Hahaha

Well all those situations are wrong so even if its open ended the answers still clear cut.

Frankly I think you should leave the parenting to those who can actually win over a five year old with your mind

The

lynn i dont think it is the fact that parents didnt use a slap as punishment durin the celtic tiger, its some parents didnt have much time to properly disclipne their children, and tended to buy their kids more bits and pieces……..

Agree 100% Lynn. A huge amount of kids show absolutely no respect these days whether that is to a garda, a teacher, or an ordinary member of the public. I was cheeky once to a teacher, and by God I got a slipper across the arse from the father and learned my lesson good and quick. That was the only time he ever touched me and the only time he needed to after that.

The current youth are no better or worse than the last generation. People have been whingeing about “the youth” since ancient times.

The youth of 20 or 30 years ago went out, got drunk, did drugs, started fights, stole, disrespected their elders etc just as much as those today. Rich kids back then were as lazy etc as those today. Nothing has changed, people just like to think they were so much better when they were young.

well said!

Good man Connor it’s a good job someone on here knows everything

If you’re going to base your opinion on one woman you once knew, could your mind be changed by knowing that Martin Cahill and Josef Stalin were most likely slapped as children?

‘most likely’ – Basing your response on “facts” there, are we?

I’m basing it on the fact that it was the most acceptable and standard form of punishment back then. It would be highly unlikely that they were not slapped, and their parents would have been considered to be bad parents if they hadn’t slapped their children.

My point is that you can’t base your opinion on how one or two kids turned out.

Your point is not made James. It is not based on fact. Just because slapping children was the most common form of discipling a child, ‘back then’ as you say, it is not proof people like Martin Cahill were disciplined that way. In fact I’d be highly sceptical of him having been disciplined at all in any form. Catholicism was the most common religion back then, and now, in Ireland does that mean you can say that a certain person is Catholic because most people happened to be.

You also say you can’t base your opinion on how one or two people turn out, and yet you go on to say that two people, Stalin and Cahill, were most likely slapped as kids, and so you shouldn’t then do it [slap a child]. Fair enough you were trying to make a point to Joe about not choosing one experience he had to make his point but you then went on to do the same thing. Your point is like a house built upon sand effectively.

That’s not what I’m saying at all. In fact I voted that it can be OK to slap kids in certain situations.

I only mentioned two “bad” people who were most likely slapped in an attempt to highlight that you can’t base your opinion on one or two cases.
There are good and bad people who were slapped, and there are good and bad people who weren’t.

James Daly, how can you build an argument on “most likely”

I was deliberately posing a ridiculous situation. I thought that was obvious but clearly I was wrong.

I was responding to a comment that suggested that slapping is right because some woman who didn’t slap her children ended up raising two brats.
I posed the ridiculous scenario of believing that slapping is wrong because a gangster and a dictator were slapped.

Well said. Parenting is all about common sense. For example your three year old runs out onto the road. What do you do? Give the child a slap there and then or put the child on the naugthy step when you get home, which at this stage the running out onto the road will be a distant Memory to them and sitting on the naughty step will be a puzzle.

So, Paul, do you have kids, and if so, do you hit them?

and violence was the only language you would have understood, was it?

Thing is most people here are talking about discipline not safety. Also if you’re old enough to use mathces you’re probably old enough to be sat down and have everything about them explained to you.

I was six, a good chat would have done nothing. And it didnt make me voilent and my father is not voilent. he slapped me he didn’t beat me up.

In fairness Sluazcanal, I’ll give ye that the one place I could be possibly convinced upoun is those extreme safety of the child situations cases. But what most people here are calling for is the right to hit their kids whenever there feeling a bit “fifty shades of grey” and just couldn’t be bothered talking to their child.

Again I’m not convivnced of the having to hit them to protect them argument but I probably wouldn’t judge someone too harshly. Most cases have nothing to do with that.

That is a big leap you made there Conor. Most people here have not called for hitting their children whenever they felt like it. You are making assumptions where their is no evidence. Many here have talked about the odd slap now and again and given examples of the Extreme instances where such discipline such be used.

On the whole debate. I love people who deal in absolutes, if only the World was so black and white.

@paul most comments talk about discipline, which is subjective, which means up to the discretion of the parent. Even if its “only now and then”. So I think my comment is fair.

Again for the fact that my comment specifically states cases where it might be possible to argue for a physical reprimand then I really don’t see how arguing subtleties equals balck and white. If of course that black and white comment was for me.

@Connor,

The black and white comment is not aimed at you.

@connor, it’s 50 Shades of Gray not a very inappropriate book to have on your mind when talking about disciplining children?

