what are the reasons for NO smacking?

[hermykne]

I AM CURIOUS to know, folling the other thread, as my dd is so bold at the moment nothing gets thru to her, even putting her in a time out room for 2/3mins, shes 3. she will keep on screaming and then hit something or push something over.
can last 40mins and no matter how you go over the matter with her when shes calm, she doesnt seem to learn anything,
and i suppose smacking will not make her understand either...
but what does smacking create or instill in behavourial patterns in yours opinions?

I am glad there is more of the evening lot who actually do/have smacked, putting their point across.

My only is that I have been called deluded, what am I supposed to be deluded about?

I cannot give you an actual reason why smacking works, on the basis that I know I don't hit hard enough to hurt. I think it is that my kids realise that have gone beyond the boundries and therefore they get upset. It is not because it actually hurts. Also all children are different in how they react to smacking. DD1 was often more openly defiant and did things that I categorically said she shouldn't, hence she got a smack. DD2 actually get scared of her own anger, and mine, to for her shouting is far worse. She is naturally a good child, DD1 is also really good now she is 6, but she was a bit of a beast between 2 and 4.

I don't beat up my kids, I haen't smacked them for ages, I have shouted at them though. Smacking has worked for me, I doubt I will use it again, as my kids hav changed ad tbh rarly do the types of things I ever smacked them for, they are in general, very well behaved

Embarrassedtoadmit, I think this is very common. I remember a nursery school experience in which a girl was smacked in front of the whole class and I felt a mixture of horror for her, and excitement/arousal.

sorry I did post that in a bit of a hurry...#I should say could lead to sexualisation, of course it won't always
it's a complex subject and I didn't mean to trivialise it

Wwell if we are in confession mode then I will say that I also used to get a "kick" out of seeing other children get spanked when I was a child. A sort of mixture of horror and fascination. One of the reasons why I would never never never smack a child.

Our headmaster used to make a big thing of "knickers down, bottoms smacked!" and frankly if there isn't a sexual connotation in that then I don't know what is.

I am not saying that everyone feels that waya, but I did.

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I'm not sure whether a couple of you are getting stressed over my use of the word deluded or Enid's, but just to make it clear.....it was referring to the impression I was getting that you (as a group) didn't feel you were hurting or humiliating your kids when smacking them. As a few of you have come back and said that you do hurt your children when you do it, I was obviously wrong.

So, you aren't hurting them thinking you aren't. You're hurting them fully aware that you are. Is that OK now? I didn't mean to upset you.

Not smacking doesn't mean that you don't think discipline and boundaries are important.

I find the argument that "I only smack occaisionally because mainly the threat is enough" to be frankly chilling. This implies that you rule your child by fear. This was my experience of childhood and I still fear my mother now.

The fact - and this really is a fact - is that many parents have well behaved and well disciplined children without ruling them by violence or fear - so why wouldn't everyone aim to avoid smacking?

Maybe discipline by smacking is better than no discipline at all - but this doesn't form an argument to smack. Giving a starving man mouldy food to eat is better than giving them nothing - but that doesn't make it right, or something to aim for.

I have wanted to smack my daughter - and the fact that I did, and the circumstances which led to it make me convinced of how wrong this is.

Not disciplining your child at all is a form of abuse in my book, but smacking is not the answer to effective discipline.

"the fact that I did" didn't mean that I actually smacked dd BTW - I mean that the fact that I WANTED to shocked me

too true about the cold water socci - i heard of a case (one of those "failure of social sevrices" cases) where a boy had died from a repeated punishment of cold baths alternated with being made to stand in front of a hot fire

i suppose that should wake us up to the risk of using any kind of corporal punishment - it is an attack on the body.

for me it has a lot to do with respect too - good discipline is respectful of the child. if i had a friend who hit me i would not feel they respected me - it is incompatible with respect IMO.

I once lived with and was engaged to a very lovely man. The relationship fell apart because he was unable to have any kind of normal sexual intercourse, he only got sexual pleasure from spanking someone or thinking about spanking someone. He had therapy and we tried everything to help him, but it was no good. He is still single and resigned to being so forever. His fetish began while watching another child being spanked on their bare bottom. Spanking can and does warp children's sexuality and people are unfortunately deluding themselves if they think this is not the case.

A cold shower? WTF. I'm sure there is place for her as a warder in Guantanamo Bay, but i'm not so convinced she's cut to be a mother. What an absolutely horrible person she must be. I hope someone does it to her one day, I truly do. Bitch.

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I am vehemently anti-smacking! I find it very difficult to 'get' why any parent would purposefully harm their own child!

Anyway - has anyone posted a link to this yet???

children who are smacked are more aggressive than those who are not smacked

I do think it's a combination of factors which makes a child aggressive. My DH was regularly spanked with slippers by his DH and has neither any deviant sexual fetishes (that I know of) nor is he aggressive. I am anti-smacking for lots of reasons, but I don't believe people who occasionally smack on the bottom can or should be classed with people who let their children take cold showers etc. I think a zero tolerance and a (whisper ban on smacking is needed as a principle. If it becomes totally unacceptable to smack a child, I think peoples attitudes would slowly change in society as a whole preventing abuse both because ignorant people might understand it better if the law is very firm and because it makes it much easier to prosecute abusers because the law would not be so open to interpretations. If there was a law on smacking, it wouldn't mean that prisons around the country would fill with parents who once in a while tapped their child on the hand. I think it's important to see the bigger picture in this debate!

Sorry, he was spanked by his father I mean. Not DH spanked by DH....

INteresting article Soapbox especially

"But researchers did find that in countries where physical discipline was more common and culturally accepted, the behavioural problems were not as bad as when it was carried out where it was more taboo."

And lets face it 336 isn't a lot of families, and in all families I think we'd all (both pro- and anti- smackers) agree there's more to a child's behaviour than simply the forms of discipline used. There's a whole host of things which will affect the way a child behaves, and how they grow up to be.

j pleasssse my simple question has gone mad!

been busy all afternoon with children
going to read this later by printing it.

i hope theres some good advice in here

well hermynke it was always going to set us off
there are few more emotive subjects - but would anyone like to discuss breastfeeding? or boden?

laligo i swear to god i dinnt think there'd be this many replies, i dont think any of my thread s have topped 100 let alone 200!!!
oh i am having a laugh at this

re boden , just got my 1st batch of gear this week _ LOVE IT

havent read all of the thread, too long and too lazy.

I went to school with a girl and she was never smacked as a child, her father would do things like make her hold her arm out carrying a glass of water for 10/20 mins i cant remember how long, but she would hate it, or she would have to sit and face the wall for a half an hour and not move type stuff, what do we think of this? ... Or have I just killed this thread? ... had to end sometime!

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I know someone whose punishment for swearing was to have a fresh chili rubbed on her gums.

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a somali woman i know is having therapy due to the abuse she suffered at her mothers hands, she had about 13 children but her mother hated her.

She rubbed chilli in unimaginable places and done things to her that would make you cry, I just dont get it. A mother of 13. Why would you be so mean? She was fine to the rest, just her that got all the brutality.

I rememeber being smacked alot as a kid and I have never had a fight or been violent in my life and I still adore my parents. The reason that I won't ever smack dd's is I do infact rememeber that smacking never worked on me, as it was a over in a second and forgot just as quick and a couple of days later I would do the naughty deed again. My parents eventually clicked onto this and used punishments like taking away things such as radio or my fav books, or I would be grounded which worked much more effectively.