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?

Ladymuck, I am ever grateful for the break I have from dd when she is in nursery (and I at pt work - the reason why I can post on mn) - she can be quite full on . As for delegation of discipline, the nursery would not (I hope) do anything I would not do, which is the reason why I chose that nursery for dd. The carers would stop her, tell her it is wrong and if necessary, physically remove her. Peer pressure at nursery is also a big motivator.

Crunchie, of course I don't think your kids hate you! When I said good for you I meant it! It's just not for me and I will never feel comfortable about the idea of a parent using their superior physical strength to get their child to do or not do something whether smacking is done in anger or not whether it is a wallop or a tap, personally I believe it is wrong and very sad. I am not attacking you, or anyone else, it is my opinion which we are all expressing, are we not? It is an emotive subject and interesting that the pro-smackers are very defensive when their methods are questioned but supernanny / naughty step mums seem to be ignoring any critisism of their methods.
The point I was trying to make is that smacking is not the problem, inconsistancy is and, Crunchie, you have said you have wonderful kids, you are obviously a wonderful mother, have been consistant with your discipline and taught them respect with good, honest values, which is, discipline choices aside, what we are here to do!

BTW Ironmaiden I am a totally C**P mother, who by some miracle has great kids. I am certainly in the field of 'Healthy Neglect'

All I have ever done right (I hope) is to make my children feel secure and loved and make them know how PROUD I am of them. Anything else in my eyes is a bonus

Wow - what staff ratio do they have if they have to remove her potentially "hundreds of times" from doing something she shouldn't be? Have to say that I'm not sure that I would trust a nursery which didn't have some form of discipline "techniques" (though physical removal in itself is a technique in my books). A lot of nurseries that I have seen use both positive methods (eg star charts or pasta jars as we have on MN) and time out (step/corner/chair). Thinking about it I would be worried if a nursery only ever used physical removal - isn't that as traumatic for a child as smacking (I would be hugely upset if someone came and physycally removed me from a situation).

Good for you crunchie! When dd was tiny I had to give up breast feeding and thought I'd die of guilt and dd would die without breastmilk but then someone pointed out that the most important thing you can give your child is love and security and everything else falls into place. I can't look at my dd without disolving into a sugary pool of love and pride!
(Sorry, I've lost the point of the thread now)

Ladymuck, glad you got me thinking about what happens in dd's nursery. The staff ratio is not better or worse than Ofsted recommendations, so I imagine 1-8 now that dd is past 2. You are right that 100s of interventions are not feasible, but then I hope I am not alone in thinking that the little ones act up more at home with their mothers than outside (hence the peer pressure). The transgressions at dd's age are things like standing on tables, scratching, pushing, hitting. So stopping the action (what I mean by "physical removal") + indication of disapproval is the technique. Yes, they do have stickers, come to think of it. If dd gets upset about being stopped and has a tantrum, then so be it. But the difference is that she is upset because she was thwarted in her desires, not because she was made to feel small or humiliated.

Have to admit that I have, on the rare occasion, hit ds1 on the hand (2yo) but mainly when we are both tired and grumpy. I don't think that it has been acceptable or extreme situations. After reading through this thread am vowing to keep my cool in future...I don't agree with smacking on principal at all however there are always extreme situations...

I simply can't smack my 3 year old, on the rare occasion that I have lapsed she has proceeded to lecture me about how smacking is wrong and "you shouldn't smack people mum". Being pulled up by a 3 year old who is completely in the right, is a powerful deterrent to repeating the behaviour!

hmc, lol!

The way I look at smacking is if you were having an argument or disagreement with another adult, would you smack them. The answer is probably no. So therefore we shouldn't smack our kids. It's easy to smack someone smaller than you, but it's wrong.

Message withdrawn

Ruty! Read my posts properly please
Did I say 'everyone was into smacking'? No. I said 'everyone was into punishment' - a completely and utterly different statement, incorporating confiscation of toys, naughty steps etc etc etc.