Well, I’m Polish and never smacked / spanked my child. I know that some people do, but probably average would be same as in Western countries, so in short, I would not think of that being a reason for their good behaviour…

Elephants don’t engage in debates – this is not a reason to assume it’s ok for humans to not use some level of reason.

If a young elephant runs into the road the parent doesn’t have to worry too much about it.

yes, if only we could reverse millions of years of evolution and live like the rest of the animal kingdom.

So Gagsy what you’re saying is people all of a sudden stopped slapping their children millions of years ago?? Funny, I would have thought up until about 50 years ago most people slapped their children. This idea of not slapping your children is a recent development and not surprisingly has only really taken place in the developed world where we can afford to ‘reason’ with children instead.

Ross, you misunderstand me, thats not what I was saying at all. I was just challenging your comment which I though suggested that becuase the animal kingdom uses a form of corporal punishment, we should also.

And you’re right, not slapping is a relatively recent development. But isn’t it a great development?

No I didn’t misunderstand you. You’re saying we would be going back millions of years if we slapped children. I’m saying we wouldn’t – it’s a natural form of discipline that humans and other animals have used for millenia.

No, I was only challenging the view that we should take our lead from animals (or history).
But I concede that I probably could have been clearer.

@Ross- Your response in itself shows the intellect of people who slap their children! I’d stop responding if I was you, you’re not doing yourself any favours

I wasn’t saying we should take our lead from animals. I was showing that it’s a natural form of discipline.

Ah yes a well-worded response to my comment. Pure ad hominem attack.

Natural schmatural!

There are lots of behaviours that are quite natural in the animal kingdom that we would not consider acceptable.

Ok you’re a troll

Am I?
I don’t even know what a troll is (other than the under the bridge fella).

But on the off-chance that its a compliment, thanks!

Ross Bowe, for someone keen on attacking others for supposed logical fallacies, you do know that you’re appealing to nature, and that that too is a fallacy – right? I mean, just because animals do or do not hit each other has no influence on how we should or should not behave.

Ok if it’s a bad thing then why has the behaviour survived for millenia in both humans and other animals?? If it wasn’t beneficial it wouldn’t have survived

@Ross- some animals in the wild also kill their young. what’s your point?

your theory doesn’t make sense!

Because it’s a lot easier to do the usual animalistic thing of expressing dominance.

People have the ability to reason way beyond animals. Maybe try engaging that before flippantly pointing to nature.

Animals don’t use condoms either, nor do they produce microchips, build houses, watch TV etc – are you suggesting we just go back to that?

It doesn’t tell kids that what their doing is wrong – it tells them there are consequences to actions. It is you who decides whether you want a child to behave a certain way and you who decides that pain and fear will be your tools to enforce the behaviour you desire (which does not make that behaviour either right or wrong).

Your parallel to what happens in nature is so obviously flawed it’s hard to understand why you’re still clinging to it.

Okay…according to you it doesn’t tell the kid that what they’re doing is wrong. It’s not as if you give them a slap and say nothing – you can tell them it’s wrong at the same time.

No – that’s not what I am saying.

A slap sends more messages than what you generously suggest is a moral message.
It tells kids that they’ll do what they are told and if not, they’ll be hit. If you imagine that kids can be told also what they did wrong then you’re depending on their ability to reason. Which, by itself exposes just how unfounded the argument in favour of smacking. If you can reason with a child then there is no need to slap – if you can’t reason with a child then you are doing nothing more than using fear and threat and showing dominance… over a child.

If you cannot reason with a child, it’s most likely because you don’t have the brain capacity to do so, so leave raising children to the educated people!

I must say that’s the first time I’ve ever been effectively told I’m uneducated – most likely because it’s obvious to people that I’m not. Nevertheless you I’ll let you sit on your high-horse despite not coming up with an argument as to why slapping your child is wrong. You’ve all simply said it’s wrong, which is an opinion, and come up with absolutely no argument as to why. I have at least demonstrated that it most likely has had survival benefit, some of which has possibly become redundant in the last few centuries – it doesn’t make it wrong though.

Demonstrated is the wrong word ‘alluded to the possibility’ is more appropriate.

As said already but you appear to have ignored it – it’s wrong because you are doing nothing but threatening, teaching kids nothing of what is wrong and right and only passing on the incorrect belief that physical pain is ok to inflict on those weaker than you.

It does not teach a child what is right and wrong – it teaches a child to fear you. A kid running around a house and making a bit of noise is not WRONG – it’s just something parents don’t want to hear.

It can be argued that kids don’t listen to reason – and that’s true, they are not as cognitively developed as adults, nor are they as morally developed. They do however react to both positive and negative reinforcement.

