Summer

Are you thankful your parents beat you? Do you hit your own children?

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Eirik

Yes.

Don't have kids yet.

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Misty Harley

Yes, every day I give thanks to the almighty hitting God that my parents took it upon themselves to make sure I minded my manners at all times with a good crack upside the ass.

Without them, I would not be the person I am today

*ends sarcasm*

(sorry couldn't resist this one)

Brenda Connolly

I don't have kids, but my parents were not above a swat on the ass or spanking when necessary when we were younger. I see nothing wrong with it as part of discipline that also explains why it was done.

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Summer

Damn you guys are fast, I hadn't finished filling in the poll stuff.

Darkley

Well seeing as I still have ongoing breathing issues due to having my nose smashed no, i aint thankful and no, i dont hit my kids - I do shout at 'em though

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Cindy Claveau

"Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

I've never had to spank my kids, ever. I wouldn't be adverse to a swat on the bottom when they were young, but I never had to go that far. They responded well to time-outs, denial of priveleges, and other punishments that fit the 'crime'.

I actually think that hitting your kids only teaches them to hit, but I also acknowledge the vast divide between a swat on the rump and physical abuse.

I just don't think some parents understand that difference. i see them in department stores sometimes - yell at the kid, berate them angrily, and when your voice doesn't make them kneel in obedience then smack them upside the head really hard and scream louder.

Yeh, that's effective parenting alright

Misty Harley

Being a bit more serious, there is a difference between beating/hitting and spanking or using physical punishment with children. At least in text books and laws of the US. You *may* want to distinguish the difference for your question.

And to answer your question; I was abused as a child, therefore I cannot (and learned the hard way as did my children--sadly enough) use physical punishment as a means of parenting. I would think if my parents used spanking like a normal parent (ie: not abusive bruise leaving moments for small things like slamming the front door), I probably would have no issue with it.

Bard Jameson

Loaded question, much?

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Isabeau Imako

If it's a swat like a mother cat will swat a kitten when he's 'acting up', then it's okay - swat as in a painless tap or push to warn of danger (fire), etc. But I have to say, there's a world of difference between a swat and a hard spanking (hitting).

I remember vividly seeing my mother regurlarly hitting one of my brothers (the Bart Simpson of our family). She kind of went coocoo once, and broke a wooden child's chair over him.

If your hand is hurting after a 'spank', you're not swatting - you're hitting, and to me that's just as wrong as hitting another adult, (if not more so).

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Aaachou!

Summer

I have an option that hitting softly is OKAY thus distinguishing levels of the hit.

Carthalis

My mum always smacked us as kids, sometimes with her hand other times with various kitchen implements, depending on what she could get her hands on at the time. My father tended to rage and shout and we had many stand offs of doors slamming and refusing to budge an inch. At primary school I once got slippered by the headmaster, to this day I can't remember what for.

I don't have kids but I don't think I could bring myself to slapping them. Knowing how much now I don't get on with my father and only speak to my mother out of curtesy I don't think I would want that.

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Summer

Whoa, that must have been scary

Lucifer Baphomet

My eldest says hed rather get a cuff round the ear than a grounding, or anything along those lines....

So I ground him after a cuff round the ear

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Misty Harley

I can't hit even softly. I don't know what "soft" would feel to my child and I was abused growing up. Neither are a good mix.

My question would then be: What's the point? If your only hitting softly, it may help to get their attention but it's not exactly effective in teaching them a lesson and very well could take away the real lesson because now they are concentrating on your soft hit versus anything you try to tell them.

Although it does help along the teaching of "if you want someone's attention, hit them" which is a total PITA when they go through the natural hitting ages and stages.

SabellaFallen

I have the belt my dad used to whup us with. It only came out on rare occasions, and it was really more of a scare tactic than anything else. It made lots of noise, and not much real hurt. My brother and older sister have said that they were abused heavily when I wasn't there to see it (discipline occurred in private in our house, for the *most* part), so it's hard, really, to say.

I know that I have a visceral reaction to children behaving badly in public. It's a combination of shock, horror, and anger. Then I look at the parent, and wonder what the heck is up with them, that they allow it.

I don't think spankings made me some broken twisted thing, though some psychologists have said it does, and that it is one of the factors of sparking an adult interest in BDSM and other kinks.

I'm generally pretty happy with how I turned out...

- sabella fallen

Siyu Suen

That's the big difference, I think. My mother never had to lay a hand on my brother, not once, and he responded very well to being sent up to his room or having no more computer time for a while. I wasn't so reasonable.

I was definitely spanked and slapped (sometimes hard but never so it would hurt more than a day or two) and I completely deserved it. There was just no other way I was going to get the message to not do something. And sometimes certain kids just can't be reached any other way. Pain is the most primal of "no!"'s, and if there's a very clear cause and effect, with good reason and sound judgment behind it I think its perfectly justifiable.

