The Smacking Debate
 

Should parents be allowed to smack their kids?

Do they have the right to discipline their kids in the way they seem fit? Or do you consider it abuse?

Under common law, a similar smack to an adult would bring on assault charges. So does the UN convention for the Rights of the Child apply here? Is smacking considered child abuse and should parents be held accountible for the way they discipline their children?

Would you/Do you smack your kids? where do you draw the line between discipline and abuse?

as a parent of a toddler who's going to start acting up soon, ive been thinking about this topic a lot. Does smacking affect the child, and if so, what long term affect does it have on a childs behaviour, and ultimately their personalities?

i have to say that im undecided on this debate as yet, but i think parents can and have a right to be firm with their kids and discipline them without smacking them. The problem here is that the UN convention refers to the physical and mental abuse of kids. Are parents hands tied? should we just ignore the UN?

what are your thoughts?

I have been able to raise both of my kids without having to resort to hitting them.

I know there are other methods to use and am not convinced that hitting your kid is necessary.

I don't believe in smacking, really.
I think that a swift pop with an open hand on the back of a child's hand to get their attention when they are about to do something that will cause bodily injury is acceptable once in awhile. For example, reaching for a hot iron, fingers towards a socket. It's more for shock value and to associate discomfort with the action, rather than punishment. I have found in working with kids that spanking is quite ineffective these days. I got better results by making an 8 year old sit in a chair in time out for eight minutes without touching the floor (started over each time he did) than his grandmother did in 5 years of spanking him for his behavior. Every time I see it happen, I want to yell, "Use your words!" at the parent. Then again, it pisses me off when parents or adults start lecturing three year olds in a manner that is way above them and then get mad when they don't respond how they want them to. "you are embarrassing me, we do not choose to tolerate this behavior in our family so you'd better choose some other way to respond." really lady? Tell tell the kid what he's doing wrong or you can't get mad when they don't change. I think that's how smacking comes about... frustration that a kid isn't acting like an adult or responding to adult words.

I think one aspect of the modern thought regarding this is that using violence as punishment teaches children that violence can be righteous. This is one way where violence begets violence. If a child sees a parent using violence to discipline---to make things right----then they may believe that somehow they may use violence for the same reason as well, perhaps to their peers or those younger than they are.

But like noodle said, sometimes such discipline can be for shock value in moments of danger. If a child were just about to run into traffic or, as noodle pointed out, about to touch or get close to something extremely dangerous, a stinging rebuke is an instantaneous and attention-grabbing rebuke and disincentive for future action. However, I think this isn't absolutely necessary. I don't think inflicting pain on children as a disciplinary action is ever something necessary.

I believe the beatings my mother repeatedly gave me when I was very young fucked me up. It effected me in many ways.

I wasn't beaten on a regular basis, but if I started acting up or got extra mouthy with my parents, they would whack me in the ass to get their point across and it worked. There were no "time outs" or "using your words".
Everyone I know in my age group got disciplined this way as a child. All of us turned out just fine.
There is a line between discipline and abuse. Getting a swat on the ass so it stings is one thing, punching/shoving/kicking is another.

I suspect that when it comes to using violence as a tool of parenting it really depends on a few things. First, if the parent is using violence because they've lost control of their emotions, then I think that will have a different effect both on the severity of the violence and the child's perception of it. There's probably some sort of threshold of severity for which calm violence has the same effect as pissed off violence.

If you lose your shit and hit your kid, you are likely teaching your kid that it's okay to lose their shit and get violent (their future spouses and children likely won't thank you for this). If you don't lose your shit and hit your kid, then you are likely teaching them something else.

I haven't hit my kids. I don't plan on doing so. I have told the older one, after a bout of particularly bad behavior, that she's lucky her mom and I aren't the hitting type.

I think that there is a line between the calm, measure meting out of physical punishment and abuse. The tricky part is that the line is different for different kids and different parents.

My mom spanked me. It hurt, and it sucked, and after we'd both had a little time to recover, we'd have a talk where she told me why what I did was wrong.

My dad smacked me. Across the face, usually more in anger than discipline. There was certainly no dialogue afterward, and if I "got mouthy," chances are I'd get smacked again.


