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?

I was aksed by the teacher to clear the blackboard and then 2 mins later she forgot she'd asked me to do it and smacked me hard on the legs and told me to sit down, I've never forgotten that incident but can't even remember the teachers name.

To get a class to behave you have to command respect, if todays teachers cannot do that without the fear factor then they aren't very good teachers IMO.

colditz I disagree, and the moment you hit a child you have lost the moral high ground. It is not necessary or desirable.

I think the naughty step is worse than smacking. There are a lot of things worse than smacking.

How are we to teach children how to be reasonable and rational if we lose it ourseleves? It is the HARDEST thing I have ever done having to work through the tantrums, bad behaviour etc that we all experience in children. But work at it we must. I have often been pushed to the utter limits - they know exactly what buttons to press to drive you to distraction and then keep on going - and I just want to make the behaviour, combined with the noise etc - stop.

Seeing the harm caused to children each day on the TV / Papers etc stops me in my tracks. Just walking through the towns I can hear parents who are either at their wits end or just lack some basic parenting skills, shouting, hitting and calling their tiny children utterly dispicable names. What chance do these children, who will be our future, have?

Children need guidance, direction and instruction on how to manage themselves, and the people they look up to are mainly their parents and then later on their peers.

I saw a young girl, who had learning difficulties, peep over the lunchtime counter at my school whilst waiting to go in to lunch. A teacher saw her and slapped so hard on the back of the legs, that she had red raised marks throughout the lunch period. I was only 12 at the time, but the distress made me feel physically sick and I clearly remember feeling it was OTT and unncessary for what she had done.

I don't mean to offend anyone - I speak from the heart as I can't bear seeing or hearing little ones hurt or abused.

kittywise you are right, there are alot of things worse than smacking. this in itself does not mean that smacking is a positive method of discipline.

there are also alot of things that are worse than stealing money, again, that does not mean stealing money is the right way to acquire it.

booo I agree, however, MN very often treats smacking as the worst possible thing you could do to a child and smackers are the devil incarnate.
That's madness and very OTT.

I smacked ds once (never again) years ago, no excuse but he has adhd and I was at the end of my tether and under a lot of stress att...it made me feel ashamed and out of control..I hated myself for it...so I have not smacked since and never would.

How is there calmness in smackinga child, thats bullshit

I was smacked in temper by my mum(on a regular basis) and I still resent her for that

VoluptuaGoodshag Thu 29-Oct-09 17:12:50 Add message | Report | Contact poster Ah knew that one would be controversial.

"Teachers nowadays have nothing to fall back on as punishment and I mean last resort punishment. I'm 40. Corporal punishment was abolished when I was about 14. But I remember that the very threat of getting the belt was enough to get a class under control."

Hmmm...I went to school in Sweden where corporal punishment had been abolished much earlier. And school children were not out of control there. Indeed I remember my mother (a teacher) reading with horror about the educational situation in the UK, that would have been long before the abolition of corporal punishment.

I actually think that the tone on here has been pretty measured.

I understand smacking in anger. I do not condone it. I agree with Hibernate

I do not understand "planned" smacking.

i have to disagree there kitty

sometimes its fruitshoots, sometimes its a dog jumping on people, sometimes its shopping in asda

I agree with Milly: if you can't get children to obey without smacking, then you are clearly not that good at the job. Respect is about totally different things from smacking.

When I grew up parental smacking was already frowned upon, though it was not banned in Sweden until much later. Yet I remember adults as people with authority; the constant fear of losing control is something I have come to associate more with British parenting tbh.

Colditz' opinion poll related to the age of the poster's children is a good thought. For what it's worth, mine are 9 and 13 (in a week). My parents managed to raise 4 of us to adult age without ever needing to resort to it: but they certainly had authority. My eldest brother has raised 3 to adulthood without feeling the need, my younger brother has got his one to age 11, and my youngest has managed to get his two to 8 and 6 respectively.