Bloss....but some children may well conclude that the person smacking/hitting them doesn't love them. That is very much my experience. Everyone seems very keen to say, 'oh, I don't beat my kids with a stick/I say I love them the rest of the time/I take them to museums/I always shout at them a bit first" and assumes that makes them utterly immune from their child resenting what is done to them, or loving their parent less for it. In my case, I remember being told I was loved, being carefully dressed, read to, taught to read, taken to ballet lessons, carried ALL the way around the Louvre, being tucked into bed at night...and I STILL bitterly resent being smacked (I prefer the term 'hit' but let's go with smacked here) by my parents and love and trust them MUCH less as a consequence. Much as I'd feel about anyone who hit me. OK, maybe I'm a bit unusual in this, but it is a risk. One that many of you are happy to run, but I'm not.

BTW the child may be wrong. I am sure everyone here absolutely loves their child. But in my case, the fact that I didn't feel loved when I was smacked when very young, and the fact that my parents did something to me that made me feel unloved, destroyed something important.

No Aloha, you are not alone!

I think that those who smack their children are rather ostrich like. Because they have reached the position they have on smacking they assume that their children will too.

Frankly I think their children are more likely than not to see this as impairing their relationsips. The risk of it all going pear shaped is not one I am prepared to take, particularly when there are other non-violent options!

I feel quite bad posting my feelings sometimes as I know that very nice people sometimes hit their kids and it doesn't have long term effects. But I think it's worth knowing that sometimes it DOES. And IME they can be pretty awful. The lack of trust and the diminution of love I feel for my parents is the KEY reason why I don't smack, and why I TRY to avoid hurting or humiliating my kids. As I said, not always successfully by any means.

Yes, IKWYM! Somewhere way down this thread I made the point that I was labelling the act, not the person carrying it out! However, I'm not sure that I gave my parents the benefit of such subtleties

I don't think anyone on her has mentioned what happens when you have a non parent partner very much..

dp has been a parent to my children but only started at 11, 14 and 15 and now has the dgs three dyas a week (he has him more than me)and we never discussed disciplining at all but I said this evening would you smack and he said no, his Mum did but he won't. He can't see why.

My ds told my dad that he was a "bad man" and he should come back to him when he was a "happy man". Ds meant that he had lost him temper. When ds loses his temper we tell him to lie down (it works for him, very calm very quick) and come and see us when he is happier.

So as we have also told him that it is never okay to hit, I would imagine a similar response if someone (adult, child, anyone) tried to hit him.

I have spent 2 years teaching him that hitting is wrong - I refuse to confuse that teaching to smack him.

What other people choose to do is up to them.

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

I was smacked as a child - I don't resent it as an adult

Aloha

you wrote: "and I STILL bitterly resent being smacked (I prefer the term 'hit' but let's go with smacked here) by my parents and love and trust them MUCH less as a consequence."

Whilst I understand where you are coming from, I'm really sorry (for you)that this has impaired your relationship with your parents, can't you let it go at all? I'm sure they were just a product of their time - most parents smacked 30 years ago, most think it is inappropriate today. They probably had no perception that there might be a moral aspect to it - smacking was what people did then, without questioning...

I think whether or not a child resents being smacked depends on the child's personality and the overall quality of parenting received.

I was caned by my mother as a child and have never been close to her as a result - it is the main thing I remember about my mother when growing up, even though my mother was extremely sacrificial to my needs in all other respects. I am sure if I asked her, she would only recall the nice things she did for me, but to my mind, it is irrelevant because of her abuse of power.

Dh was smacked around the legs when naughty but he has a great relationship with his parents because overall his mother was warm and made a happy home and smacking occurred a lot less.

Then again, I was what you might call a "spirited" or "strongwilled" child. So the unfairness of it all struck me when I was about 11. I decided I would not take this any more and wrestled the cane from my mother. She was taken aback and never hit me from then on. So Socci, you are right about the about-turn when the child is old enough to understand the balance of power and the fallibility of parents.

Dh was smacked around the legs when naughty but he has a great relationship with his parents because overall his mother was warm and made a happy home and smacking occurred a lot less.

Both dh and I are anti-smacking. But I just wanted to say that I recognise it is possible to have 2 different outcomes depending on the circumstances.

aloha i did clarify my statement. and i was rather exhausted by our other discussion.