Is smacking always bad?

[Muon]

I have two boys, both very young, and have been to playgroups where older children often behave quite violently towards other children. These children seem to have no idea of the hurt they are causing.
If a child is smacked (once they've been told it's going to happen if they don't change their behaviour and obviously not hard enough to cause a bruise) then they get the idea that physical pain is a punishment. If they don't know what it feels like how do they know what they are doing to other people? It seems to come naturally to children to try hitting as a way of expressing frustration at an age when they're not capable of verbal reasoning, so an adult giving them a smack to control their behaviour at that age wouldn't seem unreasonable.
I believe that most children start out basically nice and, when they get to the stage where they understand other people have feelings too, they won't want to inflict something they see as a punishment without due cause.
I know this message is very nonPC but I also know some people agree, although to actually smack a child in public runs the high risk of abuse from other people. Can the choice to smack or not be accepted as a parenting choice without interference from other people?

And FFS Northernlurker! None of us is perfect, none of us is suggesting we are. All of us are trying to make it clear that planning to smack your child as a parenting decision is not good. Lots of us plan things that don't work out - we are all limited by our tiredness, resources etc. and we all get it wrong. But what we are all trying to say is that aiming to smack your child is downright wrong and very harmful.

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Carrie my parents did that with me and I still have horrible memories of it at nearly 40

Bloss - I know your thread history when it comes to smacking threads.
I think people (including myself) will always post emotionally as so many of us have horrible upsetting memories of experiencing smacking as a child and to read about an adult calmly and intelligently justifying it is difficult and upsetting.

Of course it works, bloss. I just don't want my children to grow up behaving nicely because they're frightened of the consequences, I want them to grow up behaving nicely because that's what you do!

Bloss, I think you're absolutely right about punishment and that we wouldn't do it to an adult - and that's why I think we should distinguish between punishment and discipline.

They are not the same thing, the one involves teaching and the other involves the use of fear or humiliation. Ultimately, we want to teach our children to discipline themselves rather than waiting for their parents/teachers/employers or other authorities to punish them.

There are ways to teach one's children that there are consequences to actions, and to hold them up to those consequences without punishing them. Unfortunately these ways require most of us to rethink how we handle unacceptable behaviour, as we rely on methods that we all grew up with and accept without questioning. It wouldn't be a bad thing for all of us to question our assumptions about how to get our children to behave.

Even people like Gina Ford who most would consider to be quite hard core has a problem with using the naughty step and wrote quite a strong article about the techniques used in Supernanny etc.

Northernlurker No - not perfect, and have smacked in anger a few times. Still don't think it acceptable and felt ashamed of myself.

Saying something works is not a justification for doing it. Giving them electric shocks whenever they did something you didn't like would also work.

Feeling very sorry for Carrie's DD

The fear she must feel as she is being led out of the room!!

Taking DD out of the room and discussing her behaviour would be enough to stop it. The hitting part is not necessary.

No time to read full thread, but I think yes it is bad and shouldn't be used

'Why not address the fact that you lose control instead of justifying it'

Puzzled by that - I haven't justified it - nor would I. I'm just not going to flay myself - or anybody else over it. Thatisn't a reluctance I notice most of the other posters on this thread displaying.

smacking is never ok, it must be v confusing for a child to be told not to hit/behave agressively then to be whacked by a trusted adult who's supposed to be showing them how to behave acceptably.

naughty steps/time out are ok though if used appropriately and in context to the misdemeanour that's occured.

I think distractions great a times but children also need to hear no sometimes and have consequences for their negative behaviour esp if it's violence. this is the only time we use time out with dd. Some parents won't discipline or chastise their children at all and always use distraction as a way of deverting bad behaviour so therefore they get a fantsatic new activity to do with mummy, positive reinfrocement for bad behaviour . Like i said desitractions v effective in some instances but violence needs frim and consistent consequences imo by taking something pleasurabel away from the child be it a toy/company whatever.

carrie your post is awful, do you know you're being emotionally and physically abusive in doing what you do? The thought of the fear and terror your dd must feel breaks my heart. I've never come accross anyon who uses physical aggression in such a calm and calculated way towards a child.

