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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Civil poster here and since we are having an honest and civil discussion, where I'm swearing up and down why I'm right that spanking is not ideal and carries big time potential to harm kids, I absolutely need to admit that I have one child that I really do struggle with his behavior sometimes. I absolutely do think sometimes that "a good spanking" would end this ceaseless back and forth over the relentless onslaught of parenting a strong-willed child. Must we really do this thing again where I tell him 15 times to get his darn clothes on? So I'll open that up to you. I was able to change his behavior by concerted effort at redirecting, immediate consequence (you take someone's toy, mom takes it off you and hands to other kid with a redirection. You push a child or misbehave, you come sit with mom for a few minutes when youd' rather be playing, you hit or bite? we leave immediately, etc) (BTW thank god neither of mine were biters!)

My kids are a little bit older now - one is well past spanking age and the other (the rascal) is still in the spanking age but on the older side at 7. Overall i'm really happy with the human beings they are becoming but there were many, many times i left a party feeling like i had the worst behaved kid there. And I bet if I did spank i wouldn't have had that problem. So I really do get why people do it, and I've simply made a different but perhaps also not perfect choice. I just have to think that one involves a big person hitting a child and the other doesn't. [/quote]

Your comment is very civil indeed. I only take slight issue with your last line because that's kind of developed to still go for *some* moral high-ground. I'm betting that there were plenty of times when you used your advantage of physical size to enforce the "sit by mom" punishments or leave the party punishments.

The other question I'd consider is that would the overall happiness and peacefulness of all parties have been improved if one spanking prevented 15 other punishments or confrontations (or whatever ratio you suggested)? [/quote]

To your first comment, I get what you mean, but obviously I do think I get the moral high ground, I never said that I don't think spanking is wrong - I've said all along that I DO think it is wrong, but at the same time I both understand why some people do it and certainly don't think that my parenting is perfect and couldn't guarantee that I'm not screwing my kids up equally (again, assuming that I'm right, which obviously I do, and you don't) in some other way.

To your second comment, I don't think so with respect to the peacefulness of all parties would increase if one spanking prevented 15 (or countless, sometimes) other confrontations, but of course, that's the question I DO ask myself - and I DO sometimes think that a "good spanking" would have saved some time and made me into one of those moms who just had to raise an eyebrow to get compliance. But, at the end of the day, I think that compliance would come with a cost.

Honestly, even if I'm wrong, feeling how I feel about spanking, it was always going to be the wrong thing for me to do. Because I wouldn't have felt right doing it, etc. If you're very confident, and you truly spank in this controlled way, than my guess is that you are probably doing better than most parents including many who do NOT spank but do yell (I do, but damn i try hard not to, yell) or even uber permissive parents who never teach their kid not to be an entitled jerk. none of us are getting it right, so I guess I'm just saying that - don't know - it's a big bright line for me when it comes to hitting or hurting. I think that is NEVER okay, no matter the justification, except genuine self defense / defense of others. But there are some people who go a step further and are super horrified by it and I guess I'm not one of those people either, I don't think it's okay, and yet as I said, I see how there are many crappy things that otherwise well intentioned people do to their kids every day.    [/quote]

There are options other than yelling or spanking.

It sounds like you would benefit from a PEP class to learn how to handle situations that make you so angry or exasperated that you want to spank.

http://pepparent.org/classes-programs/class-schedule/[/quote]

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