I’m sorry but you’ve failed to show how it doesn’t teach a kid what is right and wrong. You’ve simply asserted it. Children are smart enough to know they’ve done wrong when you give them a slap. Don’t be so disingenuous as to pretend they don’t.

If you’re demanding a scientific explanation of the lack of link between morals and smacking then here you go:
“There are several undesirable consequences of spanking and hitting, children learn to use physical force to express anger and deal with conflict, parents often use physical force when they are angry themselves, and it does nothing to teach alternative ways of behaving.” from:
http://www2.aap.org/sections/scan/practicingsafety/Modules/EffectiveDiscipline/EffectiveDiscipline.pdf

With more here:
http://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/family-dynamics/communication-discipline/Pages/Disciplining-Your-Child.aspx?nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token

And here are a lot of reasons why other methods of discipline are preferable:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2167755/Smacking-children-increases-chances-mental-illness-later-say-scientists.html
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/laws-on-smacking-children-questioned-194022.html
http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Spanking-Kids-Can-Make-Them-More-Aggressive-Later.aspx?nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token

So, if this doesn’t change your mind I would put the same challenge to you – what proof do you have that spanking/smacking has any effect on the moral development of the child?

You don’t need evidence to say that smacking a child is wrong. If it “taught” them anything, it would be common practice in schools, college, the workplace. But people don’t want other people smacking their kids because “that’s wrong”??!!

It’s pure laziness on the parents behalf!

I don’t think anyone is saying that bad behaviour should go unchecked, but that there are other forms of punishment.

Is there really any more vandalism today than there used to be? It’s certainly not as visible as it used to be, whether that’s a result of it happening less or just things being fixed quicker.

And if we shot addicts in the head we’d have clear and safer streets. Not a good argument. Hit someone enough and they’ll eventually hit back, and hit back hard. Did you not watch Batman? :-)

and maybe the harder you beat them, the better they’ll behave.

I don’t think that you can have one without increasing the chances of the other happening under the radar. It’s too risky.

Very easy to use language like that in order to pull the rug out from an alternative point of view.

Not every parent who disagrees with smacking is a “bleeding heart”. Calling them such is an easy way for you to ignore their still very valid points of view.

Yes because that’s the same thing.

In case you missed it – that’s sarcasm

My point is it’s parents who think their special little kid is too precious

Your point is to make the two things the same.

Hitting a child teaches nothing except how to put them in their place.

Avoiding splitting out teams puts all on equal footing and does not acknowledge the difference in people that is naturally there nor does it acknowledge the skill and effort made by those who are better.

If you want to say that not splitting teams and hitting children are both stupid, then I’m with you, but you’re not.

P Wurple: you are blowing my comment and analogy way out of proportion. Firstly, in my household, there is a difference between a tap and a slap. If you want me to illustrate, I can explain that it’s a light tap on the back of the hand using my fore and middle finger. I do not hurt the child, there are no marks, or pain and if there were I would be expected to be dragged out and beaten within an inch of my life. Your daughter seems to be particularly astute for her age, but they certainly do develop very fast at that age. Clearly she is miles beyond my 12 month old boys, and your method has worked for you. That method has not worked for my twins. As I said in a previous comment, every child is different. You’d think the way you were going on I did this 10 times a day, followed by sound thrashings, starvation and locking them in the linen closet. Jesus woman. Get some perspective.

Ok I have NO idea how my comment ended up here…

Joanna.
I don’t accept nothing else works.
A smack is a quick way of dealing with it. It gets instantaneous results but possibly at a cost. It’s not easy but it is far better to deny the child something.
Believe me, it’s the hardest road but the best road in the end.
We have got to stop seeing this as a battle of wills.
The David Colemans of this world would back up what I say.

Children need to know who is in charge and at times they will keep pushing to find limits to their behaviour. I’ve got three kids, 9, 5 and 22 months. The two older ones can be reasoned with (now) but occasionally the youngest needs to be shown the error of her ways. This only happens when other avenues have failed, I don’t slap my kids every day or every month but I do consider it an important tool. Most times the threat is enough if reasoning has failed, time outs work over time but if immediate results are required, a small tap on the hand gets the job done

After reading through all the comments here, this is the primary one i agree with, its soo easy to side with political correctness as always and spout your intellectual superiority when the facts are actually as in most discssions of this nature very complex.

Absolutely agree, every child reacts differently

Exactly. My got brighter when I copped on to the fact that people use the whole red thumb/green thumb function on as a means to show approval / disapproval, but to escalate the debate. Personally I’d like to see an option where the red thumbs / green thumbs could be made invisible ( only for the viewer who chooses this ) as it means the focus would be on the comments themselves, rather then on the amount and ratio of the thumbs.