I think it's worth noting that my mom and I are very close now that I'm an adult, and my dad and I hardly ever speak. There are other factors in the mix, definitely, but how they chose to punish me is something that sticks in my memory.

I work with toddlers. I am not allowed to use corporal punishment at my job. I have to use positive discipline techniques. If I can effectively manage the behavior of 20 kiddos on a daily basis without resorting to smacking or spanking, I think anyone can. To me, spanking and other forms of corporal punishment are lazy parenting. It teaches kids that you are willing to escalate punishment to that point. We have one child at my work who is spanked. Because she is spanked at home, it is sometimes difficult to discipline her because she is expecting that discipline can be raised to punishment.

I'll say more later, but I'm off to positively discipline children.

I feel almost all cases can be handled without physical discipline. I have spoken about this with my wife, and I refuse to say I will never spank but I can not think of a case as of yet (my daughter will be 3 in June) where a spank was necessary.

That being said, just remember you can do as much abuse all psycholoically.

One of my parents is manic depressive. I'd get emotionally fueled... well, not beatings, but definitely more than a spanking. Mostly when I did something dangerous, sometimes when I just pushed them over the edge. I'm certainly not violent, nor do I have anything resembling a temper, but I am *incredibly* skittish around anyone who has shown me they have the potential for an explosive temper. Enough so that I have left entire social groups because of one member.

However, the other parent was level-headed and would only spank me when needed, without the emotional fuel behind it, and that was perfectly fine. Really, the only way to keep me under control as a child was through pain or threat or pain. I wasn't hyperactive, just willful and stubbornly independent.

IIRC, the exact text of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) disallows 'violence' upon a child. The argument is that spanking, or other limited means of tempered corporal punishment is not 'violence' per se. While a drunken beating and kicking would probably amount to violence, I doubt a spanking counts.

I think spanking has its place. I've subject to some pretty jacked up things, but, it is not wrong to teach a child that if/when you fuck up, it might hurt.

I certainly don't want some self-righteous enlightened asshole from the UN telling me how I should and shouldn't raise my child, though.

Absolutely not. Physical assault is bad enough when committed against an adult capable of defending his or herself. It's much, much worse when committed against a child who cannot defend his or herself and instinctively trusts the person who's doing the slapping. It's entirely unacceptable and should be prohibited by the law and by society at large as physical assault of the worst kind.

In addition, based on everything I learned about child development both from college and from experience, using negative reinforcement in the form of anger-filled physical violence teaches children some very harmful lessons. It is linked to increased aggression and using violence to solve problems, and it's also teaching children that when one is angry, one should react physically to that anger. I cannot imagine worse lessons for a child.

So firm is this belief, that when I see a parent spank a child in public, I feel compelled to peacefully intervene.

Personally, I'd rather chew tinfoil than be in a room with 20 toddlers. :thumbsup: for anyone who wants to do that.

However...
They are not your kids.
How many years of school/training did you go through to become a successful cat herder?

I don't have any kids (thank Flying Spaghetti Monster), so I can't comment on whether its lazy parenting or not but it does sound a little "holier than thou".

Another vote here for Lazy Parenting.

I don't think it's holier than thou. I think it's way easier to give your kid a smack than it is to raise your kids without hitting them. The one thing that needs to be understood about going this route is that you need to be engaged with your kids on a constant basis.

I think it's lazy too. It requires a great deal more creativity and effort to control someone without resorting to violence or the threat of it.

I think it's less about control and more about guidance. Certainly, a parent must on occasion give orders, but it's a parent's job to both protect and to teach first and foremost.

My parents never laid a hand on me, and I'm using their model on my own daughter, who's currently 5.

Punishment and being disciplined involved the loss of privileges and time to consider one's mistakes. An explanation afterwards to the child helps them understand. I may threaten a spanking, but so far I've never actually had to make good on that threat.

Kudos to those that take the non-spanking approach and are making it work.

People will do what they want and what they feel is right for them. The best anyone else can hope for is to teach alternate methods and provide support/guidance when asked. By referring to them as "lazy" because you don't agree with their approach is judgemental.

