Smacking children

Hitting children is child abuse.
I was belted in school three times (for trivia, like giggling). It destroyed me and my education.
I had to work very hard in adult life to deal with the consequent trauma. (Therapy is very expensive!)
I then put myself through education to master's level in late middle age.

My father abused me verbally until I was 18 and retalliated, saying he would never make me cry again. The scars remain - I'm 77. Is this worse or better than physical punishment? There was that as well.

Coco51 - putting science in quote marks! Of course science is clever enough to teach us plenty! Goodness all those clever researchers are wasting their time. I can assure you that there is plenty of evidence that children are affected by such behaviour and the fact that psychological abuse is also terrible doesn’t make smacking right. Two wrongs don’t make a right….

I can remember being smacked by my father, he used a belt once to my brother & I, we hid under the bed not for him to reach us. I was a child of the 1960's, but I know my grandfather was violent to my father, he took an axe to him once & split his head! I'm glad that I was only a baby when that happened but my father had the scar on his head until the day he passed away...

I was raised in an abusive household - smacking was a first resort and I could be hit because they didn't like the look on my face and once because I raised my arm to protect myself from a blow! I swore when I grew up I would never use violence on anyone, especially a child.

I remember my brothers being smacked, and sometimes retorting ‘that didn’t hurt’ before running away. I was smacked occasionally on the back of the legs (girls were easier to smack because they often had bare legs). I did smack my children because I was young and overwhelmed (had my first at 16) but when I had my youngest son he was diagnosed with ASD, threw dreadful tantrums and we were referred to a child psychologist. She taught me how to gently restrain him, while not looking at him, and to sit him on the stairs while putting my arm across him to keep him there until he calmed down, all the while looking away from him so as not to give him attention. Within a short time this hard work really paid off. He became a very well behaved and lovely child. It really taught me a lesson, and that was valuable. Smacking means you have lost control, and it vents frustration for a moment, but isn’t effective at all in the long term.

My brother, 5 years older than me, was always bullying and hitting me. He often got dad's belt for it, he's still a bully, now aged 75.

My brother and I were smacked regularly. I was once walloped in a very posh shop as I announced to the world at large that “mummy hasn’t smacked me today yet”! Promptly rectified. I had the belt once and remember hiding in the understairs cupboard. The last time my dad hit me I was 16 and standing on a chair to reach a high cupboard. He started smacking the backs of my legs but it was so ridiculous that I started laughing and he never did it again.
I smacked one of my three children once and felt very ashamed. It was just a tap as I could never have hit her hard enough to hurt her so I realised that it was a futile way of teaching discipline.

A very interesting thread this one.

I was smacked as a child and certainly knew the meaning of a good hiding. It was parenting in the 1960's.

My father always used to say he belted us all enough for us to turn out as well as we did (2 sisters here)

Manners and discipline was very strong in that era and that is just the way it was but of course I do feel resentful at times when I think back to the physical punishment we had. My father had a quick temper and I can see now he took his temper out on us when we misbehaved (and nothing ever that bad - well I would say that wouldn't I?!)

But so saying that very lovely parents as well, myself and sisters certainly knew our boundaries and a lot of current children don't.

But do I agree? No of course not and feel resentful at times at the smacking we got but my parents were strict and manners and displ was hard as well and just the way it was in that era and nobody really batted an eyelid.

As a child I was beaten, not smacked. The difference, a smack is to hit a child with the flat of you hand, once or twice, beaten is to be hit with an object, usually a belt, sometimes once or twice, and sometimes more. When people talk about the good old days, and well behaved children, say what it was, hit with a weapon.

A few posters have talked about ‘smacking being out of hand’ - not like the slaps we got.
The average of 2 children a week dying at the hands of carers/parents has long been consistent. Safeguarding processes are stronger and more comprehensive, though as we know children still suffer at the hands of those who should care for them

I don't think it is ever ok to smack a child.
Thank goodness smacking seems to be much less prevalent now and also that is not allowed in schools. I have very clear memories of seeing children smacked when I was at school. It meant I was always too scared to say anything at school and I do think it has affected who I am now and not in a good way

I grew up in a smacking and belt home. Once when I was five, the paperboy hit me with his bike and I got a broken collar bone. When I got home from the hospital, my dad beat me with the belt on a bare bottom for playing in the street (which we did every day). I was traumatized by the whole hospital experience and beaten when I needed comfort. I grew up to be against any physical “handling” of mine or other children that I might witness. I have three brothers who were also hit and they grew up to be addicts and quite violent people.

Why are we discussing this now? It has been illegal for years to chastise children by smacking, spanking or beating them.

I was born in 1951, my parents were convinced that it was possible to bring children up without physical correction, but on three occasions that I remember either my sister or I had our bottoms smacked. Mummy having rather stupidly said, "If you do that again, I will smack your bottom!" then found herself in the position where she felt forced to carry out her threat.

I doubt three isolated incidents in a loving upbringing damaged either of us, but that has in no way turned me into a believer in corporal punishment of any kind. I remember very, very clearly my parents' relief at the abolishment of capital punishment.

Children who grow up without love, empathy or even just ordinary kindness will, in most case be uanable to show others these traits.

