speaking as someone who was smacked as a child. There's nothing wrong with a parent to smack a child (on the bottom) if misbehaving. It re-enforces good behaviour as the child learns that if they misbehave they will be punished. Me and my little sister always got on on well as a result as we realised that any fighting would result in a sore bottom and the rest of the night in bed. It may be called cruel but children who seriously misbehave don't learn otherwise. This said smacking should not be done by anyone who isn't a family member and it should always be the bottom and never anything other than a hand, the result will be the child will be sore, in a sulk but ultimately co-operative due to not wanting the experience to reoccur lol . I don't think anyone can deny the correlation between rise in hellish behaviour by children and lack of physical punishment to re-enforce good behaviour. It's quite funny really, to this day if me or mysister see a misbehaving child showing their parent up me just say "Slap" Smacking someone else's child however isn't really done in this day and age and with good reason.
Smacking works when it is used conservatively. If it is used too often, then the child realises that they can get away with a lot it they can tolerate 30 seconds of pain, because the mystery is gone. And using a belt or other object in place of a hand is cruel because you can't gauge the ammount of force you are inflicting due to the laws of physics amplifying the blow. And then child services can make a case against you because the kids bum is blavk and blue.
My parents didn't shy away from punishing me whenever I did something wrong while growing up. But not all of it was physical though. There were times I was forced to sit in a chair for a set period of time, and once I was sent up into my room after a nasty fight with my brother. I remember one time my dad was saying while he was working around the pool at the middle school -- he works in the maintenance department of our school district -- and I guess he got talking with a co-worker about how parents don't discipline their kids. Well, there was this parent who walked by and overheard them. The guy said to my dad, "I bet you don't have any kids." My dad turned on this guy, and said something within the lines of "Yes I do, both are in their twenties, and when they did something wrong while growing up, they got a good beating." The guy backed off. Seriously, nobody disciplines their kids anymore because they all fear of getting slapped with child abuse charges, end up in jail, etc. That's why kids these days don't know the meaning of the word "no" and that they end up getting into tons of trouble that they have to turn to their parents to bail them out.
my dad just used to give us a little flick to the head with his finger if we were acting up. that shut us up pretty fast.
If I was that mother, as soon as he reached for my kid he'd have been laid out on the floor. Same with if he'd gone for my niece or nephew. --Moony
Either that, or he has been shocked to learn that the world he used to know back in the Good Old Days is long gone, that punishing a child in a public place is now a crime.