JTHM

The thumbs only give you a guide as to how much people on the forum thread agree or disagree with you. Keep it simple brother (sister)

That’s exactly what I mean paul. Take a look at other comments (not made by me).

I can understand people being stressed on a day and an isolated incident occurring. Often these are the memories people have of “the odd slap when I was young and it did me no harm” rather than regular use of slapping as the only tool in a box of discipline tricks.

Unfortunately the poll question being so vague (or maybe the options to the poll being so limited) polarised the response.

It amazes me how many of the “it never did me any harm” would be straight in to a teacher to sue them if their kid came home and said the teacher smacked them despite the fact that teachers are to act as “a reasonable parent”. Apparently slapping kids is reasonable? Right after taking money from the state’s pocket in suing the parent could be on here getting broad agreement that there is too much waste of money in education…….

I feel powerful and alive!

Muuhaahhaaahaaaahaaaaa!

They know they’ll get a slap If they do it again? so they tend not to wade down that road.How do I feel? grand, should I feel something else?

Michelle, I’ll be honest. I’ve only ever smacked the hand on my kids. Never hard, and never in anger. Lesson learned, usually pretty quickly, is not to repeat the behaviour. How do I feel? Bloody awful. I certainly have never taken any enjoyment from it, but I also recognise that, particularly with very young children, a debate on why you shouldn’t do something doesn’t work. Sometimes you need the small shock
Of a tap to drive home that, for example, touching a hot oven is dangerous.

Who do they learn? They learn not to try and kill their sister. They learn not to run out in front of traffic. Etc.

So every time a child encounters danger they require a negative reinforcer so that they won’t do it again? Some feel ok after it but some feel awful- is that a desired consequence? Parent upset and child upset. Interestingly has your child ever done the same ‘bold’ thing again after you’ve hit them? I think it’s quite Pavlovian and that long term there is very little sustained learning for the child.

Not always, Michelle. My four year old can now be told that if he hangs upside down on the swing by one leg, he’s liable to hurt himself and not to do it. Was a tap on the hand effective when he was too young to understand the argument for danger? Yes it was. Would you rather repeatedly say no to a 12 month old baby and have them actually touch the oven to learn, after taking them away repeatedly? I’d rather deal with him and I being upset for a few minutes over a slapped wrist, than deal with the more serious prospect of a burn wound.

No, Michelle. Not every time. Just if they keep doing it.
I mean, how many times can you risk your 3 year old running onto the road when there’s traffic around?
So the first time, you explain, but one goes rather quickly from explaining to a light slap.
The same when my 4 year old tried to hit my 1.5 year old on the head with a wooden hammer.

99% of the time, threatening to take away something will work.

But to accept banning slapping, I’d have to agree that there’s absolutely no condition under which a 3 or 4 year old should get a light slap/tap. I don’t agree with that.

I understand that from your experience that it works and common sense should be applied. However, have any have children hit out at others in frustration? The principle of modelling behaviour (both positive and negative) from a primary caregiver is a very strong phenomenon in child psychology.

Nicolle, my 16 month old is well aware that the oven is hot and dangerous, and I’ve never had to slap her. Seems a bit mean to slap a 12 month old infant imho. Restraint is fine, I’ve had to stop her heading for it, but now even when I point to an oven in anyone’s house, she says HOT, blows on her fingers, and says Ah-Ah (her word for dangerous). I haven’t had to burn her, slap her, lock her in a room, or anything else, yet!

P Wurple: response to you as reply to comment above… Dont know how it got there.

I have never hit my 1.5 year old, or pulled her head or tried to gouge her eyes out ;-) , but she seems to have figured out that all by herself. The older one (who has got the very odd slap) occasionally hits the younger one. On a violence scale the younger is more violent than the older. The young one is a hardy buck.

But kids figure out that one can get what they want through force all by themselves. The older one has never hit any other kid in the creche (or I’ve never been told by the creche).

My 4 yr old though tells me that other kids in the creche (bold boys) are kicking each other.
It’s tales of ‘A kicked B and B kicked A and A was sent to the corner etc’
So they’ll still see it regardless.

I don’t slap the older one much…in fact I can’t remember the last time…

Fun fact. It’s not illegal I dont think.

