Should parents in Britain be banned from smacking their children?
From this week, parents in France no longer have the right to smack their children after a new law banning corporal punishment came into force.
This leaves Britain as one of only four countries in Europe where smacking remains a legal way of disciplining children.
The French law now defines parental authority in the Civil Code as excluding ‘all cruel, degrading or humiliating treatment, including any recourse to corporal violence’.
Now the UK, Italy, Switzerland and the Czech Republic are all expected to receive mounting demands to pass a similar law against smacking.
What is your view? Were you smacked by your parents if you misbehaved? Did smacking form part of how you disciplined your own children? What methods of discipline do you think work best? Does smacking have a negative effect on a child? Let us know your thoughts!
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Tell me how you discipline a child who's too young to understand reasoning?
The over-reaction of our doctor hurt us as much as what followed, as he had been our family doctor for a long time.
No child should ever be hit , but the odd tap on legs or body does no lasting harm. There are already laws in place for serious ill treatment. I can only begin to imagine how many children like our granddaughter would take advantage if such a law were passed.
Our granddaughter is now 18 and still throws similar tantrums and blames everyone else.
Current legislation is sufficient but even so we have atrocities and even deaths regularly under the eyes of the very same CP officers who reacted in such a draconian fashion in our case, which shocked us deeply.
I would smack our kids, but they had to be really naughty and cheeky, mostly they were alright.
Now in today's world, some kids in the street could do with putting in their places, but only by the law makers.
In the case of child, children a chastisement is in order but just to show them what's right.
I treated my own children the same way. I honestly feel that it is the Namby Pamby state that we live in which allows children to grow up long before they should do. Parents are often both at work so the
child is left to its own devices. A smack on the bottom or the leg does not mean the child will grow up with anger....which may explain why children grow up with no respect....for their peers and more important for themselves.
I always try to talk through any unacceptable behaviour with him first of all - only rarely does he 'push my buttons' enough that I have to resort to a smack on the leg. But if he doesn't respond to the verbal, and it is important enough because he is 'crossing boundaries' in a very big way.... then I would use the leg smack as a last resort. And, it works. You have to show who is the 'alpha' leader of the proverbial pack, or, as we are seeing in today's dumbed down society, we are simply rearing a herd of little monsters!
And, they will soon be reporting their parents for abuse when there is none! Real abuse will not be prevented by banning 'smacking'. That goes into a deeper psychological problem with the parent child relationship.
Honey Maya
I know a couple of young mums around here in Suffolk, sweeties both of them, no discipline for their kids, and no idea what they doing except claiming the benefits.
One, I've written this elsewhere on SS took a £500 iPad and thrust in her two year old's hands in a check out queue in the Co-op. A five hundred quid toy?
About five years ago I was in the same store. My step grand daughter whom I've raised along with her grand mother, was in that store with me. She's a girl, a lovely and lively young woman. They like to spend. My step grand daughter joined me at the check out, stood in front of me, and put my arms around her, looking up at me with the most seraphic smile. She was spending my money, she does it so well.
An extremely strident feminist type behind us were went of at full thrust. She accused me of touching the girl's breasts and thereby assumed all sorts of other distasteful naughties. She really went off on one. And so did I, my fuse is very short. My few, and it must be said very harsh words, persuaded her to leave the store. Behind me a round of applause began.
There was nothing untoward with my step grand daughter, nothing whatsoever. Nor would there ever be such. Last weekend she was here and the first thing she did was to throw her arms around my neck, kiss me on the cheek and then bury her head in my shoulder. Was she so insecure wioth me?
I don't think so.
We all need to get back to some reality here. Human relationships are not defined by narrow social laws expected by the few. They are human relationships, loving relationships, and these relationshipsn are expressed in human contact, whenever, wherever ... and yes, in whatever form.
To smack or not to smack, that is the question....
At the same time I do worry greatly that once children learn they can get away with anything and not be punished it could lead as Lionel said to society falling apart.
I was caned at school and it has had a truly detrimental effect on my wellbeing, I know this for a fact and I grew to hate the teachers who did this diabolical treatment and my first step in to not having much faith in human nature. Maybe if I had been caned for something bad I could have accepted it but I tutted once and the other time was for an ink blot on my paper!!!
A lot of years later I worked in a school, the bad behaviour was insane. This world is set to self destruct as we are soon going to be controlled by youngsters just as a teacher is now in school, controlled and living their every working day in fear of a child, I have seen this, watched a kid no more than 4 feet tall, punch a member of staff in the groin, kick, spit and swear.
So what do we do? its all too late really isn't it.
I may only hope at some point the pendulum will swing the other way but that won't be in my lifetime.
I was beaten mercilessly by an abusive step father and abused in al ways possible. His beatings made no mark on me emotionally. I grew up swearing no man would hurt me, and apart from one violent partner they didnt.
Yet i told mum a lie when i was 13 and she smacked me for the first and only time. It hurt more than almost anything in my lifetime. But i grew up polite respectful honest and compassionate. So no dont ban smacking
Most certainly I do not advocate abusive punishment, as you might read I suffered under that at school. But, whilst we as a society must curb that - it will never be eliminated - we must not say no child should be smacked or, in the worst cases, caned. If we do that ...
Then society will fall apart. All traditional values which have made this nation great and almost guaranteed the safety of the individual will disappear in a generation and none of us will be safe.
Worse, these youngster will have no self respect, nor respect for others. The 'self' will rise and dominate this country.
But isn't that what is happening now?
A pup offended my current Collie bitch. He'd done it before. It was summer time and she took him by the scruff and dragged him outside the front door, leaving him there. We brought him back, but for a few hours she disowned him. Today, we have this pup in the house, with him mum and dad. He is now ten, a most noble and self disciplined animal, but he's wary of his mum.
Yes, better to be harsh, but not cruel, in response to bad behaviour than stand at their graveside. Well said.
The misfortune to be at public school in Central London in the early/mid-sixties was mine. It was a mixed school with a rigid code of conduct. Any infringement resulted in a punishment, usually physical. The staff hadn't heard of sitting on the naughty step or detentions. They beat me so many times I think there was a page in the punishment book dedicated to just me!
Twelve strokes of the cane, administered by a former Australian rugby player, had the effect of concentrating one's mind. But wonderfully.
The net effect on me has been I'm pleased to live within the accepted norms of any country I've lived in or visited. There is no need in this heart to project the 'me' over everybody else.
Public school discipline of that period is not necessarily recommended. It was unnecessarily harsh but, none the less served a purpose. Today, there is nothing to persuade many young people to conform to society's norms and so they don't. It is the same position for older people brought up since corporal punishment was abolished.
Our press recounts so many instances of parents beating their kids unmercifully, even to the point of death. Why? Because they might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!
Our society is falling apart for lack of self discipline. Therefore, I am in favour of corporal punishment in schools, homes and in prisons. I am also pro-capital punishment - banning that in 1965 I think was a grave mistake indeed.
If you've got this far you will understand I am not a bleeding heart liberal. But I deeply believe in societal order, in self discipline and reforming people of either sex by the swiftest and cheapest of means.
Thumbs down is expected, in quantity. But after all these years I remain unashamed of my views.
I was smacked three times by my father and I can still remember each occasion and why he smacked me and it was always because I had done something dangerous (like leaning over a balcony) - so it was for my own good.
I see so many kids which are uncontrollable that this seems like one of that last ways of keeping some discipline.