The unforntunate thing here is that no-one seems really to have addressed the problem of how to deal satisfactorily with the many occasions on which a child just will not do as he or she is asked or told - often thereby running a risk of hurting themselves or others.

Avoiding, quite rightly, smacking children has led some parents (and teachers) either to allow their children to do more or less as they pleased all the time, or led them to use other forms of discipline that may not really be any healthier or better than smacking.

A lot of my generation, given the choice as a child between having their bottom smacked or having to listen to mummy or daddy going on, and on, and on about how naughty they had been would greatly prefer the smacked bottom to the lecture.

It's never ok.
I was never smacked, my 5 children were never smacked and, as far as I know my grandchildren are not smacked. Violence breeds violence.

Absolutely Anniebach, this is assumption and judgy at its worst!

I'm 74, and still remember to this day the times I was smacked. Once by my stepdad when I was 8, once by a teacher when I was 10 - both times on the legs. And once by my mum when I was 13 - a slap around the face.

I spoke to my mum about it several years ago and she said her mum smacked her and she saw nothing wrong with it.

I never smacked my children.

I was smacked as a child. In fact, I had times in my childhood that I was unable to go to school because of it. I chose not to smack my son. At the age of 7 he came to me and asked why. I told him because I didn't think it was the right thing to do. He asked me to spank him the next time so that he could be like his friends and get hit and then can go and play right away instead of having to come in and no longer play. I agreed and cried through three spanks on my sweet little bad boy's bottom. He told me that I didn't have to do it again because he didn't want to punish me again.

I don't think children were better behaved when they were routinely smacked. I think they were sneakier about being badly behaved.

Violence seldom if ever solves anything. Violence against those unable to defend themselves is bullying, pure and simple and is never justified against children.

My daughter was no tearaway but she was no angel either. She was never smacked, even if it was occasionally tempting, and she grew into a well-balanced, bright, capable young woman doing all right for herself in her own terms. Anyway, who wants a goody-goody for a child/grandchild?

I had the occasional smack when I had crossed the line.

I do remember the public caning, once at primary school, and another at secondary school, of boys caned by the Headmaster for whatever transgression felt this merited. How barbaric was that.

I once lightly smacked the back of my son's hand when he absolutely refused to stop whatever it was he had been told to stop. The look of utter betrayal and hurt on his face I've never forgotten, will always feel bitterly sorry for, and I never smacked him again.

Mind you, there is an often told story in my husband's family about the time when as a stroppy teenager, his mum hit him about the head with a handful of clothes hangers! She was hanging ironing on them at the time, so I suppose he was lucky it wasn't the iron.

I have no recollection of children being smacked at school although I am sure they were; I know two boys were caned for writing graffiti in the boys' toilet, a very rare occurrence in 1957, and we were very shocked; the rarity of the punishment emphasising the severity of the offence.
People forget that a punishment such as smacking may well set an example to those on the fringes of bad behaviour; those who are considering joining in for the kudos they will gain, think again when they see a humiliating and childish punishment meted out.

I was smacked occasionally at home, and once for disobeying my ballet teacher's instructions when she was called out of the room. The pianist was left in charge and told us not to continue with the exercise we were doing; I was enjoying it and carried on, because I knew and liked her. She left her piano stool, gave me one sharp smack , said not a word and sat down again. I was mortified, and very ashamed.
I wish I could say I apologised at the end of the lesson but I didn't. I was terrified she would tell my mother but she never did for which I was endlessly grateful.

I can't tell you how many people end up in therapy rooms because of being abused as children, and that includes physical and emotional violence. Forcing a child to eat food, screeching in a voice that has the implicit "don't do it or else..." message, and slapping all count as forms of abuse. There are no accurate statistics but what we do know is that there is a tendency for children who suffer such abuse to encounter mental health problems in the future that may or may not lead to criminality. There is also a tendency for a proportion of children whose primary care givers smack them to seriously reason that those care givers are exercising a power over them which they want to achieve for themselves and this is done by trying out this form of violence on younger siblings or animals. From this they graduate to being violent adults.

My brother had a psychotic teaher at his prep school who randomly would pick the boys up, feet off the floor, by their hair then beat them round their ears with his other fist. I don't think it made my brother or any of his friends into a better person. Physical violence against a child is not acceptable. 'Just a tap', 'just a smack', sorry (not), but this is not a 'just a' thing t do to someone smaller than yourself. I wonder how many wife beaters were physically chastised as children? Doubtless studies have been done, but outside my field. Methods of managing bad behaviour should not include hitting, the use of physical bullying. My mother was hit by her (hugely cold) mother, usually with a hairbrush. Her loving father never hit her and she did not hit us. I could never bear seeing a great big man hitting a child, it did seem even worse than seeing a mother do it, but I'm afraid it really shows a lack of understanding of how children tick. So glad it is outlawed now, it at least stops those who get a kick out of hurting children maintaining it is normal accepted practice. Emotional abuse is of course abuse too and very damaging, but adding bruises to it doesn't help.

Foxie48, what is a taws?

There were three of us as children.
My Dad once quite proudly said if he didn't know which one of us had done something wrong, he just hit the nearest child.
If they were the guilty one they'd accept it, if not they'd soon tell him who had done it.
He was genuinely surprised when, as an adult, I told him that was lazy parenting and unacceptable.