As you travel to various states/countries...you'll find many people have different ways of disiplining their kids...some however, have gone overboard to the point of abuse. So do you think that it's wrong to spank kids and how far should the law of the land go in determining how much is too much??? Ought to be an interesting discussion!

Yes.
Spare the rod and spoil the child!
Of course, any parent who beats up their children deserves to be thrown in jail.
Put the child over your lap and a few slaps from the wrist will teach him/her a lesson. You don't even have to be harsh about it. I was spanked as a child, and I can tell you I dreaded the concept of being spanked much more than I did the actual spanking.

Spanking? Absolutely -- beat the living hell out of the little crumb snatchers But if you do that your kids will hate you for the rest of your life.

Words can be just as painful as a physically punishment.

Moreso, IMO, but a good smack can get the point across quite well. Of course, abuse should not be tolerated, but I think a little physical consequence does help to train a child.

People treat smacking as a fine line between abuse. It isn't. There is a distinct different between a slap on the wrist or a wack on the backside and abuse.

As a Kid we used to have a smack on the hand as a warning, and a "pants down smack " or a wooden spoon for when i really couldn't pull my head in and later on my parents introced "the rod" which was the handle of a plastic feather duster and was kept for when i was really misbehaving. An there was similar punishments in place at my school up until about year 3.

The difference between this and abuse is that i deserved it, my parents did not enjoy it and it did not do any permanent damage.


I actually think that words can be worse and more damaging then a smack because while you quickly forget the pain from a smack you never really forget the lesson learnt. Where as you will always remeber the pain from a harsh word especially when that word comes from a loved one. I also think that it is very easy to say something that is not going to be easily forgotten.

The human mind is a much more fragile thing then the body.

I think it's also a lot easer to associate pain as a consequence of an action or behavioral pattern than to associate a verbal response. Furthermore, the verbal memory tends to stay longer, whereas with a smack it's more along the lines of "if I do X, then I'll get hurt" and that's that.

Yeah exactly.

But hey who needs smacking these days when we can solve behavior issues with drugs like Ritalin. God forbid we actually let out kids be kids for a change and only punish them when its actually needed.

well, as each child is different i believe each child needs to disiplined differently. personally, i don't believe that teaching children that violence is the solution to lifes problems will make them productive members of our society. but some children for one reason or another need to asociate bad behavior with pain, the problem is that the child doen't know why their actions are a problem. only that if they do X then they get hurt.

Its not a 4 year old or younger that we are talking about smacking. Its older kids. Usually they are warned not to do something and they do it anyway. Kids are not stupid and they quite often know what they have done wrong. It has nothing to do with violence either it has to do with showing them that their are consequences when they do not do the right thing.

The fact is the best way of getting a message like that across is with a smack.