messiah

I must say that "I got smacked when I was a kid and it didn't do me any harm" - although I reckon it depends on whether it's deserved or not - and how much the kid is misbehaving.

When kids are involved - I don't think that there's a bigger deterant that violence - If they deserve a good hiding, and then get one - the threat of another when bad behaviour crops up again should be enough.

RichWalk

Tiggs raises some good points, however disciplining boys vs girls can be very different, I firmly believe a boy needs a 'heathly fear' (as someone said) of their father and their older peer groups, in families where the father is absent, the lack of a male role in development can cause wayward behaviour in later years. For girls the use of 'grounding' and removal of privileges may well be more effective.

Ringpeas

'smacking' is natures way of dealing with unruly offspring. It is normal in higher animals for the adult to give a swift paw around an ear if their kids push it too far.

If I got the slipper for being bad, then I knew I deserved it.

If I got the belt because I did not do as I was told (not finish my tea) then I hated their guts for months.

I have a 2 year old now. Lets see if I can get it right.

pugoetru

I have seven children and only 1 misbehaves they have all been brought up the same way the one that misbehaves knows fine what she is doing she just winds you up till you cant take any more

I think we should have called her damien

she is 4 years old swears shouts and screams for no reason (we do not swear at her before someone says it)

so what would the pc brigade do with her ?

drumsterphil

iTrader: (1)

What the PC brigade fail to understand is that there is a huge difference between a smack and beating seven shades of **** out of a kid.

One is a disciplinarian measure (I got my fair share when I was akid and yes, it did me no lasting harm but did instill in me what was right and wrong and the correct way to behave) and one could be classified as abuse. There is a clear distinction between the two and if the person administering the punishment cannot tell the difference then they need help!

About time we actually gave powers back to people rather than the pc brigade viewing everything in it's worst possible light and letting it get to the stage now were you cannot touch children for fear of being labled abusiveness and thus, instilling a proper sense of right and wrong in children (so that they might actually behave instead of run wild with no fear of the law or anyone).

Regacy

If your boss hit you when you didn’t do what they asked you it might make you more compliant but it certainly wouldn’t make you respect them.
You’d just end up looking for another job!
Just because children aren’t able to articulate those sorts of emotions as effectively as adults doesn’t mean they don’t have them.
I’m astonished by some of the detailed descriptions of violent behaviour towards minors in this thread. Justifying your behaviour by saying not hitting them too hard was ok.
And as for the ‘it never did me any harm’ brigade
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
We all carry a certain amount of emotional baggage around with us, how do you know it’s not caused by the breakdown of trust that came from your parents hitting you?
How much more confidence could you have built if you came from a background where you were dealt with as an equal rather than controlled by physical superiority?
And how much more in control of your children could you be if you weren’t perpetuating that damage!
Drop the bravado for a minute and really think about what you’re doing.
Flame me if you like, we’re all entitled to our own opinion and my conscience is crystal clear.
R

Tiggs

"I firmly believe a boy needs a 'heathly fear' (as someone said) of their father and their older peer groups"

interesting one- my son is 3 years old....if i shout angrily at him he will stop what he's doing pretty sharpish- i hope this respect of me reaching my limit will continue till im too old to care!

however, a smack will see him grit his teeth and mummble "that didnt hurt", a second smack will reduce his witty comebacks to a slight quiver of the lip.....but inside hes yelling "that didnt hurt suckaaaaa"
i have quickly realised that i could never hit him to a point where his reaction was one of worrying that he'd done wrong as opposed to one of dealing with the pain and situation via standing his ground.....so i deal with him in other ways (he's a very well behaved kid by the way!)

i remember my mum smacking me with a slipper...as she did it she said "have you have enough yet" i just shut up- no way was i going to tell her she'd won! in the end she realised she would have to stop and she gave up.....i still belive i was right about that argument and it was over 20 years ago! i cant even remember why she hit me but i know i was right!

Brendan Hughes

I'd think age and comprehension make a big difference. Presumably you smack 2-5 year olds as you can barely reason with them. The older and smarter they get, the less they'll respond as you'd wish to violence, so words (or something else) should take over.

I've never lifted a finger towards my wife's son (was 9, now 15), for various reasons. Doesn't stop her hitting him though, in unpleasant moments. He can be really stubborn, and makes it into a "the more you hit me, the more I won't obey, to prove I'm stronger". Frustrations therefore build up further. No matter what emotions are shown to the other side, I can guarantee that there are usually tears behind closed doors from all involved.