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Northernlurker - could you explain how you would like posters to inform other posters about other ways of doing things and about why smacking is so damaging?

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Bloss - do you really think that parents who don't punish 2yos sit for hours with them trying to explain things?

I can tell you, from my experience of bringing up THREE children through their second and third years (DD4 not old enough yet to comment!) that you can do it without punishment and that it is far preferable IMO.

It really annoys me when people say 'you can't do this, that or the other' when blatantly you can because lots do.

Well I was smacked as a child on a very rare occasion and it did me absolutely no harm. The threat of it happening again was enough for the future. I do not feel one iota of fear when I recall my parents disciplining and I know that we were fairly well-behaved children.

Each to their own (within reason obviously) but I think you've reacted very harshly to Carrie. When I was being brought up plenty of my friends were disciplined in the same way as Carrie disciplines her children and it has had no discernible effect on them. We all talk about it and laugh now. DH is adamant that his parents would not have been able to control him and his brother without the threat of a short sharp smack every now and again as they were close in age and terrors.

What I remember and shudder at is verbal humiliation at the hands of other people's parents or teachers (of course my own parents never did this). This I think is far more damaging.

I remember being smacked by my best friend's mother and I know we deserved it. We were being bloody naughty and had been warned at least twice. I had a huge amount of respect for her after that and always had a very close relationship with this woman who was like a second mother to me.

I understand why this is a controversial topic, though and it's good to debate it and I appreciate reading other people's views, as I don't think I know anyone in RL who wasn't brought up the same way as me and feels the same way as me about it. But I haven't any children yet so I'm interested to read and learn more.

I don't want you to feel like this is turning into a witch hunt Carrie but that really is disgusting. Taking a child away from a situation and having a calm discussion about how they are behaving and what they could be doing instead should be perfectly adequate.

Coldly administering a smack on the bottom is positively Victorian and should have no place in modern child rearing. It's 2009 ffs, things have changed, what is considered acceptable has changed.

Maybe this is what you're parents did with you and you think 'Well I was smacked and I turned out ok'. This is what people often say to justify the fact that they smack but you just are passing down the behaviour to your own children which in many people's opiniion is not at all 'ok'.

I dont agree with banning it actually but I do agree with the current law. I would feel more uncomfortable with the state interfering with parenting to that extent than I do with the actual smacking.
I cannot see how an outright could ever be enforced and it would cause so many repercutions with people reporting each other etc.

I have to admit I smacked DD1 once as she was in the naughty corner having a tantrum and was lashing out at me, I told her if she hit me I would hit her back and as I am bigger that her it would be sore, I think the shock of me hitting her back stopped her dead in her tracks, she was going through this phase of hitting and kicking me and this was a last resort. I am not trying to justify it, I hated doing it and haven't done since.

I was telling a friend this and she does smack her children frequently and she said "well my DC have never tried to hit ME" as if that was why DD1 had did it because I had never smacked her, personally I think it's more frustrations in the child than the method of discipline.

We have a zero tolerance policy on violence in this house, the DDs do hit each other but how can I tell them that hitting is wrong by hitting them? Does not make sense at all.

DD3 is 15 months and going through a hitting me phase at the moment, someone told me I should hit her back too to teach her it hurts, she is 15 months! I know that seems hypocritical after what I said in the first paragraph but DD1 was a lot older and could communicate and reason. DD3 is a baby.

The thought of putting a child over your knee and coldly smacking their bum horrifies me. I remember when I was young lying crying in bed with my Mums hand prints in red welts on my bare legs, I never want the DDs to experience something like that.

Oh I don't know - maybe they could cut down on the emotive language for a start:

lashed out

you hit them

highly damaging

Smacking is humiliating and demeaning

why would you want to hurt your own child?

The thought of a child being smacked makes me feel sick to my stomach

you post made me feel sick. The calmness of it all is vile.

very sad that you can so calmy inflict pain on your child. very cold.

your post made me feel cold

aiming to smack your child is downright wrong and very harmful.

carrie your post is awful, do you know you're being emotionally and physically abusive in doing what you do? The thought of the fear and terror your dd must feel breaks my heart. I've never come accross anyon who uses physical aggression in such a calm and calculated way towards a child.

Bit of a flaying there I think!