How many of u smack your kids for discipline, I do , and I believe it is better than the give them a small talking to in the corner routine, I know plenty of feral kids that the parents have no discipline over , and I’m talking about controlled smacking also.
I don’t believe hitting anyone ever helped a situation.
Smacking, hitting, punching, belting, knocking around…I don’t do these to those that can’t do the same back to me.
My kids are teens and I rarely used physical discipline with them for several reasons.
For one, it just does not feel right to me. I don’t like to be hit and don’t like to hit others. Another reason is that I don’t think it teaches the right lesson- that compelling others to act through physical force is not the best way to get them to comply. In thinking about my long-term goals for my kids, having a physical duke-it-out with a teenager is not something I want to do.
Another reason is that one’s kids will one day be big, so they may be able to and choose to strike back. This would be a normal response to someone raised to respond physically if the parent has spent years disciplining them that way. Which leads me back to the part about where I don’t like to be hit.
I find that you can (usually, almost always) reason with kids of just about any age. Even the famous ‘terrible two’ year old. It is best if they are kept well and regularly fed, watered and rested. They tend to act up more when tired, hungry, thirsty, etc. This is where parenting comes in- keeping them on a reasonable schedule, being aware of when they are stressed and more likely to misbehave, etc. I think my kids are some of the most interesting folks I know, I enjoy talking with them about all sorts of things and always have. I’m always kinda surprised when I meet parents who don’t seem to talk to their kids much and just yell orders at them a lot. Seems weird to me.
There is a pretty big space between smacking kids and letting them run wild. I believe I’d prefer to be in the middle somewhere.
Another thing, if I could suggest it: Kids don’t come with instruction manuals and most of us learn our parenting skills from our own parents. Having kids of your own is a good time to reflect on the parenting style you know (that of your own parents) and deciding if you want to repeat those parenting patterns. If you find you would like to make some changes but don’t know what to do, either find a ‘good parent’ role model in your friend and family circle to emulate, or head on down to the book store and peruse a couple of parenting books.
My local big book store has a Starbucks and some comfy chairs. One could grab a coffee and a few interesting looking parenting books and just lightly peruse the chapters that are of interest. Having two or three or four (or more) different opinions on how to handle any particular parenting issue could be useful. Iv’e done this at least a couple of times for specific issues and found it very helpful
My father once smacked my sister a coupe of times. I had to clean up all the blood afterwards.
The experience turned me off of corporal punishment in general and smacking in particular.
I never say never, because I find with kids, that’s a great way to find out that whatever you nevered is the final solution that you must resort to (Mama Murphy’s Law, or something.) But no, I don’t smack them as a general form of discipline, and I think each one got one smack, and were under the age of 3 when it happened. My boy I smacked when he bit a nipple, and it was a purely reflexive action. He was shocked and cried for 5 minutes. I cried for hours.
My daughter did a “wiggle the hand out of hand and dash for the street” move. I grabbed her back and planted one firmly on her (diapered) butt to shock her and cause her to pay more attention to me than whatever had caught her attention in the street.
(I think…it’s possible I’m mixing them up…)
I don’t regret the street running one. Safety trumps momentary pain and shock and the other negative things that being hit by a much larger person might cause. I do regret the nipple biting one, 'cause he was a baby, and what did he know of biting nipples? But those are the only times I recall smacking them.
They very much are not out of control, though. I have The Eyebrow down pat. Being my kids, they want my approval - the suggestion that they might not be earning it is more painful than smacks.
I use a souvenir baseball bat on the little bastards, after learning the hard way. I broke two metacarpals in my right hand after junior spilled his milk (again).
My daughter is two and a half, and I have spanked her twice. It was never impulsive though. There were warnings, counting to ten, a talking-to, a formal de-pantsing followed by ten (not very hard) blows on the diapered bottom while she laid across my lap, another talking-to, a time-out, and a talking-to with a requirement that she tell me what she did wrong.