Guess we'll never know who's right.

mart360

Wow

its remained fairly balanced, but one thing seems to be apparant.


all parents alike have the same concerns, what is reasonable, and what is too far!!!

i believe it is a balance of good parenting and teching your kids to accept responsibility..

this will probably p off the pc few, but there are times when a smack is your only course of action.

you cannot reason with a very young child, and as such they do not understand the difference between right and wrong , safety or danger...


in approximatly 20-30 years time we in the uk will suffer a revolution

crime will be at an all time high and law and order will be at an all time low..

we are breeding a generation of uncaring unfeeling i,m allright jack,, people.

until we can reestablish the ethos of respect and value withing the younger generation, we are going to suffer terribly...

unfortunatly we are adopting a connton woll approach and the only people to suffer are ourselves...


Mart

Brendan Hughes

The swinging 20s
Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis in the 50s
Drugs and the Stones in the 60s
Heavy rock, then Punk in the 70s
"Greed is Good" in the 80s...

Don't get caught in the nostalgia trap.

Apparition

David Lock...... I found by first hand experience that sicking ones finger into a plug socket is not a bright thing to do ! Still have the hair style to prove it !

andrewdelvard

I knew a lady who was the personal assistant for Dave Stewart of the Eurthymics.She told me how Dave would sometimes bring his children to the office. No matter how noisy and active they would sometimes be, Dave would just have to say in normal conversational tones "Would you quiteten down please, thanks"....And they would. Instantaneously and reply "yes Dad no problem". It was obvious to her they loved him (and I saw him takeing them to the local swimming pool in Covent Garden a couple of times and they looked very happy together) so she asked him how he did it. He didn't go into much detail but he replied that he'd always spoken to them like adults.
For some reason that story always stayed with me and it is for sure, food for thought.

RB5 Paul

I'd hit him back lol

Because i'm not depressed/angry/or a complete mess,i think the people on here that got a smack or two when growing up would know if they had issues.I have a job,house,wife and a nice life and i know right from wrong.

Obviously you can't beat the hell out of kids but a light smack just so they know that doing the wrong thing hurts people is no bad thing,i don't think at a young age you've really got a proper understanding until you get shouted at or smacked.I always use to remember my Mum's voice rising and then those words i'll go and get your Dad and see what he says.

Regacy

I don't understand this perception that reason is beyond young children.
Children understand words long before they can speak.
Surely they can understand reason if you are patient and explain in terms they can relate to?

RB5 Paul

I know what you mean regacy but at the end of the day once they realise nothing bad is going to happen to them they do what they like,i know i did lol.
As they get older the punishment changes (grounding,no tv etc)
But i think it's each to their own,as long as the child isnt beaten black and blue then there's not really a problem.
I think you see more children going off the rails due to lack of attention more than anything else.

Rachael

With the breakdown of the family unit maybe responsibility should fall on the education services?

I know this post was a couple of pages ago, but as a teacher, I sort of disagree! A teacher has an awful job of disciplining children unless he/she has the parent's support. (single parent or otherwise). I have recently worked in a reception class where a new child has been excluded from 3 schools, and he is still only 5. Surely this can't be the fault of the education services - what is the child learning at home?

Teachers are also in constant fear of disciplining children (of any age) as more and more often parents will claim their child is victimised and look for what compensation they can get from the authorities.

Of course, teachers (I'm speaking as a primary teacher) try to model good manners, install some sort of values and respect for others, but we can't do it on our own! We need to have the support of the other adults in a child's life, who will model the correct behaviour and correct their children in a suitable way when they aren't behaving appropriately.

Somewhere there has to be a happy medium in discipline. I'm not sure whether banning smacking is the answer... I'd hope that if I ever have children I would never have to resort to it...

Krade

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rachael

With the breakdown of the family unit maybe responsibility should fall on the education services?

Rachel I posted that comment, I probably didn’t word it right maybe I should have said "Give the education services more powers to discipline unruly and disruptive kids."



A Childs time at school has a major factor on how they develop. I understand the points your making about victimisation & compensation, but the school system must take some responsibility for the Childs behaviour whilst in their care. I think it’s a crime that schools have to molly cuddle kids and that their hands are tied by PC rules. It’s another instance where kids know they can misbehave and get off virtually scott free.

When they get home I very much doubt the parents of the disruptive kids care or know what their kids are up to.







Hypothetical

It may come to a point where its gets so bad that we have to go medieval on society to get thing back under control. Capital and corporal punishment anyone??? (Opens a large can of worms).

