Imagine this.
Your co-worker does something you’ve repeatedly asked her not to do. It doesn’t matter what. The point is that you’ve explained why she cannot, must not, should not do this and yet she’s done it. Again. You’re over it. When will she learn!
How can you make her understand she’s done something wrong? So you walk over to where she’s standing near her desk and hit her. On the bottom. Through her clothes. Not too hard. Just enough to teach her a lesson.
You are charged with assault.
You're picking up your child from school and you see another mother walking towards the school gate. She's talking on the phone as she's crossing the road and walks straight in front of your car.
You nearly run her over. It's a dangerous situation and you feel the prickle of adrenaline. You get out of your car, grab her by the arm and hit her across the back of the legs. It's for her own good, you tell her.
She could have been killed. She must be more careful when she's crossing the road. This will teach her a lesson.
You are charged with assault.
Your toddler is being impossible and you're over it. After having several tantrums about various silly things, he has decided he doesn't want to eat anymore of his lunch and throws his plate on the floor. It smashes. You hit him, not too hard, just enough to shock him, show him he's crossed the line and pushed you too far. He cries.
Parents Anonymous: Killing Off Santa
This Glorious Mess
Top Comments
Please "the majority" of us beg you to stop writing such over reaching drivel, and telling us how we all should live.
Stop trying tell the world you or anybody else has reinvented parenting, you haven't, nor have you discovered some shocking insight that has been missed for thousands of years of human evolution, again you haven't. Equally hysterical rhetoric linking domestic violence to smacking is not going to persuade any rational and logical human being, namely most parents.
That facts are far from
Certain (so common sense should prevail and certainly never be interfered with by draconian laws that reached into what is most sacred...our home/family). Studies have recently Suggested unstructured discipline as you propose vs. structured discipline which includes smacking had the opposite effect. Modern day disciplinary techniques have Conversely had a range of socially negative effects that may be a root cause in the spike of domestic violence which we are now seeing, which runs counter intuitive to your argument that smacking leads to domestic violence.
Also positive up bringing for a child is not determined by one factor alone (discipline) but a connective web of positive experiences, which Importantly involve "love" "attention" and "responsibility" being taught by parents in a stable home, that at times may include discipline such as a smack.
Your article misleads both parents and the point of good parenting which is to be an active well rounded custodian of building your child's future. How you discipline your child is important in this process but crucially it is how you recognise their personality and character and raise them as whole based on quality time. The worst thing today from parents is "digital neglect", the over reliance on outsourcing time spent to phones and iPads...
As for the example of the woman jaywalker who you nearly ranover, I am in full support of a law change to enable them to be smacked, as well as journalists who resort to contraversial topics just for a short term spike in traffic.
I never liked smacking my son, but until he was old enough to understand the concept of a delayed punishment (e.g. no iPad for the rest of the day) we had to use it occasionally because it was the only thing that had an impact! We tried everything...explanations, removal of toys/privileges, time out, time in...nothing was immediate and effective enough to act as a deterrent to a stubborn pre-schooler. Of course we had rules about smacking: it was only done after two warnings (and it was very rare that those warnings weren't sufficient...but it was only the threat of the smack that made them effective), and we never smacked while angry (if necessary we would delay the punishment until we had cooled down). Anyway, articles like this are pointless if they don't offer alternatives that actually work in the real world. We would have happily stopped smacking if we had found an effective alternative - and we did stop as soon as my son was old enough to understand that the pain of losing screen time was not worth whatever wrong choice he wanted to make in the moment.
Also, as others have pointed out, the whole premise of the article (that you wouldn't hit an adult so you shouldn't hit a child) is flawed. You don't smack an adult because there are effective alternatives - to start with you can reason with them, and if that fails you can report them to a supervisor/law enforcement officer/etc, or allow natural consequences to occur (e.g. getting hit by a car). In addition it is not your responsibility to teach your fellow adults how to behave (unless you are their boss, in which case you already have an effective deterrent at your disposal - threat of being fired). The comparison with wife beating is flawed because that is so unsavoury not (only) because of the violence, but because of the assumption that a husband has the right to decide how the wife should behave. However good parenting is all about teaching our children the correct way to behave - both for their own safety and so they can function in society.