When I was a child my mother would often get angry and say, "That's the worst thing you can do!" Being a little kid with a big vocabulary I would say, "How can I manage to plumb a greater depth of depravity every time I do something you find objectionable?" Addressing me by my full name she would say, "You wait until your father gets home."

When my father came home he would listen to my mother. Then he would take me in the bedroom and get my version of what I did. If he thought it wasn't good he would talk to me about it. Otherwise he would just tell me something about enduring. My mother was an alcoholic, and he had to endure a lot. Then he would take off his belt and say something about this hurting him more than it did me. He would lustily strap the bed post, and I would yowl. We would then emerge from the bedroom, and I would wipe my eyes.

Much later I occasionally spanked my two sons with my hand. Then my wife had a daughter. When she was two she ran out of the house into the street nude, and a car came to a screeching halt. I carried her into the house intending to spank her, but I found myself unable to swat that cute little bottom. I never spanked anybody after that.

Smacking a child is painful, humiliating and immediate. For behavioral modification, there is generally no need to smack.

However, in the case where the child disobeys an instruction and puts his/her life in jeopardy, a smack differentiates this from other "bad" behaviour, and for small children the rapidity of the discipline strongly reinforces cause and effect.

We used this only a handful of times on each child and never after 5 years, and it had the desired effect of separating in their minds behaviour that was dangerous and non negotiable and largely prevented repetition.

So to sum up, whilst I believe that discipline is possible mostly without resort to smacking, I am not in favour of the one size fits all rule of NEVER for no one.

spare the rod and spoil the child. If people can't see today the result of 'sparing the rod' then there little hope of them thinking rationally. We have far more violence and abuse than ever before. We have allowed kids to be worshiped rather than loved resulting in a total breakdown in families and society. It is straight out child abuse not to discipline a child adequately.

Excellent article and I agree totally.
Ive said it before Hitting a child is assault. And a particularly cowardly one at that. While I dont call for sanctions, after all what is worse for the child a smack or a parent in jail, I do think we should aim to further our civility as a society by extending the social taboo of corporal punishment to all people all of the time.

I tend to the anti-smacking side of the debate but I found the article overly one sided. It did not try to present the issue reasonably but rather ran a very one sided portrayal of the issue.

Kid's and parents hurt, often for a much longer period of time from other forms of corrective discipline. Smacking is not the only cause of emotional pain when it comes to disciplining children. The argument about children not having the same protection s as others ignores the elephant in the room which is that children don't suffer the same consequences for bad choices as adults, a child might have a loss of some privileges, spend some time in a thinking corner or maybe get a smack for an action which if carried out by an adult could well result in a prison term.

There is plenty of research which suggests that when smacking is a regular long term form of discipline children might suffer negative long term consequences, a statistically significant increase which all parents should consider.

There is also evidence to suggest that children who are smacked young (when their capacity to deal with other forms of discipline is not well developed) may do better than their peers who are not smacked. Early days on that yet but worthy of attention for anybody considering outcomes http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6926823/Smacked-children-more-successful-later-in-life-study-finds.html

It is a complex issue, in some cases a smack might be far less painful to all involved than the other practical alternatives available to most parents.

R0bert

Let parents decide how to discipline and love their children.Get big brother and the know nothing academics out of our lives.

It is all a matter of what works for the individual.Not disciplining can be more destructive than a smack.

We have never had so much interference from the state and yet we have so much dysfunctionality and violence in our society.Everyone is a victim seeking redress for situations primarily of their own making.

When people are made responsible for their own actions,they will learn and so we'll have a semblense of equilibrium.