Swatting kids who misbehave has been going on forever. Although the kinder/gentler approach is whats spoken/acted in public, I don't doubt a lot of kids get their butts tanned behind closed doors.

I don't know. When I was growing up, I got in all sorts of trouble. My parents tried more things than I can remember to try to get me to behave. Time outs, groundings, taking away of privileges, paying me, offering payment then slowly removing it, not letting me go to birthday parties or camp, strict talks, sympathetic talks, writing lines, doing chores for free I'd normally get paid for, not letting me read, not letting me have friends over. Who knows what else.

Nothing worked but pain. Immediate pain or threat of immediate pain.

I think on some children creative positive or negative reinforcement works. Probably on most children. But I really can't blame my parents for resorting to spanking me. I certainly would have.

Fair enough. I can acknowledge that kids are different. I think that it's lazy to resort to violence first. It sounds like you were a handful.

Nothing worked but pain because that's what you were conditioned to expect, Poetry.

Think of discipline and punishment as a continuum, with positive discipline on one end and corporal punishment on the other. Using positive discipline methods (redirection, conversation, explanation, etc) sets a child up to expect that. When you move towards the other end of the continuum, into punishment, children come to expect punishment. Once the card of corporal punishment has been played, they understand that their actions could invoke that punishment, and more or less laugh at any attempt to discipline them in another fashion. This is why it's truly best to start off with (and stick to) positive discipline.

Yes, it takes patience. Yes, it takes a lot of hard work. I have a sheet of discipline techniques I keep in my box at work to refer to when I'm feeling short of patience and frustrated. But honestly, if you use positive discipline and stick to it, eventually it becomes second nature to use those techniques.

And yes, it may be judgmental of me, but I stand by my opinion that it's lazy to spank a child.

this^

I'm wondering if this would have been true for me. I don't remember far enough back (obviously) to when I first started needing punishment to keep my behaviors in line, and what they did.

I just remember knowing that sitting in time-out was simply something to pass the time. That while writing lines, I could be daydreaming. That there would be other parties and other days to have my friends over. That if I didn't get my allowance this week, I would get it next. If my mother offered me $10 at the end of a trip and slowly took it away over the course of the trip due to my actions, even if I had a dollar left at the end of trip, it was a dollar more than I would have had. $0 and I had no loss, as I started with $0.

Also, I had child "principles". I had to stick by them. I was incredibly stubborn. Even at 5, I was doing the Bender "Breakfast Club" thing of encouraging more punishment, trying to find out what the breaking point was, the worst thing they could do to me, so I could determine what was worth it.

But if a bar of soap came out, or my father raised his hand to smack me, I was cowed.

You make me wonder if they did or did not start with physical punishment, if anything else would have been more effective in curbing my behaviors. I know my parents weren't the best at raising me, did some things they shouldn't that impacted me poorly. I'm not sure if this is one of them.

i dont particularly disagree with Poetry. But at what point to do smack a child. I dont personally think a slap on the back of the hand or on the bottom is a bad thing, if its warranted. I guess it depends on what it is that the child did, and whether other corrective actions have been taken before resorting to physical corrective action.

Since most of ya'll are agianst even touching a child, and since most of you are north american, i wonder if this is some kind of cultural thing going on here. I know in arab culture it is more acceptable to smack a child if they misbehave. i know some people who have been physically violent with their kids, and i dont particularly agree. I personally have never been beaten by my parents, and i only remember being hit once in my life, and i pretty much deserved it. I was testing the waters and seeing where the boundaries lay. I never even went close to the boundary after that.

My dad gave me tough love. He was a very man-of-the-house type father, but he was always caring and generous. But i could never get away with anything because of the strict way i was brought up. My mother on the other hand would always cave in to whatever i wanted, and i used her as a proxy to get my father to say yes.

Willravel - if i smacked my child on the back of the hand for misbehaving in public, regardless of whether its right or wrong, if someone approached me telling me how wrong i was, i'd tell them to mind their own business.

