Smacking

[alwaysblonde]

I was smacked a lot as a child. Not a tap on the legs but pull the pants down and proper whacks. I remember my brother and I screaming blue murder. It's odd, my mum denies it was that bad yet my dad says that I was very naughty.

Issue is I'm 20 weeks and thinking about how I want to discipline. Personally I don't wish to smack due to the following.

1. I wouldn't want my DC to have the memories of being smacked that I have.

1. I think there are better ways of disciplining. None of my friends do it

However I mentioned this to my dad and he said "yeah right, dream on, you'll be on the phone crying to us that you can't control it".

What's the consensus on smacking? I think it's child abuse.

I do agree with discipline- children have to learn boundaries. In the case you suggest I would take the book from my child's hand and give it back. I would explain that the book belongs to the other child.

It's not something that has happened to me. At the sound of having "mythical children" my kids have always been sometimes a little too sensitive towards the needs of other children, especially when it comes to pinching toys or violence.

Sure they have done other things that are undersirable, pouring shampoo on the carpet, scribbling on walls etc. and although they need explanations and guidance those things are partly my fault.

I don't really think your children are mythical but I do wonder if certain parenting strategies only work if you have a particular sort of child.

There are some children that grab and hit and others that don't - and I really don't think it's all down to parenting tbh - and if you have one that doesn't you have more parenting options open to you. (In the same way that it's easy to be against sleep training if you have a child that sleeps through from fairly early on...)

Only read op so far, so only responding to that.

I don't agree with smacking as a form of discipline. I hate it and yes, I most likely do judge parents who resort to smacking. I have never yet heard a good or valid argument in favour of smacking.

My DD is 12y and I have never smacked her. Neither has DH, or anyone for that matter We made it clear to anyone looking after our child that smacking was never an option, none ever would have though.

There are many other forms of discipline. Yes they may take time. But that is fine.

My DD is well behaved and polite, and has never caused us any issues with regards poor behaviour. So I can say that not smacking her as not caused her to become uncontrollable, undisciplined or anything.

I don't remember ever being smacked when growing up either. I do, however, remember friends being hit by their parents and even then feeling very uncomfortable about it.

Minipie- fine if you think that. I have had that said to me many times. I must have easy children.
Funny if they had been off the rails that would have been my fault though.

I'm finding this interesting. My parents hit me and yet I can't imagine hitting my baby (she's one).
Yes the look of anger and rage on my mothers face was awful.

I've read Toddler Calm and I just agree with the concept that it's my job to keep her safe and teach her what's ok not ok.

I agree it's tricky- she has started yanking the cats fur and laughs when I say no. I did tap her hand once. She took no notice at all. So hard would I have to hit her to make her listen? No way am I finding that out. I guess keeping on showing her what 'nice' and gentle mean and removing the (stupid) cat from her clutches.

The idea that toddlers are not mini adults, and have a lot to learn about how the world works and how we should treat each other, makes a lot of sense to me.

Parenting is difficult!

No, I don't think it would have been your fault if they were off the rails - not when little anyway. In terms of babies and small children I think there's a lot more nature than nurture involved in the way they behave. Nurture kicks in later.

So at what age does nurture become evident- am I counting my chickens minipie?

Of course you don't smack children. You don't need to hit anyone to make a point. I was smacked as a child, for very little, and it just lead to low self esteem as a teenager.

Don't discuss this with your parents. I expect they will think you are weak but you don't have to defend your parenting choices.

So it's Ok to hit a child but not a puppy? Crazy.

Mini with the gentle parenting philosophy you don't rely on punishments like time out or smacking or removing things. Mainly the idea is to focus on what you want rather than what you don't want and emphasise that. Also to let go of the idea of "disobedience" "defiance" "temper tantrums" "doing as you're told" etc. It's not so much "Do this because Mummy/Daddy said" but thinking why you want them to do it and can you encourage that behaviour generally rather than punishing this incident of them not doing it.

