I was abused as a child. Serious abuse. Physical and mental abuse at the hands of my mother, abuse of a different kind at the hands of my grandfather. It was a sustained abuse which, while it may not have happened every day, was frequent enough for me to be terrified of my mother. There weren't many weeks went by without me being belted or beaten several times.
That kind of abuse is damaging, and very much made me the person that I am. Sustained and prolonged abuse does damage children, there is no doubt about that, and I am one hundred per cent with those posters who have said that it is not acceptable to treat a child that way.
My point was that this is not the thread for this kind of discussion. If those posters who were discussing hitting children in broad terms wanted a discussion, this was not the platform for it. That is a discussion which, although it has been had many times before on MN, is always going to lead to strong feelings by the anti-smackers, and those were not the kind of postings which were going to help Rococorita. By all means go ahead and have that discussion somewhere else, in broad terms which do not demonise one particular poster. But emotive, over-dramatic postings, accusations of child abuse, and suggestions that the OP needs anger management are not helpful in the context of the original post.
One smack does not damage a child in anywhere near the same way as the sustained, systemic abuse which some of the posters on this thread are talking about. It wasn't the right way to react, we all know that - but the point is that Rococorita knows that too; that is what she was concerned about.