Please correct me if wrong…
http://www.eumom.ie/blog/2010/07/19/to-slap-or-not-to-slap/

@ Conor – it’s illegal to beat and/or physically abuse a child. It’s a purely subjective opinion on whether a slap is physical abuse or not. That’s the essential problem. Plus, there’s the fact that, if you use physical violence ( and a slap is both physical and violent, even when it is not hard enough to cause lasting damage ) to discipline a child, you are teaching the child that physical violence is a justifiable and acceptable means to discipline and control others. In short, if a person slaps a child, that person should expect that child to either slap them back, or start slapping other people, at some point. The old stupidity of “do as I say and not as I do”. I don’t respect that. Kids aren’t stupid, they won’t respect that either.

JHTM you are in fact legally allowed to hit an adult in self defence as long as you use reasonable and proportional force in doing so. The same applies to slapping a child. And as for directly or indirectly passing the right on to authority figures you’re trying to conflate parental discipline with some kind of Orwellian argument for control of the masses. Which is ironic because by trying to enforce a slap ban you would be inviting government employees into the home to inspect parents’ discipline. When it comes to clearly defining a situation you can look at the overall life of the child, there are many well established methods for people such as teachers to identify potential abuse of a child. If these markers are not present in the life of a normally happy child then is it not reasonable to assume that any slap they may or may not be receiving is not psychologically affecting them?

@ John Mc – I don’t buy that someone could claim “reasonable and proportional force” if that person is an adult and the recipient of the violence is a child. That said, I would say that if the child was an older teenager, effectively a physical adult but legally a child, and that older teenager instigated the violence, then this would be a different situation. No small child deserves to be hit.
Orwellian? That’s a bit ingenious? I was simply saying that if a parent hits their child, then their argument against other adults feeling justified in hitting that child is seriously compromised. “I’m allowed to slaps child but you’re not”. It doesn’t really hold up as a reasoned argument. Hitting kids, for whatever reason, is wrong. This is one of the areas in which northern continental Europe are far ahead compared to us. I have two kids, I live in the continent, and a discussion such as this would have a very different outcome. To be honest I’m having a hard time believing that the pro-slapping commenters are sincere. It reads like a wind-up and, if not, it seems that there are many people in Ireland who are living thirty years in the past. Hitting kids was unofficially acceptable in CB schools when I was going through the education system, I naively presumed the days of hitting kids and claiming it was good for them was long gone.

Karl, I just thought it would a logical step if applying a mild slap is considered acceptable.
I personally don’t think its acceptable but in terms of principles to be intelligently discussed there’s not too much different in the two approaches – its just one of them doesn’t feel quite right for some reason.

Lets take a look at your statments of fact.

Violence breeds violence for a start.
Ghandi would probably disagree.

For seconds it’s bullying and cowardly bullying at that. So my father was a cowardly bully and most other parents in ireland are cowardly bullies, wow what a country we have here.

The only reason people hit kids to discipline them is because they have an unfair physical advantage. Another wonderful statement of fact which is in no way a ridiculous generalization.

For the record I wasn’t hit as a kid and I have two kids who sometimes it would be so easy to slap to quickly ‘put them in their place’. Bravo to you and your parents, well done. Should have thrown in a few more sweeping generalizations though just in case.

Think how a kid views his dad and the world when the person he expects to protect him/her hits him/her. Ask anyone here who got a slap off there parents and the reason why they got a slap and they will probably tell you they deserved it, except in the rare circumstance where it was an abusive parent.

Now I have two kids, and I have never needed to slap them, they are great kids! But I have seen other kids as I am sure you have at playgrounds, swimming pools etc who are completely out of control. Now from what I have read about this, and I have read a couple of parenting books, giving your child a slap is ok under certain circumstances, in particular if they are regularly engaging in an activity where either they are a hazard to themselves or to someone else. Tough love you see, not cowardly bullying. As in almost any argument it is easy to either be on the far left of political correctness or on the far right, but in reality there is a warm squishy middle too.

@ James Okeefe. You should write a book. Make sure it’s a hardback that way it can be used as a handy instrument to discipline kids with. Send the Dali Lama and Nelson Mandela copies while your at it as I’m sure they are in the same camp as ghandi is (relevance Christ knows). It’s sad when a grown man defends hitting kids. I guess you must have issues. Help is only a phone call away.

I was not defening hitting kids and if you read it that way then that is your mistake.

I started off by pointing out your ridiculous generalizations, of which there were many. I then went on to say that under certain circumstances where a child has been told multiple times not to do something, for example running across a busy road and still does it, therefore they could end up very seriously injured from what I read a slap was seen as the best way to deal with it.

Now iyou want to go again and try make out that i am in some way saying that children should be whacked at every opportunity , and no I have no issues except with you talking down to us idiots who just happen to disagree with your opinion.

Why not go all the way and replace employers and employees with references to 1940s Germany for the full emotional impact?