Obviously you still need boundaries and small children will push/challenge them. This is where it gets semantic-y. One way of enforcing a boundary might be to remove a child from a situation which they are finding hard to cope with. Or to remove a toy which is being used in a dangerous/destructive way, or to avoid a situation completely for a while - all of which could be called punishments, if you like. But because the intention is just to prevent the misbehaviour you wouldn't emphasise "Well we're not going to soft play because you didn't behave last time" and if you remove them from a situation it's okay to take them to another situation which is more enjoyable, if you remove a toy it's okay to give them a distracting toy. Now, semantics again, some would call these things rewards and be horrified that someone might do them after a behaviour which they're trying to discourage in their child. The point is that it's not intended to be either a reward or a punishment, you're just preventing them from doing whatever it is you don't want them doing. If they're upset, you might try to distract them or you might explain why they're not allowed to continue or you might just be totally fed up and leave them to it. That depends very much on their age/understanding/whether you think it was deliberate or accidental/whether you have other things or children to deal with this second/your own state of mind.

In practice I've found it works for 99% of things but there are a couple of issues that I had to bring in an external more generic punishment (removal of unrelated privileges) for. But I like it as a philosophy. Nobody likes punishing their child(ren) and IMO this reduces the need for a lot of it.

And also acceptance of feelings, realising that just because something seems trivial to you it might be a big fucking deal to a child, especially if they are very young, and trying to be understanding of that - sorry missed this out of my first paragraph. Just trying to see things from their point of view and YY like Justgotosleep says, realising that they aren't born knowing about how the world works and how we should treat each other, they need to learn it from scratch and the most influential person they learn from is you.

bertie thanks. I guess the question is, if there is never any negative consequence, how do they learn that what they were doing was undesirable behaviour and not to do it in future?

So for example if my DD hits other children at playgroup, and my response is not to tell her off or take her home but instead to distract her by playing her favourite game with her, then how does she learn not to hit other children?

Interestingly, as it happens, the tactics I've adopted so far have been much more along the "distraction" lines than the "punishment" lines. But that's because of her age - I think she's too young to understand the connection between what she did and going home - plus distraction is just easier! In 6 months time though, I think she would understand. So that's when I will have to choose between the two approaches, iyswim.

bertie- thanks for that. Pretty much the approach I take. It teaches children to take responsibility for their own actions at a deeper lever. So rather than perform in a way that robs them of TV time or other external unrelated punishment they learn about other's feelings.

I have never punished my children.

minipie One way it works is that all the attention goes to good behaviour and attention is the ultimate reward. Even negative attention (scoldings) can be a kind of reward. So ignoring bad behaviour and attending to better behaviour can replace the bad with the better.

Having said that, there are some situations where it’s not the most effective way and I would agree that deliberate physical aggression is one of them (at least with a slightly older toddler/child) But it’s effective in far more situations than you might imagine.

I did "parenting pyramid" myself, which uses a whole battery of different things. It's a pyramid because there's a base of attention and play and communication, a middle bit with praise and rewards and ignoring, and a tip with negative consequences and time outs - the idea being that (like bertie says) the tip needs to be much smaller than the base!

kleinzeit, that makes sense. I too take a very posistive approach with my children. Looking for ways to comment on how their behaviour has nelped or made family life easer- they begin to see themselves in a responsible helpful mindset. It's not just empty praise though- a banal "good boy" it helps to point out specifically how their actions have impact. If little John helps with the packing at the supermarket them it's work pointing out how it made the supermarket trip so much easier/get back home quicker/be more organised.

Little John starts to see himself as a really responsible organised boy and next time you are out shopping he is proud of the fact he knows he can make a good contribution to a shopping trip.

Rather than get a star on a chart like a performing seal for not having a tantrum in the supermarket or indeed a loss of TV time is he does have a tantrum, we can refocus on the good behaviour.

This way bad behaviour diminishes.

unhelpful comment alert

Gawd the sanctimonious zealotry of the AP brigade really sets my teeth on edge! There's a pervasive sense on MN that there's only one truly 'right' way to parent your DCs and the rest of us unelightened buffoons...drives me crackers!

(Have never hit my toddler and hope I never will by the way. BUT I did FF him practically from birth, put him in his own bedroom at 6wo, never used a sling, weaned him at 5mo, gave him a dummy....etc etc etc. so what would I know?)

