up with cruel and unusual punishments for all sorts of things which weren't even bad behaviour imo.

We were low contact through most of my early adulthood.

We have a fairly good relationship now. She denies any of those events ever happened and claims she was a warm, lovely, gentle mother and I have a wild imagination to remember her as overbearing, cruel and angry.

She still makes underhanded spiteful comments from time to time and I pretend I don't hear them. She no longer affects me with her behaviour, but I still bear the impact of how she was in my childhood.

I would never, ever lay a finger on my DD and will never engage in the authoritarian controlling tactics I endured either. There is never any need for it; good parenting is about prevention and setting your children up for success, not punishing them for failure.

My Mum smacked me. She put me over her knee and hit my backside with a wooden hairbrush.

My thoughts...

It hurt but not dreadfully (some of my friends got the belt from their Dad's!)

I had been properly naughty....it was never done in anger for no good reason.

It didn't really work. I was just a spirited adventurous child. So while the threat of the punishment sort of put the brakes on me a bit, it didn't stop me much.

The most effective punishment she gave me was when I stole some daffodils. She was a keen gardener and they were some special type so she knew exactly where they had come from. She made me go to the house, own up and apologise. That was extremely effective. Probably when she hit me it was times when that sort of option wasn't available.

Being a parent myself I vowed never to.smack my two for that reason - smacking didn't really work. I would be better chatting to them as to why and explain then why not and that is what I did and it was successful.

Interestingly, my Mum who helped care for my two in the holidays never dreamt of hitting them. She said that was partly because she now didn't think.it was right but also that they were lovely kids and I was a nightmare!

I was smacked as a child, not what anyone would call abuse and probably would still be defended by my mum.
I distinctly remember the most horrible desolate, lonely feeling. I remember crying and begging saying ‘mummy, mummy, mummy’ I was desperate for comfort and she was ignoring me. Then something twigged in my little brain and I thought ‘why do I want her when she hit me?’. I remember the thoughts and feelings so very clearly. Funnily enough I remember neither the pain of the smack nor the thing I did wrong (I don’t think I understood what I’d done at the time either). I do think it was harmful to me, that gut punching loneliness is never far from me, I’m very sensitive to perceived rejection, it definitely harmed my bond with my mum. I also struggled with lashing out and aggressive behaviour when something felt ‘justified’ somehow.

I was, particularly by my Dad, who found my personality difficult. To me it's wrong - it's violence against children - taking our your frustration on a child is not ok

Born in 1975. Have a younger brother who was deemed to have 'special needs'. I got the blame for everything he did. He definitely was a trouble maker. I mostly got smacked or beaten by dad. He died when I was 20. Frankly his death was a blessing. I shed no tears whatsoever. I was beaten with hand, slipper, belt, bath brush.

On a different note, my DH's nephew (DH's older sisters son) was smacked around the head by his father. Developed epilepsy. Is now dead.

". I don't know why she didn't love me"

Because she didn't love herself. Your child is a defenceless mirror of yourself , so if you don't think much of yourself then it acts out on your child. It was nothing you did, and I hope you can heal

It's something I would never do to ds. My dad smacked us as a form of discipline when we misbehaved etc and it was always one moderately hard smack job done then reconcile. It was very much a case of him parenting the way he had been parented and what he thought was 'right'. I don't think it ever taught us anything because we still did the same behaviours and then just tried to be better at hiding things or avoiding him - it definitely didn't actually help us to stop and think about what we were doing and why it wasn't a good idea. My mum often smacked because she felt overwhelmed, couldn't cope and I guess didn't have the emotional resource or parenting strategies to manage us better and she moved over into physical abuse with it, smacking repeatedly until she was out of breath. It taught me nothing apart from that she couldn't cope with me and that she really must not like/love me very much.

I think smacking is a dangerous road to go down because we all get days where we are overwhelmed and kids are being challenging and I think when we move to smacking in those moments rather than actually grounding ourselves and using other skills it's more likely to get out of hand because you've already crossed that boundary for yourself. I also think you cannot teach children not to hit or be violent when you're then modelling hitting and violent behaviour, you're undermining yourself. I would never expect ds to tolerate or think it's ok for anyone to hit him, so why would I want to teach him that it's ok for him to be physically hurt by me. Again it undermines what I try to teach him even at an early age about respect for our bodies/ consent/ safe hands.

I remember reading a thing a while ago about how for many children their parents are actually the first bullies they encounter without even realising it and that really stuck with me. For me smacking falls into that category.

I don’t care that we were smacked as children. I think my parents did the best they knew how.

i was smacked infrequently but reading your OP instantly brought back the feelings of humiliation. I was so mortified and scared and embarrassed by it all. Dreadful for a little person to go through alone. I remember each and every occasion (the emotional fallout not any “lesson learned”).

