Smacking 'does no harm if a child feels loved': do you agree?

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello.

We're wondering how you feel about new research that suggests smacking does children no harm as long as they know it is for the right reasons and feel loved.

The publication of this study - which focused on teenagers, it must be said - is causing quite a stir, with, according to the Telegraph, 'parenting groups and charities [reacting] angrily to the findings, [and] maintaining that a child can suffer long term damage from physical discipline'.

In Britain, parents are not banned from smacking their children but it is illegal to inflict injuries causing more than a temporary reddening of the skin.

So, do you agree that smacking is fine, as long as it's tempered with a backdrop of love and affection? Or do you think that smacking is never the answer? Please do tell.

It doesn't matter where you hit them the very act of hitting a child gives out the message that you can get someone smaller and more vulnerable than you to toe your line of you strike them. There is no valid argument for it yet people still try. My mum smacked and hit all of us and we all resent her for it.

Haven't read whole thread but this research doesn't surprise me. I look at the animal world. Mother lions cuff and growl at their baby lion cubs to stop them doing daft things. I can't believe that generations and generations of parents from cavemen onwards have damaged their children by smacking them to stop them running towards a woolly mammoth/speeding car.

Punishment which comes out of love is one thing, whether physical or mental. Punishment which comes out of cruelty is torture, whether physical or mental. I think equal damage can be done, either way.

Comparing an adult in the street to your child is very odd. You do not have raise and guide that random adult. So yes you would not smack them but nor would you put them in time-out or take away their computer games .

BTW I am not defending smacking, I just think it is a bit odd to use that kind of comparison.

'i believe is legal here in some religious "sunday school" type settings'

Can you evidence this? Never heard of it myself. On the contrary the sunday school I am aware of has clear policies that mirror those of schools in terms of how discipline will be imposed.

My DS1 is the most likely candidate for a smack I've ever known. Often DH and I will get through a hideous tantrummy bedtime and pat each other on the back for not smacking our child. He seems to be unable to physically contain the extent of his rage/emotion/overtiredness sometimes, and can neither say what is the matter nor, really, calm himself down without help and intervention.

The fact is, that's when I most want to give him a smack. Yep, that's right, I want to hit him sometimes. I'm as human as can be! But I don't, because I know that it would be for me - I imagine I want to do it because I think it would make me feel better. I know full well that hitting him at any point in his tantrum would escalate the horror, rather than stop it/calm it down.

Parents smacking, I see as basically parents having a tantrum of their own. I don't blame them particularly, I've often felt like doing it myself, who doesnt' want their own tantrum sometimes? But I stop myself, and repeat that it wouldn't HELP the situation I am in at all, and could cause it damage.

I do agree that not hitting is the best way to go, although I have done it in the past when I've lost control.

Reading back a few posts - noddyholder my DM smacked both my sister and I and we love her to bits. Just for another perspective. coffeeaddict has put across a very reasoned argument in my opinion - sort of how I feel.

I would like to say that people always say 'You wouldn't hit an adult so why do it to a child?', and I ALWAYS think 'I would probably hit any adult that wound me up as much as my children have - they just know when to stop.'

Ultimately though I think hitting is bad; I try very hard not to and haven't for a good while now. I can't really see much benefit coming out of it, except in that Pavlov's dogs sense, when your child is about to something that could be deadly (like running into the road).

I don't know if anyone can answer this one, I'd really like to hear how people who think smacking isn't that bad might answer it. I'm not being arsey, it's not some 'ahah!' question - I just find it my stumbling block when people say "well don't compare it to hitting an adult, it's different, no one would let my child drive either, children are different" - if I imagine this scenario

How about if a vulnerable adult with a mental age of three or for was in my care, say my mother or sister. If she played up, would or be okay to smack her? What about to stop her running into the road? Or if she hit me/ the cat/ a baby?
Can I smack my mother with dementia or my sister with a mental age of three or four? Would that be okay?

Because that's where my line is. Would I do this to someone else who was vulnerable and in my care?
And, of course, when someone (my mother) says "I'd give him a smack" I ask: would it help? How?
Dmum has admitted that no, it wouldn't help, but it might make me feel better. We had a laugh about that, actually, as I love her honesty :)

Ah! perfect timing, Eugenes

How about if a vulnerable adult with a mental age of three or for was in my care, say my mother or sister. If she played up, would or be okay to smack her? What about to stop her running into the road? Or if she hit me/ the cat/ a baby? Can I smack my mother with dementia or my sister with a mental age of three or four? Would that be okay?

i personally find the comparing adults with special needs to three year olds incredibly offensive.

A vulnerable adult with a mental age of three or four is not the same as a three or four year old, neither is a person with dementia.

Sadly, in terms of language and cognition, a four year old often has much better "skills" than an individual with special needs who may never attain that level of language fluency or ability to do certain tasks but that adult is still an adult who has accrued a lifetime of experience.

This does not mean that children don't require dignity and respect, of course they do. It's just that comparing adults who have lived with disability all their life to typically developing children is in itself neither dignified nor respectful.

Satyricon - What I meant to say was anyone who was smacked, says they are fine, and then smacks their own child is obviously not 'fine'. Anyone who feels they deserved to be hurt by someone, and then feels justified in hurting someone else, is not fine.

No Ahah moment for me.

The patient with dementia wouldn't be able to learn from it, it would be forgotten and they wouldn't know why it was done in the first place.