David Lock

Rachael - agree with you 200%

David Lock

without checking spellings ect

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

errrr tried to read the thread but gave up as it's getting a bit long .....sorry

I've never smacked / hit my two kids ( 8 and 6)

May be I'm an older parent !!

Midlife.....

Cabinet Enforcer

Conversely, I can't possibly understand your point of view, children learn reason, and they learn boundaries of acceptable behavior, it is generally understood that up until the age of two, children do not have the facility to apply logic to a situation, they consider only themselves and what they want (a good thing from an evoloutionary POV).

Smacking beyond the age of 4 or 5 is however pretty much pointless, as kids can apply reason to a situation, their reasoning may be flawed but they see it as reason nonetheless, so you have to convince them they are wrong rather than reinforce their reasoning by metering out a punishment that is wrong in their eyes.

According to my parents, my brother was smacked a lot more than me because he was a right akward little get, he turned out better than me though, so maybe it does work eh?

Leslie

Its as I said Tiggs, going by what people have said here so far. All children are different and parents have to find the best way to discipline each particular dhild.

Its all part of the joys of parenthood of course and no one ever said its easy! Banning smacking is not the answer though and neither is beating a child purely to let off steam.

Les

Tiggs

"neither is beating a child purely to let off steam."

i always stop if the kid starts steaming

Regacy

This is the crux of the argument for me.
YOU ARE TEACHING THEM THAT PHYSICAL FORCE IS AN ACCEPTABLE METHOD OF EXERTING YOUR WILL ON OTHERS!
Surely you don't really believe that?

OllyK

Discipline is mostly about:
1) Rewarding the good behaviour
2) Ignoring the bad behaviour that you can accept to ignore (they will soon get bored)
3) Correcting the bad behaviour you cannot accept.

It seems to me in this day and age, point 1 is not used an awful lot, the good behaviour is expected rather than acceopting it needs training and reinforcing. Point 2 happens quite a bit, but it rapidly moves on to point 3.

Point 3 needs an "escalation plan", i.e. threats that you can make, and are prepared to carry out, if the behaviour does not stop. When I was growing up, the escalation plan had a good number of steps to it. It probably started with a sit at the table and get a good ticking off, through to a smack at the top end. I was only smacked a couple of times as a child that I can think of. Because I knew of the other punisments that could be dished out and that a smack was at the top of the pile, I tended to think about my actions a little more, and if I was bad, the smack option could be mentioned, followed by a degree of pleading on my behalf which convinced my parents I had taken on board the error of my ways and a lesser punishment was administered.

Sadly as mentioned by others, the escalation plan has far fewer steps in it these days and the lesser punishments such as "go to your room" don't have the same impact due to TV's etc in kids rooms. As a result the "smack" becomes a threat far earlier on, and a threat is nothing if you are not prepared to carry it out if required. The end result is that kids are getting smacked more and it is far less effective.

End result is that for those parents who resport to smacking frequently need to re-asses their escalation plan. For those where a smack remains an effective deterent that needs to be acted upon only occasionaly then I would consider it to still be acceptable. For the former, the smacking reinforces acceptablity as a method of coersion rather than deterrant.

Scooby96

Krade,

No way would I let any teacher smack my kid whatever age they were. I'd deal with the problem myself when the kid got home in my own way.

Did anyone hear about that Japanese kid that was naughty in class, he was told to sit in a room and write something down in blood, leaving a knife and some paper on the table for him to complete the task

OllyK,

My kids have a behaviour chart and get a star at the end of each day based on their behaviour and whether or not they've made the bed, tidied their room etc. At the end of the week if they have enough stars they get a treat, if not then its explained why not.

I will smack at extremely rude behaviour, dangerous behaviour etc etc but only as a last resort.

Brendan Hughes

Alternatively, get one of the classmates to do it for you.

(Headteacher's tactic - on news yesterday, can't be arsed to find the link...)

Rachael

just thought I'd post a letter I read in the Daily Mail yesterday...

"...In her novel Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte describes life for a children's governess in mid-19th century England and explains that the lax discipline exerted on children at the end of the 18th century gave rise to the bad behaviour of the children in the first part of the 19th century.
This, in turn, led to the excessive rigours of the Victorian era."

Are we coming to the end of a 'behaviour circle?'. Will we soon see a back-lash against the leniancy of the end of the last and the beginning of this century??? hmmmm I wonder...

By the way, I'm off duty now, so I don't give a to$$ about the spelling!