"giggling at the dinner table."
Gosh so glad we have moved on from children should be seen and not heard, I can't imagine an expression of joy being punished nowadays!

There’s a huge difference between the 2 scenarios. We know children’s brains go through critical development in the first 5 years of life. That’s when they learn about the world, how people interact, they form core views of themselves and what to expect from other people. A child growing up where they feel safe, nurtured & able to control their emotions (through good role modelling) is going to have very different foundations from someone who grew up with parents who made them feel scared and hurt them.

I was born in the 1970s and I was smacked by my mum - just using her hand not an implement. I think it was wrong but it's not something I'm bothered by now, and I'm very close to my mum as a adult.

Oh apparently that's quite common, in fact it was an official thing for upper class kids to have a "whipping boy" to take all their punishments.
Therapy is available to try to heal from this kind of thing. It's abusive of the golden child as well by the parents.

I was very occasionally smacked. It wasnt very often and I really don’t even think about it now. Defo didn’t affect me at all. I do think if it’s the default discipline method though it might have more of an effect. I don’t smack my kids, wouldn’t even think to, but I don’t think being smacked occasionally did me any lasting damage.

It is illogical and unfair to judge the people of the past by today's morals, we have developed and learnt that the things that happened in the 60s/70s/80s are not necessarily right in today’s society.
Of course smacking was wrong and in today’s world it is certainly abuse . But I don’t believe that my DM was an abuser , she and most other parents of the time thought they were disciplining their kids correctly .

No adverse effect means that it didn't impact me negatively in any way, as it may have for some people. It did me absolutely no harm. I don't understand your reply. Did you misread my post? I do think I probably deserved a smack on the bum on occasion as a kid. It wasn't a regular thing a different time and usually if I'd done something dangerous. As I said id never smack my own kids.

I was smacked. Mostly for stupid stuff and “to set an example” to my younger sibling who wasn’t smacked. I’d be hit for asking “why”, I’d be hit for using too much shampoo, I’d be hit for not being able to sleep.

It was only by one parent and it was, categorically, abuse. It was targeted and excessive. I was a teenager in the 2000s and parent decided appropriate legal punishment was to whack me across the face. I was petrified of said parent, I never knew which flavour of them I was going to encounter.

I got into trouble at school for wearing make up to cover the marks. A teacher made me scrub it off and they realised what it was covering.

Violence is not discipline. It’s violence. The ban can’t come soon enough because “legal punishment” is too rough a definition.

Yes that makes sense. I guess for some people, the smacking they received didn't make them fear their parents as they knew they were being corrected? It's probably different for people who felt they were abused by their parents and not loved perhaps? Either way, I suspect in 30 years time, all our kids will contribute to a thread about how "abusive" we were by talking to them when they were wrong 😥

I think that’s a very normal reaction borne out of fear, shock, and heightened emotions of what could have happened in that situation. Honestly, let that one go. I’ve done the same in a similar situation from a fear driven response.

Your mum sounded very ahead of her time, you were very lucky!

Was smacked and physically abused as a child. Dragged across the room by my hair, hit in the face with a hairbrush until it broke, had nails dug into my hand so strongly it left marks and bled, etc. Recently I was travelling with my mother, and she hit me across the face on the plane after an argument. Some people just shouldn’t have kids.

It’s had dire consequences. Lack of self confidence, severe anxiety, depression etc. I get scared at loud noises for example. I used to idolise friends parents and always wondered what it would be like to not fear your own. Even now, I’m closer to others parents and feel they have more genuine care for me. However it’s given me the motivation to become a more caring and nurturing parent, and go over and beyond for the children I interact at work (education setting).

I have never laid a hand on my children, and work in an education setting where the thought doesn’t even cross my mind. I know the impacts of hitting/smacking and wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy.

I was smacked. I remember feeling hatred towards my mother and it had the opposite effect - it made me see her as wholly irrational and erratic and meant I had 0 respect for her or her opinions.

In fact it made me actively antagonistic towards her and I would try and gain some sense of control via small acts of rebellion and underhanded naughtiness to make her life a little more miserable without her being able to pin the blame on me.

I feel weird about my relationship with her now. She always tries to justify herself or deny things happened so I see no point ij rehashing the past. We've forged a better relationship but I can't forget how she treated me as a child and she has slipped up at times over the years since I've become an adult and the same rage and anger seep out of her. She smacked me in the face in public once for daring to speak to a family member whose mother she had fallen out with.

I think the smackers fall into a range of categories, from those who didn't like doing it but knew no better and genuinely thought this was how you parent a child to those who actively enjoyed harming their children. This affects how you feel about having been smacked. (As a side note, she also was a yeller and would spend up to an hour shouting at us for any perceived slight so this also affects how I view her)