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"Should we smack our kids?"

Just been reading in a paper over lunchtime that the NSPCC is launching an ad campaign to stop parents smacking their kids.

I put it to you:

Is this a good thing?

Now, we all know that beating kids is wrong, and child abuse is terrible and needs to be stopped.

BUT, should smacking your kids, when it's been naughty or whatever (for a genuine reason is what I'm trying to get across) be frowned upon in society?

Both me and my brother were smacked as kids when we played up, and I've not turned into some homicidal axe murderer or anything.

I feel that smacking should be allowed. Afterall, how to kids learn? Through praise and punishment. Praise them (give them sweets/treats etc) when they do something right, and punish them (smack them) when they do something wrong.

It could be argued that that the recent rise in child crime, and general child misbehaviour could be linked to the decline in smacking kids as they're growing up.

It could also be argued that smacking kids could lead to them being violent themselves when they grwo up.

I intend to smack my child(ren) if they misbehave when I have them.

What do you feel about all this?

I think it's fine, but only up to when they become teenagers. The reason being that most teenagers are 'hard' and would probably smack the parents back. Another reason is that teenagers have a tendancy to get very upset about nothing, so smacking them may result in them running away from home (or something else suitably ridiculous).

I don't really think it is right to hit your kids because it could teach them that violence is the answer.

No!!!!!! We shouldn't. I'm a kid. Well, mental aged kid. I'm about 99 but have a mental age of about 7. * in childish voice* Lets go play power rangers and sing nusery rymes. Ring around ..... so one!!!!!

Well i'm glad you came up with this topic cos today i was walking home from school and there was this really fat women she had a little child about 3 years old and cos she was fat she wanted to get home and the little kid as they do was climbing on a wall and she pulled him really hard and he hurt his finger and the little boy said "i hurt my finer" and the fat women said good and she smacked him. Well i do belive in hitting children but not for the little things in life, i would smack a child if they where smokeing doing drugs or they had stole car and was skiping school.

also it teaches kids at an early age that voilence is the answer.Now i play voilent video games all the time.But ive never attacked anyone before

but a lot of pycolisgist say that slapping a kid can be horrible to a childs emotial development.I got smacked a lot and now im depressed,dementid,loney,insicure,pycotic so there.But that could just be me

it depends really if you smack them from an early age so that thier used to it, it is ok. But if you only start when the enter their teenage life, the'll feel threatend by you and proably grow up resenting you.

so it's ok, as long as you start early. :-)

Of course we should smack them, there is nothing wrong with a smack as a final form of punishment. We have tried not to with ours at times but soemtimes it is the only thing that you can do to make the children know that you mean what you say to them.

There is a big difference between a smack on the back of the leg as a form of punsihment and beating a child. These do gooders need to understand this difference and stop trying to make this country even less disciplined than it already is.

The main reason kids behave the way they do a lot of the time is because they have no respect for law and order due to the fact that they have have not been disciplined at home or school due to these silly laws.

When I was at school I was caned twice (It bloody hurt) but I did learn my lesson because of it. It hasn't made me into some kind of child beater or a homicidal maniac ( It's playing GTA3 that did that !!)

The most convincing arguments i've heard on this are that it treaches kids to solve problems with violence and that it's cruel.

But, yeah, any form of punishment could be considered cruel. What next? You can't tell kids off because it could pshychologically harm them? You can't do anything to upset them? Sure, ideally you could sit your kid down (or ask them nicely to sit down?!) and talk to them, reason with them and they'd understand whatever they did wrong and never do it again, but they're kids, you can't do that all the time, not at all until a certain age. So you have to use other methods, which are better in the long run than letting the kid run around doing whatever it wants.

Teaching violence? Well, that seems to me a more compelling argument. I guess i'd need to know more about its effects before i could come to a conclusive opinion, but seeing as i'm not likely ever to know that kind of stuff, i'd probably end up only smacking my kids if it was absolutely necessary, and there was no better alternative. Which, thinking about it, probably would be incredibly infrequently, if ever.

I agree there YH.

Smacking as a genuine form of discipline is a good thing. If i wasn't smacked as a kid, I'd have kept doing things I shouldn't.

Discipline is severely lacking in most kids these days. The way they discipline their kids should be up to them (unless of course their discipline becomes abuse - problem is drawing the line)