There’s always one… Some people just have Nazis constantly on their mind.

Caroline.
‘Children of today’…. That sounds a little lazy. The children of today are no different than any other generation.
They are no worse. They are a clean slate. A little more open mindedness is what is required.

May be worth a read: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100172911/kids-disrespecting-their-elders-since-4000bc/

I actually never realized so many people think it’s ok to slap/tap/wooden spoon etc.
My kids are 8 & 6.
Bottom line? I just couldn’t do it.
They are well behaved, good kids & when there is a problem they know full well by what we say that if it keeps up, there WILL be consequences. Eg, no nintendo, no treat, whatever.
I’m thinking about them now & back to when they were little toddlers .
There is no way I could. Not a chance.

But I don’t believe you can have the one without increasing the risk of the other. Slapping may not be abuse, but it normalises hitting children and makes it more likely that certain parents will not be stopped from beating the tar out of their offspring.

So, Rocco, do you have kids, and if so, do you hit them?

Yes and yes.

Thanks for that, I was beginning to despair that all common sense and decency had somehow disappeared. A person who hits a child is assaulting that child no mistake about it. Being brought up in an environment where slapping is common only conditions that person to see it as acceptable, in our own Irish culture it was socially acceptable to slap children. Nothing in the world makes me feel more anger and sadness than to see children being abused or neglected.

Jason.
I agree kids need to know who is in charge. Completely agree. However, I believe you have failed when you resort to slapping a child. The usual line of ‘it doesn’t do any harm’ is hard to quantify. No parent has the right to smack a child. They are fully paid up citizens of the state and you are custodians of them. I’m not saying that every child who is smacked ends up with life alternating issues, of course not but if we turn the question around ‘what does the child gain by being smacked? Respect?
Would you respect somebody who hit you? They might submit to your greater power but you haven’t won them over or changed their ways. You have just made them submit.
I once heard Michael O’Leary talk about this subject and he used the common line of ‘I was smacked and it never did me any harm’.
That comment from him convinced me more that ever how right I am.

wow dissed by the red thumb brigade. I dont agree with you either though, kids dont re act to intelligent debate.

I got the wooden spoon…. ya wouldn’t even think to misbehave again when ya got your arse roasted with the wooden spoon. kids now get away with murder the little brats….tough love its called

Completely agree with you – slapping a child only adds to the upset and in my mind is a lazy parenting form by today’s standards! My mother slapped me and my older brother when we were younger as she didn’t know any other form of discipline, however when my little brother came along 11 years after me the market was flooded with other ways to discipline your kids. She found time-out brilliant – tough going to get the child to take to it at first but worth it in the end. It gives a child time to calm down and the parent can properly discuss the issue with them so they child can actually understand why what they did was seen as misbehaving.

You need a lot more patience to carry out discipline methods such as time out but it’s worth it in the end. When you get slapped, as a child you can often feel resentful about it and often lash out even more as a result- it is not a suitable form of discipline by today’s standards and the problem is if you say it’s okay for parents to hit/slap their kids where do you draw the line between a slap turning into a beating? Young children mimic their parents – remember that!

@paul- they won’t if they have morons for parents who slap them rather than teaching them right from wrong!

Same as David, didn’t make me a violent person, put me in my place though!

Micheal do you have kid?

I never once slapped my 16 year old but that’s not to say I think it should be outlawed. Its a tough topic because I’d have no problem giving a kid a “smack on the bum” but where do you draw the line with the amount of force, for what breach of discipline is it ok to “smack” him/her? There are to many, this would be ok that wouldn’t be ok

Michael Fagan…
I fail to comprehend as to why you got so many thumbs down.
It makes me curious as to what gob…tes peruse the Journal.
It also prompts me to move to a news outlet which can boast a readership with a higher intelligence level.

@ stray mutt- +1

And it works too…

serious backwards? wow. You must be some specimen

Yes, because until recently the majority of people were morons. Until they were enlightened by these studies. If anything society is as bad as always, despite less people laying the smack down on their kids!

The threat thereafter was enough?
So you didn’t learn respect.
You learned fear.
Far better to have been denied an ice cream or whatever threat you may have had coming. You wouldn’t have been hit but would still have learned a lesson. Sorry, but there is no proven basis that what you say is the correct approach. All kids are different and some are very challenging personalities and you need to work through things. Resorting to smacking is poorly thought out, reactive and is just a battle of power which every adult will win over a child.
The best way to guide a child through life is by example.

Sorry for troubling your superior, enlightened mind with our idiotic thoughts

Well said! I got the occasional slap when I was younger and it has only made me resent my parents more.