This is how my parents did it when I was that age. The last time they ever had to do it, I was barely three. It seemed like such a long and miserable ordeal that it made a big impression on me. It seems to have made a big impression on my daughter, too, because now all I have to do is start counting and she straightens up. The farthest I’ve ever gotten is “four”, usually “one” is enough.
I’ve done my mom’s “counting to three” thing occasionally. I’ve never made it to three. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I did! 
(Hmm, how much longer before this goes into GD?)
I don’t have kids. But as a kid, I was smacked all the time (I remember one day of my young life that was unusual, because I didn’t get spanked that day.)
I don’t know how I feel about spanking. Sometimes I wonder if I’d have been less mentally fucked up if I wasn’t smacked so often.
The trick is to beat them BEFORE they do something stupid. It’s too late after.
Another trick is to use things other than beating. Fire for instance. Burning a kid in a sensitive area hurts. Later, just flicking your Bic will get its attention.
Cubs fan?
Believe it or not, I used to work with a woman who believed that CPS should have no say in how parents discipline their children, and yes, she believed that if a parent wanted to do something like this in the name of discipline, it should be allowed! :eek:
I also noticed that the OP wrote (I’m assuming) his post in textese. Does he also smack his wife when she does something he doesn’t like? 
I never spanked my kids past the age of 3. I learned from watching my wife who seemed to have a rare gift with kids. She would tell them no and if she did not get an instant response a light tap on the bottom or the hand followed by picking them up and loving them for a minute or so. I could not be happier about the way my children turned out.
My son and his wife decided to raise their kids without punishment. The daughter who is now 4 is not a bad kid but a tad out of control. Recently I have noticed they have become much stearner with them.
I don't believe that dragging out a confrontation with a 3 year old can possibly be better than a light smack on the rump and then back to normal. Even chimpanzis know this!That’s a false dichotomy. We never hit our kids but we were strong disciplinarians and didn’t have long drawn out conflicts either. Not being chimpanzees, we had to figure out other methods that seemed to work quite well.
I’ve never smacked or otherwise hit my youngest, but I did spank my older daughter a few times when she was very young. I was never comfortable with it though, and it usually happened after I’d lost control, not because I truly thought she needed to be smacked. I was a very young mother and I really had no idea what I was doing at the time.
No kids, but being born in the 50s when corporal punishment was common I can say even I wasn’t really smacked. If you mean open-hand, smack to the face. When me or a sibling would do something bad we were typically paddled or whipped with a belt. Always of the form where we had to bend over and take our licks. I’d say all but a number I can count on one hand were administered by my mother (really undermining her threat of “wait until I tell your father”–virtually all child discipline was enforced by my mother so unbeknownst to her she was a lot more scary as a threat than he was.)
Basically the only times I was smacked were when my mother was basically very angry or had a reflex action, and I don’t think she was proud of either time. To her, formal “whipping” was how you disciplined children and wasn’t done out of anger, but smacking in the face was letting your emotions get the best of you and hitting a child. An incident I don’t remember but have heard about, she was carrying me in a department store when I was 3-4 years old and I wanted let down. When she refused, I bit her hand (drew blood), she reflexively slapped me in the face basically as hard as she could. She always explained she was mortified to have done it, but the bite hurt so bad it was basically 100% reaction and not thinking.
There’s a lot of debate about corporal punishment for children, and while I don’t have any I basically don’t think you should hit a child in anger for any real reason. I think if someone “slips” like my mother did that’s an understandable situation where you were just hurt really bad by the child and an almost primal “lash out” response kicks in. I think if you’re going to punish your children with physical correction it should be with a paddle or belt and done in a way that makes it more akin to “this is how you are punished for doing something you shouldn’t do” not “this is what I do when you piss me off.”
I would never do it. If my 3 year old was out of control I would calmly and rationally explain to him what was wrong with his behavior, and kindly ask him to stop
I think something not mentioned here that directly relates to any kind of discipline is what we are doing the other 23 3/4 hour of the day when we are not involved in discipline. If a child feels like we are alwasy available to them a little discipline leaves a very minor impact, if however 90% of the intersaction they have with us is disciplinary then no kind of punishment is really a good thing.