And for the record, I consider smacking an older child a far more serious matter, as they have a sense of dignity that is different from that of a younger child.

sorry, first sentence should read: if as a teacher you cannot...

my dad was a teacher (and a pupil) before the abolition of corporal punishment in school, and he always said it was pretty obvious which teachers had to resort to it- it wasn't the good ones

I am sure those who do smack are actually very good parents, but I could never bring myself, ever, to smack DD, and I can't get my head round how other people can smack their children. I find it easier to understand those who smack in anger. Those who make a calm, rational decision to smack give me the creeps, but I know that if I met them, I would probably think they were lovely. I think it's the smacking, not the smacker that I cannot stomach. I think that in ten or twenty years time when smacking is pretty much obsolete, it will be viewed in the same way that e.g. corporal punishment in schools is now. People in the sixties thought the cane was perfectly normal. Now, we would be horried at the thought. It is on a completely different scale (people remember being caned with horror, whereas I can't think of anyone my age who seems scarred by smacking, and it did happen to most of us), but I think the point about changing views still stands.

I don't agree with smacking- I have in the past, when the dcs were younger, and it was a horrible out of control feeling.
I'm interested in comments such as Lynnette's- if you don't take things away/do naughty step etc- what do you do? If dc has misbehaved, I would find it hard to ASK a child if they'd like to take part in a punishment...I would expect them to do it. Otherwise what respect as a parent do you have?

"if you can't get children to obey without smacking, then you are clearly not that good at the job. "

I don't agree with smacking and I don't do it but I don't think this above necessarily true either. It's a very simplistic view that doesn't take into account the individual child. Some children are exceptionally strong willed and stubborn.

Every member of my family finds my ds confrontational, objectionable, dramatic and mostly uncooperative. They can't all be bad parents, surely. I'm talking about gps and aunts and uncles here.

Do they all give him a whack WW ?

Sorry, I did qualify in my later post; I meant "as a teacher". They've been trained and have the authority of their position!

Still, it is not the case that there are no strong-willed children in Sweden: parents have had to cope for about 20 years. I was an exceptionally strong willed child; my parents still managed to maintain authority.

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That's the thing Winky. No-one seems to consider that every single person is different and deals with things in different ways. This applies to children as well as adults. But anyone who dares to suggest that smacking (and let's face it, it's usually under extreme circumstances) was used then they may as well be hung, drawn and quartered.

Sad thing is, those children who are most affected by physical abuse, then that probably always goes on. That sort of stuff is not a very occasional smack, it's serious physical abuse but all parents are just lumped together under the same umbrella and they are labelled bad, hopeless parents

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Booooyooooo

To answer your question, no of course it's not right. But the same can be said for a teacher in a bad mood dishing out lines or making someone stand outside because they didn't like them or is in a bad mood.

Ah yes the cane

My brother was caned at school as was my father. Neither can remember the reason they were punished, they just remember the person who caned them.

Actually VGS that is exactly what everyone is saying that children need to be guided according to their needs and how they react, a good smack isn't the one size fits all solution.

The problem for me is where the line is drawn, I was smacked as a toddler, that was acceptable, but then with a slipper as a 4 year old, maybe not so good, by the time I reached the grand old age of 9 the leather belt was out for talking after bedtime lights out.

So if in one parents opinion a belt is fine and anothers a smacked hand is fine, it's easier just to say neither is fine to make sure the first one just doesn't happen.

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Nooooo, DS doesn't get hit at all by anyone except his two year old sister who gives him a good clout every now and t hen for getting on her nerves!

But family members who have come to stay/holidayed with us have been amazed at how he hasn't responded to rewards, punishments, reasoning, hugs.

He has been shouted at when we'd just had enough of every single weekend being a source of utter stress. And yes, we failed then but we are human.

I hate the thought of smacking but not everyone is well equipped all of the time to deal with every single situation that they face. It's not right to dismiss swathes of parents who otherwise do a great job with their kids as failures because they've let the stress get to them on occasion.