I’m getting really confused here at the like/dislike ratio. Can someone give me one situation where it’s necessary to hit a child? If it’s not necessary the only reason to introduce violence into a childs life is your own frustrated release which even if it wasn’t wrong would just be weird.

And popsicle babes, I’ll be as condescending as I like to those who condone violence on children. :)

lol what are you flapping about mate? troll

You may find Conor that a slap in certain circumstances is the lesser of two evils. Try intellectually explaining to a recidivist 12 month old why sticking their fingers in a power socket isn’t a good idea. From my experience they don’t really grasp the finer details of electricity, despite their best efforts.

If you scroll down i gave a situation where i deserved a slap as a child.

Andrew, have you seriously slapped an infant?

I have restrained mine… grabbed their hand, or held them back from walking off an edge, but I’ve yet to find an occasion where I would need to slap them.

P Wurple. I have on very rare occasions used the tap on the hand approach when the child was so young as to be unable to comprehend and entertain a fully articulated and reasoned debate as to the pros and cons of a particular activity. It goes without saying for me that it should go no further than that and as the child grows older the need for such an approach disappears entirely. To co-opt a phrase from another discussion, I believe ‘slapping’ should be safe, legal and very very rare. I would rather that than risk a child seriously hurting themselves just so I could feel smug and superior in the wrong-headed notion that all slapping/tapping is child abuse. A parents first role is to bring up a child safe, healthy and well – and if that requires a rare gentle but stern tap on the wrist when other measures have failed, then so be it.

Andrew surely grabbing the child back from the socket and explaining in a strong stern tone how dangerous it is would be more suitable than slapping them and just leaving them scared to touch the switch only while you’re in the room. I’m disgusted by how many parents still hit their children – there is so much information out there on alternative ways to discipline – stop being lazy and use some!

@ Poppysmith. Sometimes the child just doesn’t get it / can’t get it. We are not dealing with fully realised adults. We are dealing with infants / children who by dint of their youth have an under developed understanding of danger. Truthfully I would rather have a child shocked by the ‘violence’ of a tap on the wrist than have them shocked by 240v coming out of the wall socket. Clearly we disagree about which would be more detrimental to the child…

@andrew- maybe socket covers Andrew?

I totally agree with Conor and can’t understand the like/dislike ratio either! Although to be fair, those red thumbs are most likely the same people that are devout Catholics and proudly follow the “word” of the local priest religiously! If the priest says do it then I must! They most likely have the brain capacity of a dead fish and shouldn’t have kids.

Andrew, the alternative to slapping is neither a electric shock treatment or a long and reasoned debate with a toddler. It’s just as poppy said… Grab their hand away from it, and give them a sharp “NO” and “Dangerous”. You’re hitting them to give them a fright by the sounds of it, rather than to hurt them. I guess I’m just doing the same thing with the restraint and a stern No in my best I-Mean-it voice.

Maybe there will be an occasion where I need to smack a child to get their attention or something, I wouldn’t rule it out, but it has yet to happen in my experience.

@red, I’m a catholic, and don’t see any reason to slap babies.

@p wurple- That’s good to know, 1 down, 1 to go

Would I be right in assuming that the majority of people here that are strenuously opposed to slapping a child are not parents themselves?

@Paul, I can only speak for myself. I have children and don’t slap them. so far. :)

@ Reds. Unfortunately I don’t carry enough socket blockers around with me for the various and many houses of people I know. We certainly used them when the boy was small in our own house, but to think every house will have them is fanciful in the extreme. In short, get real.

Better slap that insolence out of red Andrew, sounds like he’s giving you a bit of backchat.

@p wurple- he’s a she!

@andrew- stop being a coward and hitting vulnerable children. If you cannot discipline them with words, don’t have anymore children!

@ Reds.

Hush already, would you? I’m not some ogre going around beating up on children. I am a parent who understands his first job is to protect the child from themselves given how vulnerable they are to their limited understanding of how things in the world work. Absolutely nothing I have written above could be construed otherwise, Any pretenses to the contrary reflect only your own silly and indeed, juvenile, prejudice. My position is clear, reasoned and restrained. Yours on the other hand, seems intent on the wholly wrong-headed notion that children are little adults just waiting to engage with you in measured discussions – and anyone who’s seen a child go through the terrible two’s knows that that is just plain silly.

@andrew- Protect the child from themselves by slapping them?

You should never be too far from your 2 year old that you cannot simply move them away from danger rather than hitting them out of frustration because you do not have the patience to deal with the situation correctly.

@ Reds.

