Smacking! At what age do people thinking it's appropriate

[AlanasMum]

I was at coffee morning the other day and my 15m dd was playing up a little. Another mum commented and said wow I bet she gets a lot of smacks. I must have looked a bit shocked as it hadn't occured to me to smack dd before.

I've always been on the fence on this subject and figured I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. Which appears to be coming quicker than I anticipated.

This will be my last post on this thread.I do not like to be abused by people who at this moment are being the bully.If he had said no I would then have told him that the thing he wanted to do would if he had then touched it at least I would know that I had tried my best to stop my child from being injured.As a parent I believed that this was my job.You are purpously trying to make your point and bully me into believing myself an abusers I thank you for your concern for my children,however it is unneccesay my children are well behaved loving caring people who speak for themselves.I came here and wrote my posts to support another here who does not believe that a smack is sinister.
You have purpously tried to turn all I have said to your advantage in the hope that it will prove you correct.There is nothing sinister about a parent trying to protect their child from harm.I am sorry that you are obviously worried but if it was a person I ws mneeting in the st=reet I would invite you to meet my children and myself.However as there is no telling who people are on here I cannot for safety reasons extend such an invitation.If still concerned however and you feel you have a strong enough reason then report what I have written to mumsnet and they will if they see a reason follow up on this.

I'm not remotely worried, and I have no desire to meet you or your children.

I'm simply responding to what you posted - that you hit your child hard enough to hurt him and then asked him to confirm that it had hurt him, so that you could make your point. I personally think that is weird, cruel and abusive. I can understand (just about) someone who smacked in anger and then felt terrible, but what you describe is humiliating as well as violent.

Nobody is bullying you. Really, if you weren't expecting anyone to disagree with what you posted, perhaps you shouldn't be venturing onto public forums?

Have decided to post once more .Its annoying to have people to decide whats right and wrong without first understanding isn't it?
I am not averse to being disagreed with quite enjoy it really but you were accusing me of being a sadistic bitch.I'm not I just copied what I knew worked as my mother had used this on my db's.
If you had been a little less judgemental I would not have felt so annoyed.Have seen since that you are having bad day.I hope you feel better later.
My apologies if I became to angry but you did accuse me rather badly of lying and being a screwed up person.As you are obv having bad day will not post again

Hello Singingmum. I am fairly sure you will be unable to resist reading this thread, even if you do not post again. I found your posts quite disturbing. Your anger spilled out into
every sentence as you threw out blame and accusation left right and centre. I do not get the sense that you are a self-controlled person
and, as such, I would be concerned that you considered yourself capable of delivering sensible, controlled taps to your children.

I did not call you a sadistic bitch or accuse you of lying

I feel strongly about this and would have posted the same whether I had been having a bad day or not.

What did you expect? Surely you must have anticipated that other parents would think it was OK to hit a child hard enough to hurt and then ask him just to make sure.

I've no idea whether you are screwed up or sadistic, I've never met you. My remarks are addressed to the behaviour you describe, not you as a whole person.

As the person who started the thread exposing Greeny's bad day, I can assure you that she really would have been like this even on a good day, singingmum

i have tapped my dd's hand when she was little and said 'no' at the same time, after a coupe of times, she understood when i said 'no', i do not smack her now, although i have been known to threaten her with it.

i think its a parents choice, and i do not think the pro smacking posts on this thread are from child abusers, they just have different teaching methods.

{don't worry, i'm getting my coat, and skulking out the door}

i meant different parenting methods, i was rushing to get outta here before i getted lynched

what really upsets me about people who are prepared to hit, in a planned way like singingmum, is that it's just so completely unecessary. If the child is about to touch something hot or dangerous, a loud "NO" and / or removing the child works. Telling them that the oven is hot works.

You simply don't have to hit them to make this point. It's making your point by making the child feel small and humiliated. A smack on the hand brings the child up short, makes them acutely aware of the power of the adult, makes them acutely aware that they have no power, that they are completely within the control of the adult...it's humiliating for them. You only do it BECAUSE you are in a pwerful position; if a friend was going to touch something hot, you wouldn't hit them, you'd tell them.

just want to know what you do if your child does something wrong and you've explained why he/she can't do that, consequences ect. Tried naughty step. Talk, talk, talk. Arn't you going to smack him/her on the hand/bottom and say no? To keep on talking and talking just doesn't work always.

One of the main reasons I don't smack my children is also because I don't trust myself, especially at the point when I'm so tired and fedup (and, yes, wound up by their behaviour, often quite deliberate behaviour) that I'd contemplate smacking. I know that the urge to violence that, yes, I feel on those occasions is abusive and nasty. And I can't say with complete assurance that if I did breach the 'no hitting' rule that I would only hit them judiciously, appropriately and rarely.

