We have never smacked any of our 4 children and as far as I can remember neither myself or any of my 3 sisters were smacked either.

We learnt to respect our parents, IF my mum ever shouted or raised her voice then we knew we were in BIG trouble, my parents rarely yelled but if they did we knew we had done wrong.

We very rarely smack ours but take things away from them,
i think this hurts them more than smacking them,but i can understand why parents do smack, having 2 boys with special needs they can really test your patience at times and everything needs explaining a little bit more.

Now they are a little bit older though we can reason with them,but on the whole they are quite well behaved

Sal

i must say i was only ever "boxed around the ears" where mum tapped both her hands around my ears...it was more the shock and the noise that shut me up...but mostly it was the "glare"...if you got that you shut up sat down and didnt move!!!!


i have no problem with it ...but it depends on what extent, a slight smack to stun the kid yes a whack around the head deffo no no!
Alex

xx

Just a simple Q to those who feels its ok to smack kids, wheter its a "small" smack or a bigger one.
Do any of you ever smack your dogs? Other pets?

I know I´ll get 10.000 angry mums on my back now for saying this (my sil gets this very red, angry face when I say this) but whats the difference in teaching manners, how to behave and prob the most important; respect to a child and to..lets say a puppy?

I know a child is not a puppy and I know theres differences in how to raise them (try the lead on the kid and you´ll see ), but there are also similarities wouldnt you agree?

I am surprised sometimes by the yelling, screaming, smacking and angry mood I see ppl are in when it comes to displining their children. But when it comes to raising a puppy they do a 180 and wouldnt dream of acting like that. Why´s that?

AMTS - not a parent

Hi amts. Well I'm not a mother, but to answer your question: I think puppies (and dogs) are more delicate than kids, especially big kids, and are also defenceless inobtrusive creatures, whereas a full blown angry hormonal teenager who was cheeky to me or didn't do what I asked him/her would definitely get a slap from me if I was Mum, whereas my dogs - never in a million years!

Good thread.

When I was a kid, from the age of about 7 or 8, I was (apparently) a little sod. My mother was an alcoholic, so I don't know whether the way she treated me was a direct result of my "naughty" behaviour or her being drunk. She used to beat me with the buckle end of a leather belt, sometimes so badly that the welts would bleed and I couldn't go to school in case someone saw it.

I'm sure my primary school must have seen it at some stage and at some level of bruising, but nothing was ever done. Mum continued this behaviour until I reached about 15. Needless to say, I left home (pregnant at 17) as soon as I could to get away from her. Our relationship was always dreadful, and my Father didn't seem able or willing to stop her doing it.

I had no real love for her, and no Mother/Daughter relationship at all. She finally died of cancer in 1983 and I soon got over her death. My Dad died in 1991, and I didn't grieve much for him either, even though we had a closer relationship than Mum and I.

My own daughter was "smacked" when naughty but not excessively, and certainly not with anything more than my hand. I was always very aware when smacking her of what my Mum had done to me.

My Daughter never smacks her two kids.

Looks like the circle has been broken, but my Mum's treatment of me (and it was only me, even though I had 3 sisters) will never ever be forgotten or forgiven.

As an adult, I did once ask my Mum (on the phone) why she beat me when I was a kid, and she pretended she couldn't hear me, despite hearing everything else I had said during our phone conversation up to that point. Shame perhaps? I'll never know.

I'm not looking for sympathy here, just putting forward my reasons for my opinion. The odd smack, when several verbal warnings have failed, is sometimes the only thing that works, in my opinion.

Dogs don't speak english...........oiky teenagers do !

Is it only teenagers who gets a smack?

Well, if I did have any kids amts, they would have been taught the manners etc. when they were little anyway (probably without any smacking coz I'm a bossy boots type of person with a loud voice) and it would only be (for me anyway!) when they reached that awful puberty age that they would start rebelling I think? I am often heard saying when I see a real brat of a kid on the t.v. or out somewhere, "give it to me for a week!" As myschievous has said, there are ways of dealing with this via restricting the nice things in life, and the ignoring syndrome, before any smacking is done, and I have seen some awful scenes in the local supermarket with young kids, but usually you only have to look at the mother towing around 6 kids to know the reason why! I think it's the "easy" way out to smack them, instead of taking the time to teach them the rights and wrongs in life and give them some manners.

Anyways, I was only saying about why we don't hit our dogs

I have learnt that, as long as you dont have kids of your own, you have no right to speak your mind! Course you have no idea what its like and you will change your mind if/when you get some of your own Or so my sil tells me

I still do it though - I wonder and I ask and sometimes I comment and I take the heat that comes along too

AMTS - maybe not wise enough to understand