Just as an example of a spanking offense, when I was four my mother took me and my brother and some other kids to the circus, and I just wandered away from the group. I was bored waiting to get in or something and I had seen a playground maybe a quarter mile away, so I just walked off, down a very busy road, and then played away on a near empty playground with no adult supervision. Blissfully unaware of the myriad dangers, it wasn't until I got an actual, tangible pain associated with that sort of behavior that I learned it was bad. I can only thank luck and my mother that I learned that lesson through a swat, and not through being kidnapped, hit by a car, or molested.

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Sansarya

I've spanked a couple of mine, but rarely, and the punishment also has to fit the personality of the kid. One of mine you could spank her, ground her, give her time out, take away her stuff, yell, etc. and nothing works to calm her down except a hug and sympathy. Another one has never been spanked, ever. I just have to use the "warning" tone of voice with her full name, and she's immediately contrite.

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Ned Easterwood

I have three daughters, all now in their twenties.

I learned very early the power of parental disapproval. Although their were a few time when I swatted a kid, I never was right to do so - and apologized afterward for doing so. The last time I hit one of my daughters, we ended up crying in each other's arms afterward.

And btw, they are all good people - just like they were as kids. You can discipline very effectively without using corporal punishment.

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Siggy

Don't have kids - but am I glad? FUCK YES! There's a fine line between 'lulz' and being 'a right fucking prick' - and if you look around the animal kingdom (especially those that love their kitty cats' you'll see quite a bit of smacking upside the head when that darling lil one does something retarded.

Should it be the first line of sorting something out? Nope. But hey - there are some things that deserve a good kick in the arse, and looking around I think most of us turned out AOK without the help of Dr Whatever De-Jour on the Tele telling our parents how to raise us.

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Summer

Misty Harley

that post was really hard to read. Black text on black background makes it difficult.

Siyu Suen said:

[/QUOTE]Just as an example of a spanking offense, when I was four my mother took me and my brother and some other kids to the circus, and I just wandered away from the group. I was bored waiting to get in or something and I had seen a playground maybe a quarter mile away, so I just walked off, down a very busy road, and then played away on a near empty playground with no adult supervision. Blissfully unaware of the myriad dangers, it wasn't until I got an actual, tangible pain associated with that sort of behavior that I learned it was bad. I can only thank luck and my mother that I learned that lesson through a swat, and not through being kidnapped, hit by a car, or molested.[/QUOTE]

When my youngest (now 6) was 4 we took her camping and we didn't move fast enough for her liking so she wandered off down the campground road to the playground. After panicking, I realized where she went and ran down there. Relieved that she was ok, I trotted her little self back up to the campground and had her walk with me a few times around a circle of our campers to show here how far she was allowed to go. She has never wandered off since then and now asks what her area is whenever we go someplace new.

Kids are all different and I don't think spanking or not spanking is the make or break deal wrt raising kids (not implying you thought that either).

Rev Eponym

I was never beaten, nor do I think it's acceptable.

There is an age, around 2 but not more than 5, where children are tasting autonomy and experimenting. Sometimes their verbal abilities aren't enough to recognize instructions like, "Don't wander into the street!" They also need to learn, at that point, that parents are the boss of their toddlerism. This isn't because we're superior beings or anything, but they do need to learn to listen. Sometimes, with especially headstrong little ones, a sting on the backside is necessary to establish any of the above.

But if they are older than 4 and still not listening to you as the parent, then you're at fault, and doing it wrong. Hitting doesn't do anything but make them scared of you, and teach them that hitting kids is okay. Which it ain't.
.

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Predreus

Hitting and Beating are really going over the line when I think of those words. Disciplining them by slapping their hands when they grab something they shouldn't, or spanking them on their butt with your hand, belt, or a paddle is acceptable and are things I had done to me as a child. While I do not have kids, I do have nephews and nieces, and I'm not above giving them a good spanking when they have done something wrong. The problem these days though is the parents that go too far when disciplining their child and beat them half to death. These are the people that make proper disciplining of a child stand in a bad light.

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Eirik

My father always ensured the punishment fit the crime.

Most of the time it was just a cuff around the ear, nothing else.

Then one bad exception was when I broke into the parochial church when I was 6 years old to attempt to burn it (a few weeks before my First Communion, because I didn't want to do that ceremony ) and I still have a scar on my head from the beating then. He broke a wooden cane the thickness of my arm back then over my cranium. At first he considered locking me up in a room with the priest's angry guard dog though, so I can't complain about the final result.

And there was the time me and a friend were seeing who could throw rocks the highest over the hedge on the edge of our garden. In less than 5 minutes we trashed the glass roof of my neighbour's veranda, put dents on the roof of his car, and hit him in the head with a rock the size of a baby's fist. That resulted in a pretty bad beating also and no allowance for the next 6 years.

I guess it's good that those things I did back then weren't considered criminal acts yet, but just bad-behaving kids that needed disciplining. I probably would have been in Juvi if I had been raised by tree-hugging hippies, because I always felt the need to push the boundaries and see how far I could go.