I have never seen a parent smack a child without leaving a mark. How is it done. I can tiouch my arm here and no mark is left. Just experiment on yourself. If it doesn't hurt at all then it's a ridiculous thing to do. If it does hurt it will leave a mark. So virtually always it will be illegal in my view. Obviously if it's like a cuddle and doesn't hurt then you can do it legally.

If my eldest, 2yrs old, does something naughty i just tell him that he musnt do it becasue it is wrong. If he does it again i put him in a travel cot in the kitchen to calm down, then when he he is calmer i bring him back in the room, and then i dont mention it again. I think they get confused if you talk at them too much.
They dont associate a smack with being naughty either, it doesnt teach them anything apart from the fact that adults lose it.

I'll never forget seeing my SIL 'discipline' my neice when she was still in a high chair; she'd thrown something on the floor, so instead of thinking to herself that her dd must have had enough, and getting her out of the high chair, my SIL shouted at her dd, and smacked her hand; my neice simply looked at her in surprise, so SIL immediately smacked again, harder, to get the upset and crying response she wanted.

My SIL is not a monster, I know she loves her dd, but she was angry and when you allow yourself to smack it can lead to this scenario very easily indeed. I can't believe my SIL felt remotely good about herself as a mother after this incident. My neice was so upset she had to go and have a sleep.

OOOOOh, can I be controversial too?? When I was pregnant with ds I spoke to my hv and said I would smack if ds were about to touch something hot/dangerous etc. After him trying to climb up on the grill of our fire about 50 times I took his hand and 'smacked' it - he looked at me in shock and I burst into tears!!!

I don't think I'm really a 'smacker' after all, and thinking about it later: I don't go around smacking adults, and would be horrified if my children smacked someone else, so why would I smack my babies!! It doesn't teach them anything positive does it? But I do think maybe Singingmum has had a bit of an unnecessarily hard time - there's a big difference between varied methods of discipline and abuse!

Please see my thread child abuse from last monday morning. It might give you some insight.

MI, fantastically honest as usual. I'm the same.

Well, someone had to say it.

God my kids drive me up the wall sometimes. I really cannot allow myself to add smacking to shouting.

Tasja, it depends what you mean by "work"

If you mean, "get immediate obedience due to child being scared of you"

then no, talk talk talk doesn't "work"

but if you mean "in the long term, teach your child the right way to behave"

then talk talk talk does work, very well as it happens.

Xenia - when I used to give my young children a 'tap' on the hand it certainly didn't leave a mark. However, one day when ds1 was 6 an incident arose that I won't bore you with and I did give him a smack on his bare shoulder, which left a red mark for over an hour.

That was the day that I came to the conclusion that it was wrong to hit them - I had used too much force because of my own frustration. They have never been hit since (except by each other of course!)and I now believe that smacking is at best ineffective and at worst psychologically damaging.

Interestingly - mine never hit, kicked, bit or pinched other children, so I don't necessarily think that there is a connection there. I know plenty of children who behaved violently towards others even though their parents didn't hit them.

I suppose so. I just tried to hit my arm and I was just about able to do it without leaving a mark. Apparently part of the reason the new law is ludicrous (and also permits still some abuse of children) is that it doesn't make allowances for skin colour. On someone as white as I am and with very markable skin you could breach the law more quickly than someone with darker skin. A whole new meaning to tanned hide I suppose - get them in the sun, get their skins darker and then beat the hell out of them with impunity.

what a great idea xenia thanks - no sun block this summer!

I'm interested to know what kids will be like in 10/20 years time after all this talking and time out etc.
Seems to me like all of a sudden there is a handbook out there, although I didn't get one when I had mine (must ask my hv for a copy though!)
My mum qualified as a social worker 2 yrs ago and has since insisted there are 'right' and 'wrong' ways of doing EVERYTHING. And I'm not talking big issues here, just everyday things. I personally don't smack by the way but do get very frustrated with people who insist that a responsible adult can't decide whether a thought out tap on the hand is appropriate in certain circumstances.
If I took everything my mum said to me on board then my children are going to end up psychological wrecks. Just an example here - god forbid I sell their old toys - apparently it will cause all sorts of psychologoical instabilities.

Personally I think that talk talk done properly does work but maybe I speak as a mum with a child that it does work on, I know a few of my friends would disagree.

As I have said on my previous posts I have never smacked my children out of frustration(maybe I should add yet there!) or definately not as a form of discipline as I believe it is wrong but this is my view and I do believe parents have a right to choose how they bring up their children - we are enough of a nanny state already!

I will go on to say one more thing and that is that as my DD has never been hit or frequently shouted at and she has never used hitting or shouting to get what she wants or to express her emotions and I really think this is because she doesn't know any other way.

Now maybe I just have a very placid child and in a few months time when DS gets a bit older I will be on here saying something else who knows, we will have to wait and see!