You'd be right to tell me to mind my own business and I'd be right to put public pressure on you not to use physical violence against your child. It'd end at that. And it depends on if it were just a small thing, just enough to kill an insect, or a slap intended to inflict harm. If it's just a tap, that's less about violence and more about nonverbal communication.

My mom and dad did not spank me when I was small. I remember getting grounded for a day when I nearly burned the house down at 2 and a half, being told to go to my room, and ignoring them and running to my paternal grandmother's house next door to cry about it (I had woken up early and been trying to make my parents breakfast in bed).

I'm a ginger and had very sensitive skin as a child -- including dermatographia, where when my skin is scratched I will welt. When my parents divorced we moved in with my maternal grandparents, and my maternal grandmother believed in spanking. She learned that she had to be very careful with the peach-tree switch she would use or she would hurt me. She never did any real damage and it was a "consequence" rather than a punishment. Never in anger.

When I was about 10 we moved out of that house, and I got really mouthy with my mom over going to school... I was getting beat up there daily, including during class time, and the school was doing nothing even when Mom tried to get them to fix the situation. I couldn't learn in that environment and I didn't like getting hit, so I refused to go to school that day. Mom was under a lot of stress and decided to spank me with a switch. She let her anger get the better of her and when she actually looked at my tush/legs after she was done she was immediately sorry. I was fine, no real damage, but I definitely wasn't able to go to school that day because it looked so awful. Heh. She didn't spank me again after that.

But I have no kids, so I'm not going to judge people for spanking as my grandmother did -- without anger.

Parents should not hit their kids. There's absolutely no reason for doing so.

Hitting a child is merely an adult's expression of anger. It teaches the child that the parent is angry, but doesn't teach the respect that many parents believe that it does. If you have a fight with your s/o, do you hit them when you're angry?

Sure, many of us who were hit/spanked as children ended up becoming decent human beings, but at what cost? If there were any stats about child rearing methods and years in therapy, I'm sure the child subject to this "minor" violence wins hands down.

The key to disciplining a young kid is keeping negatives to a minimum. I totally understand the frustration of saying "no" 24/7, but the fact that it doesn't work and that one feels they have to smack the kid for not listening should make it crystal clear. Constant "no"'s mean nothing. Praise them when they do the right thing and they will do whatever it takes to keep their parent(s) happy, as long as they're being loved.

It may sound idealistic, but it works. Really.

And dlish, you brought up a good point. The parents must ALWAYS back one another for good parenting.

And, just so ya know, I was one of those who was face-slapped by my mother and bare-ass belted by my father. I was such a good girl in public, wasn't I raised so well? When I was 16, my mother told me to put on my shoes and I kept walking away barefoot. She repeated the demand again, I said "no", she backhanded me across my face and, for the first time in my life, I smacked her back. She fell on the ground.

I'm not proud, but I was human. Sometimes, in life, there's backlash. Peace, love, rock and roll. Life is short and love is definitely the way to go.

Way too many broad strokes in this thread.

I reckon it depends entirely on the child. A spanking need not be an expression of the parent's anger at all, but rather an effective deterrent for a particular type of child. I know the new mode of thought is that this is somehow assault or child abuse but that's awfully heavy-handed speaking as a third party. Kids have unique personalities just like adults. Some adults are motivated by negative consequences (avoid bad thing that happens to me), some adults are motivated by rewards, some are motivated by achievement, some are motivated by others, and most importantly everyone is motivated by a combination of the above.

I feel like we've had this thread before, and I've said that the only effective discipline my parents ever gave me was physical. Time-out and locking me in my room wouldn't be effective, because I have a particularly antagonistic and stubborn personality when someone tries to punish me. I would have (and did) goad them into submission once they realized it was having the opposite effect. My sister, on the other hand, was not motivated by negative reinforcement at all. She rebelled even more as a result.

The answer? Yes, parents should be allowed to use all rational and reasonable methods of discipline available to them, but we ought to encourage them to consider what is most appropriate and effective for each child as an individual.

My parents spanked me only when I was being particularly difficult. In retrospect, this happened during my formative years and helped to develop a fetish. As far as discipline, I don't know if it helped at all.

You're rationalizing, J. If everyone's motivated by a combination of factors, then why should a child be punished with violence?