The vulnerable adult would be given more allowance to do reckless things due their disability but smacking could work in an emergency. As with dcs only if a special situation arises, not routinely.

people keep doing it on this thread working9 and it is making me really uncomfortable.

"The patient with dementia wouldn't be able to learn from it, it would be forgotten and they wouldn't know why it was done in the first place.

The vulnerable adult would be given more allowance to do reckless things due their disability but smacking could work in an emergency. As with dcs only if a special situation arises, not routinely."

Oh dear.

You see, I don't agree with smacking. I think it is wrong, I just think that in a parent-child relationship there's probably a chance that there are some times when a situation that appears deathly serious provokes a parent to revert to that animal part of themselves, the mother lion who bats her lion cub away. I can imagine that in those rare situations (in our world) a smack is literally a mother/father reacting out of their "primitive" brain, the brain that existed before language and in which physical action was the only way to communicate. I think it's no accident that there a number of people who say the only time they ever smacked was in a situation where they feared for their child's life.

There is never going to be a situation where that applies to someone who is caring for an adult with either learning disabilities or dementia. I know in the States that there are some institutions where electroshock therapy is used to prevent adults from gravely injuring themselves due to repetitive serious self-injury but a discussion of the rights and wrongs of that are really nothing to do with a discussion on smacking.

Haven't read the full thread, but even looking at the title of the research suggests hat it relates to a particular cultural subset of young people and may very well not be generalisable to young people elsewhere. On those grounds alone I would cry 'Bollocks'.

And all the other arguments against smacking (hate that word, it's hitting, don't gild the lily) from many of the posters above.

I'm finding these responses really helpful, thank you.
You see, I'm trying to tease out the strands of thought that make adults smacking children acceptable, but children smacking children, or adults smacking adults, unacceptable.

Thanks for your responses.

Whilst I'm addressing the sanctimonious brigade may I add that I haven't hit my children. I haven't slapped their heads or faces or indeed any body part except for a flat palmed smack on the bottom. When people get all humphy about 'hitting' children you're just confusing the issue.

I usually agree with a lot things you write Northern and I am not trying to be argumentative but can I ask (genuinely) what you feel the difference is between smacking and hitting?

To me, a smack or a hit or anything physically 'violent' (I realise there are loads of levels of violence but it's violence all the same) is the same thing. I am really not trying to confuse the issue, I just see don't see the difference - it's like people try to use terminology to try to lessen what the act is.

Oh, and apologies to the offended.
I honestly don't think that in any of the situations I've been tempted to smack my nearly three year old, he would have learned anything from it. So hence my introduction of adults with learning difficulties differences as analogy.

The way we discipline our children is our chance to help make the world a more peaceable place, one child at a time. It is very important that we model acceptable behavior in how to deal with conflict in our interactions with them. I believe that we should strive to discipline them without hitting, without shouting and yelling, and without smashing/destroying property.

Further, I think the Telegraph made a huge and misleading leap from the study cited to its headline. I also think that cultural context is important, but that we need to work to change cultures that accept that hitting children is defensible.

HenryIsUpduffed "A child is either too young or too old to be smacked"

That is one of the most sensible and insightful things I've read on here. I might just have to steal it and pass it off as my own.

I wasn't having a go at you, SAF, sorry if it seems that way. Unfortunately this subject usually tends to evoke a lot of personal defensiveness. It bears much in-depth discussion (and has done since humans were able to discuss it!)

Leaving my experience right out of it, I am adamant that all physical punishment is violence. There are places for violence - in self-defence, for example, which wouldn't be necessary against a child - and there are places for hitting without rancour - in play sometimes, and in some sports.

I understand what you've said about smacking DS, and feel sorry you've had to justify and qualify your choices. I used to smack small children but decided never to do it again after examining the issue more closely. I concluded that expressed anger is sufficient punishment for a child and, thus, any "final resort" punishment will do the job as well as a smack, without the implied acceptance of violence. I certainly know many parents whose hard stare is a big enough deterrent to poor behaviour in children, and this is what I aimed for in my own actions (with reasonable success, I think.)

Actually the hard stare is useful against oiky yobs, too, ime, and far safer than hitting them

I usually agree with a lot things you write Northern and I am not trying to be argumentative but can I ask (genuinely) what you feel the difference is between smacking and hitting?

To me, a smack or a hit or anything physically 'violent' (I realise there are loads of levels of violence but it's violence all the same) is the same thing. I am really not trying to confuse the issue, I just see don't see the difference - it's like people try to use terminology to try to lessen what the act is.

I agree really, I don't understand why smacking is a kind of special hitting/slapping. Using the word only specifies "hitting a child with an open hand as a disciplinary method" rather than being a different physical action.

I understand "tapping" even less tbh - if smacking works at all, surely it's because it hurts, so what does a non-hurting smack achieve?

Jesus you're welcome to it. I've been having this discussion for years - my parents were among the few non-smackers in the 1980s - and that's the core of the matter for me.

What's all this about mother lions? We're all feline now? Cats carry their young by grabbing the neck with their teeth; should humans do that too?

If you bother to watch a cat batting a kitten away, she doesn't hit the baby. She bats it with a soft paw. It's the equivalent of you shunting your annoying toddler (or, indeed, cat) off the book you're reading.

whose children were you smacking garlic?