Actually there is a reason for not smacking which is not just because it’s cruel. These days a lot of parents seem to imagine smacking is some kind of evil magic – as if it is was a very effective way to stop bad behaviour and everyone would do it but it is too cruel. The truth is different. The truth is - whisper – it doesn’t work very well. It didn’t even work for the OP – her father says she was very naughty. The parents who do smack effectively (which usually means very infrequently!) could have done something else just as effectively, the kids it works for would probably have been well behaved anyway, and for a lot of kids it’s exactly the wrong thing to do. There is always something else you can do that will work as well, or even better, than smacking.

The trouble with having smacky parents yourself is that they don’t teach you what to do instead, because they didn’t know themselves. There are plenty of good books to choose from, or you can go on a positive-parenting course. I liked “Toddler Taming” for toddlers and “Incredible Years” and “Parent-Child Game” for older ones. But there are lots of others!

BotBoticelli Yeah but the OP is going to need a bit of smug self-righteousness because she is going to have to stand up to her parents, one of whom is in denial about how bad the smacking was and the other is still trying to justify himself

If you say so Bot I don't think it's the one right way at all, just works for me. But my DS is older so I'm rather beyond caring what anybody else does with their babies/toddlers. I think it can feel a bit "us or them" when you're in the middle of it but when they get a bit older you see it's not really like that.

Minipie I think you can let them know that it's not okay to hit without it being negative for them? Again semantics and me saying "Hey, that isn't a nice way to treat Holly. We don't hit people." might be considered a telling off, or you could call it giving information. I do think it's important to tell them that they've crossed a boundary, unless they're 6 months old or something. The hope is that backed up with reinforcement of positive ways to communicate, giving them options which work better - hitting doesn't, usually, have the intended response - and also pointing out the effects - you could say, look at Holly, she is sad. How can we make her feel better, maybe you could say sorry or give her a cuddle instead. All of these together lead to a mindset where hitting just isn't a logical choice.

Of course you can achieve the same aim by removing them (I mean you'd remove them anyway, it would be shitty in the extreme to stand by and let your toddler maul another child while trying to educate them about your feelings on the matter!) or making sure hitting is always a negative choice for them, neither way is better as such but that's how I'd deal with hitting another child. If it's a phase and they're doing it repeatedly then you probably need to be a bit helicoptery, hover and jump in when you see they're about to do it and remind them to "use your words" or take turns or ask nicely or count to 10 or whatever. This can be backed up with role play or talks at another time or stories/TV programmes which explain a similar concept etc. If they're too young for any of this kind of intervention then probably a swoop and distract is best, because the kind of hitting that happens before they can communicate by talking they tend to grow out of whether you give negative consequences or not.

Klein, I think smacking is just as effective as any other generic (ie not directly related to the crime) punishment, TBH. Possibly better because it's immediate and unpleasant. But it's not nice to punish your children with something they are frightened of, in my opinion. It's just not necessary and hence it's unpleasant for both of you and it can counteract the message you're trying to send.

OP, your parents are bound to criticise you if you tell them that you have made a decision not to smack. By doing so, you are telling them that you disagree with their decision to smack and this will make them feel defensive.

It's much easier for smackers to justify their decision to do so than it is for them to reflect on whether that decision was the best one and realise that they could have done things differently with just as much success and less trauma.

Bertie I think I agree with all that.

*"Gawd the sanctimonious zealotry of the AP brigade really sets my teeth on edge! There's a pervasive sense on MN that there's only one truly 'right' way to parent your DCs and the rest of us unelightened buffoons...drives me crackers!

(Have never hit my toddler and hope I never will by the way. BUT I did FF him practically from birth, put him in his own bedroom at 6wo, never used a sling, weaned him at 5mo, gave him a dummy....etc etc etc. so what would I know?)"*

Wow- a serious chip on your shoulder bot.

Reading this with interest as I have a very feisty 18 month old. As a sensitive child I grew up subdued by both my dad's temper and my mum's emotional blackmail and was keen to bring DS up in a more mutually respectful way whilst maintaining firm boundaries. I've found the Positive Discipline books and ahaparenting.com to be invaluable both for helping me find a general approach to discipline and for techniques to use in particular situations. I love the idea from Positive Discipline of seeing discipline in its original Latin sense of 'to teach' rather than as 'to punish'.

And as a bit of a science bod I like that they are both based on recent research in child psychology and brain development - gives me ammunition when my mum comes out with unhelpful suggestions (such as 'if he pulls your hair, pull his back to show him how it feels').