Even an adult receiving the worst punishment allowable by law (in the US, anyway) is put to death in a non-violent manner.

Corporal punishment (CP) is not automatically abuse. Failing to distinguish between corporal punishment (the use of pain, without inflicting injury, as negative reinforcement) and abuse is not only does no justice to CP, it significantly degrades the suffering of those who are genuinely being abused.

Pretending that all physical violence is equally morally objectionable is also nonsense. Violence is not always morally evil. It is trivially easy to contrive a set of circumstances in which the correlating supposed virtue (pacifism) would be extraordinarily morally evil and violence would be righteous. I can name for myself (most of you probably can as well) a great number of punishments inflicted without harming me physically which would cause more suffering than physical abuse.

Also, CP is not metered out solely in anger or frustration, or by parents who are loose canons, as some of you seem perfectly happy to imply.

This is my question.

Why is spanking being automatically equated to parental anger?

In my experience, I was NEVER spanked by my parents simply out of frustration or as a display of anger. I was spanked because I had been told that the consequence of breaking X rule was to receive a spanking with a wooden spoon.

I broke X rule, I got a spanking. My parents were entirely unemotional about it, if only to be disappointed that the spanking was neccessary. I was required to go get the spoon from the kitchen myself. I would usually start crying and apologizing before the tap even came, and not because it hurt. It was because my parents were following through on their rules and I quickly learned it wasn't a bluff.

For me, the worse punishment I ever got as a kid was to lose my nightlight because I was caught reading after I went to bed by it. To me, it is more a matter of making the punishment fit the crime and actually do something to deter the behavior in the future.

Based on my understanding, you would be the rare, rare exception. Did they just have blank faces? What about the fact they were hitting you? Couldn't that be used as evidence they were angry, just able to hide it a bit better than some?

Think of every spanking you've ever seen. How many of them have been accompanied by signs of anger? How many have included yelling and other intimidation tactics? How many have had and angry look in their faces? How many seemed ever so slightly out of control, as if having lost their temper? I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of spankings have their genesis in a parent's anger and/or frustration, and that anger/frustration is communicated along with the spanking, thus connecting them in a child's mind. My parents spanked out of anger, virtually every time (until eventually, perhaps, it was just out of habit). The fact that they were clearly angry when they would dish out corporal punishment suggested to me at the time and suggests to me still that it was as much about satisfying them as it was about punishing me.

Oh for Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake.

Sometimes a spanking is just a spanking.

You don't believe in it, fine. Stop trying to make my parents out to be abusive monsters.

And no, I don't say that out of some Stockholm Syndrome either....

I don't think your parents (or mine) were abusive. Rather, I think they were/are antiquated.

There are other ways to parent. Ones that don't involve unnecessary violence.

can we all agree at least that Stephen Quire (if his actions are genuine...) from the freakout videos deserves a spanking if not more? if so, where on the spectrum do we draw the line between the Stephens that probably should be physically disciplined vs kids that dont need it?

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes,
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

(As you may well remember - the boy in question grew to be a pig)

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I would have prefered to have been hit. My mother was very inventive and manipulative. I spoke up once, when my brother did something to my sister - I was sitting in my high chair and it was my first sentence. I remember how hard it was - stringing those words together. First time it came out in a whisper, and my dad said for me to say it again, and I did louder. When my dad wasnt there after, she told me things are going to change around here. She was very vicious, and my brother was her more than willing tool. I had children of my own, and she started in on them. She is a bully, and needs a victim, and will always work that way, she also has a favorite to show off for. Her favorites didnt come out too well. My sister a paedo coke head whore. My big sister who was a victim became a nurse and moved away - like me she wants to vomit at the sight of our fathers wife. I was lucky, after my brother glassed me in the face aged 18 months - or maybe before - my dad took me under his wing - my sister never had that - although I paid for being loved by him. House rules - he should only love and believe her. May I say Poetry, that I am in your club - like many others. The nicest people often are.

Why is assault not assault because the victim is a kid?

I dont think its right (legally speaking) to hit people who cant fight back, ever.

Is grounding a kid then equivalent to unlawful detention?