I never said that it was okay to smack a child in a moment of frustration. I would encourage you to go back and read everything I posted above. I think you will find you have concocted this ‘smacking out of frustration’ entirely out of your own head.

What you are singularly failing to understand for some reason, despite being a parent yourself, is a child’s ability to put themselves in harms way despite stern discouragement to the contrary.

Like I said, you might be happy or think it correct to run the risk of your child getting a wallop from a car or 240 vs because you don’t want to give them a tap on the wrist, but I am not. We will have to agree to disagree on this one. The one thing I am certain of is that my boy is a lovely child, who does what he’s told and gets on well with his friends and other children. I have never seen him raise his hand to another child, nor act violently, despite the few taps he may have got way back when, to make sure he didn’t endanger himself or others. Go figure.

Painey when it comes to “any degree of pain or discomfort” many small kids play hurling, getting a hurl to the shins causes discomfort, the kid rubs his leg and continues playing; no one gets traumatised. Are you going to suggest that a slap with the hand can cause more long term psychological problems? There are behaviours which are dangerous to the child’s actual survival such as running out on the road or going near hot kettles. With the best will in the world you can’t prevent all them as a parent, sometimes a slap on the leg after a warning is flouted can teach a better lesson than allowing the child to get hit by a van. It happened to me and as far as I can tell I’m fairly well adjusted

In your eyes

wow more trolling and complete bullshit aswell. I’d like to see how you get out of that one when a cop comes along and asks whats going on here. YOU ARE NICKED SON.

sorry garda i was just correcting this poor excuse for a parent, on the misgivings of how to discipline there child.

Yes Mark lol that will work. Dear oh dear

so does this mean you have never ever seen someone smacking a child in public?

Um Paul, if all these other people are trolling, what is it that you’re doing?

Paul for example in Sweden you wouldn’t need cop for arresting him as you would be arrested first for smacking that child…
They have not just one case when parents fight back in court for their rights to the child once they spanked them and were caught and children taken away, google it.

JTHM

Getting green thumbs mate, you?

Paul, you’re moulding your responses on the basis of what will go down well with other people? Are you a populist politician?

damcoles

Nope, Just a Daddy.

Quite a few of us here are daddies.

I wouldn’t hit my son. I’m going with something my parents did with me, love, trust, and non violent punishment. You can’t hit your kids, but you can make them wash the windows.

Don’t know. The number of green or red thumbs is not really my concern – it’s not as if there’s a prize at the end of the day. If there was, I’d care. Until then, I won’t give them much thought. I’m more interested in the people who put the effort into writing a comment then the people who only interact through a three-way choice.

Thats beautiful Damocles. Now back off and let me raise my kids my way and you can do it your way.

JHTN

Very insightful.

I wasn’t stopping you raising your kids as you wish. I was expressing an opinion.

by Jesus I’d give you some hammering if you interfered with me and my kids, keep out of other peoples business and your nose will stay a lot straighter

I worry for the future of this country when i see all of the thumbs that are going in favor of smacking and paul you must be a big man pushing for peoples need to hit little children to keep them in line. Talking to a child and correcting them for doing wrong might be more difficult to do but i would make that choice any day over raising my hand to the small person i am raising for the future. Cause i couldn’t live with my self hitting a child but then again paul i am not telling you not to hit your child break there small grips of love for you all i’m saying is say the next time you do something wrong and i was standing over you ready to slap some sense into you, would you think you would learn a lesson or do you think it would just make things worse. I think it would just make things worse. Remember children are little people and should never be seen as less then that.

Hmm and is there nothing wrong with assault causing harm. Cause I think you’ll find Mr. Garda will be telling you about a little thing called a section 3 assault under the non-fatal offences against the person act. Now if that parent was actually hitting their child repeatedly, and forcefully, then I’d have to do something. I wonder are people disagreeing with parents giving their children the rare smack on the arse, in extreme cases, or is it with parents who vent their frustration etc on their kids through violence? Because the latter absolutely sickens me.

“by Jesus I’d give you some hammering if you interfered with me and my kids, keep out of other peoples business and your nose will stay a lot straighter”

Apply “keep out of other peoples business” to many other situations where parents have been prosecuted for various crimes against their own children and see where that has already lead.

It always amazes me to see this attitude. You are ok with smacking your kids in public (that’s the implication at least) in order to teach them something yet if someone tries to teach you something in the something in the same mode your reaction is to break their nose?

Isn’t that just an open admission that there is no lesson in violence and that by hitting a kid you are only comfortable with it because your child is not big enough to break your nose?

you should really try “parenting for dummies”

I don’t know the difference between spank and slap.

Other than that spank seems to have quite saucy connotations.