Did any of you ever get slapped as a child?

Up until I reached about the same height as her, yes, all the time, by my mother. There was no "reason" behind any of it, she just enjoyed doing it. Seemed proud of it as well. She used to claim to other parents in the area that she was a "boot in the arse mommy" and wouldn't take any **** from us. And then she wonders out loud why other mothers cut off any contact with her. She would also wonder why I was covered in bruises all the time, and why I "never told her about the bullying". I didn't realise it was bullying, it just seemed like a less extreme version of what was happening at home. She tried to blame me for it as well.

Of course, now she denies everything. She blames me. She says it was always deserved. She thinks there must be something wrong with me because I don't "love" her. She blames my father now that he's dead. She blames my younger brother's problems on our father, and not on the fact that she was so preoccupied with torturing me and watching TV 24/7 that she completely forgot to parent him.

Any time it is mentioned, her reply goes something like this: https://www.chrisshepherd.org/the-narcissists-prayer/

My brother mentioned it to her not long ago that we'll be the ones deciding what nursing home she goes to. According to her, that's awful, and she will never end up living in a nursing home. According to me, that's awful, and I'll never end up paying for her to *live* in a nursing home.

I don't have children of my own, and I don't want her to be anywhere near my children if I have any in the future. Some people are just f*cked up, slapping never fixed them, and them slapping their children only makes things worse.

Yes I was and I have very mixed feelings about it.
I ended up getting into an abusive relationship in my late teens and part of me resents my parents for hitting me because there are times I wonder is that why I put up with it. I don't know. Other times I think I'm being ridiculous.
I would never hit my daughter.

misterme123 wrote: »

Just to be clear, smacking your kids is illegal.

Just to be clear -

No new offence has been created that explicitly prohibits the smacking of children as a form of punishment - however, the decision to remove the defence is a significant step.


Parents no longer let 'chastise' children by smacking

Judging by some of the nastiness on other threads I suggest some didn't get slapped hard enough as a kid.

Yeah regularly got slapped around the arse ir back of the legs by both my mum and dad. Never slapped in the face or head. I’ll admit I probably deserved 99% of it. It done me no harm and I think a good slap every now and then would have benefitted many of today’s teenagers/young adults however I do not slap my own children and probably never will...although I have to add that they have never done anything so far that would have warranted a slap/physical reprimand.

Graces7 wrote: »

we used to be sent to our rooms. It was a very real punishment when we wanted to be out playing with our friends.. could hear them outside...

This never worked with me Grace. I used to love my room. :pac:

Mum: "Go to your room!"

Me: "I'm already in my room!"

wexandproud wrote: »

that's the whole point , as correction of kids and discipline in general has decreased over the past 4 or 5 decades violence has increased .

Really?

You might be right, but I'd like to see the numbers as to my mind there's substantially less violence nowadays.

Tony EH wrote: »

Some children cannot be reasoned with. They don't have the capacity to understand reason, so trying to be logical with a person that cannot understand logic is pointless. This is also "bad parenting".

Say a child runs out into the street continually and despite all efforts of the parent to reason with that child about the danger to its safety, it continues to do so, up to the point where the child is involved in a serious or fatal accident, would that also be considered "bad parenting".

The shock of a smack on the arse is often enough for a child to understand that it has crossed the line and the parent is seriously displeased. Often this is the quickest and most effective way to show the child that the end of that particular nonsense has been reached. Children don't want to displease their parents and an angry outburst shows the child clearly that these actions are not the way to go.

But that doesn't mean that slapping should be the first port of call or the solution for every piece of ill discipline that a child will engage in either. Most boldness doesn't warrant a slap. But there are times when I think it can be justified.

There's a difference between slapping a child because it won't brush its teeth and slapping a child because it wants to put its hands in a fire.

If a child doesn't have the capacity to be reasoned with how is hitting them going to help, how are they supposed to process that?

Hitting a child is a parent losing control, it's bad parenting and there's no excuse for it.

This is it wrote: »

If a child doesn't have the capacity to be reasoned with how is hitting them going to help, how are they supposed to process that?.

I've explained that.

Peatys wrote: »

You might think that, but there's actually still room for good parenting even in the road/hand in fire examples.

You mightn't be aware, but that doesn't excuse hitting a kid. You wouldn't let anyone else hit your kids, so the one person they trust most in the world shouldn't be the one to do it.

And conversely, while you might think that a parent smacking their children is an indication of “bad parenting”, the fact is that an excuse for doing so isn’t necessary. It’s regarded as a socially acceptable and legitimate form of discipline as opposed to other forms of discipline. The key factor in determining whether any form of discipline is acceptable or appropriate is intent.

It’s why the Government of the time, in spite of numerous claims here to the contrary, didn’t introduce legislation specifically making smacking children unlawful or a criminal offence. They simply removed a long-standing defence that could be used by a defendant in cases where they were accused of child neglect. The key determination again in these cases is whether or not the intent is to cause harm or undue suffering to a child or children.

Parents who use smacking as a form of discipline aren’t immediately criminalised for doing so as it isn’t acting in the interests of children to criminalise their parents for what is still regarded as a socially acceptable form of discipline. The idea of removing the defence of reasonable chastisement was to promote a cultural shift in attitudes regarding how parents choose to discipline their children appropriately. The mantra that “smacking children is illegal” promotes a misunderstanding of what is regarded in Irish legislation as child neglect - a person may be charged with child neglect for using other forms of discipline which are also socially acceptable, such as psychological and emotional manipulation causing harm and undue suffering to a child or children in their care, without ever using physical discipline. Again, the key factor in any case will be to determine intent.

As for whether or not I personally would or wouldn’t permit anyone else to physically discipline my child and your assumption that I wouldn’t - I can’t answer for anyone else, and I won’t attempt to answer for anyone else, but because I see nothing inherently wrong or inappropriate in using physical discipline to discipline children, i wouldn’t have any immediate issue with anyone else using the same methods I use to discipline my child. I would have an issue if I determined that their intent was to cause harm and undue suffering to my child, regardless of what form of discipline they used, whether it be physical, verbal, psychological or emotional discipline. Again, and I have to stress this - the key factor is intent.

As for notions of “good parenting” and “bad parenting”, to me they are just simplistic nonsense that has no regard for the bigger picture that is instilling in children an understanding of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and context. It would be silly for example to suggest that the State should imprison children who misbehave as it would be regarded as a form of psychological torture and place them at risk of even greater harm and undue suffering. Yet that is exactly what we do with adults when they misbehave. We do not hold children and adults to the same standards, so comparisons between how we discipline children and how we discipline adults are so different as to be incomparable, and it would be silly, as demonstrated above, to even try and compare them.

The idea of imprisoning adults is with the intent to have them reform their attitudes towards society and modify their behaviour accordingly. To argue that we should attempt to do the same with children and hold children to the same standards as we do adults, would be utterly ridiculous, and it wouldn’t be long being pointed out exactly why we don’t hold children to the same standards as adults - because children haven’t yet developed the mental capacity and faculties of reason to have the same understanding as adults, and are therefore not held criminally responsible for inappropriate and socially unacceptable behaviour in the same context as we hold mentally competent adults responsible for their behaviour.

This is it wrote: »

I somehow missed half your post, apologies.

It may work in some cases but in my eyes the bad far outweighs the good. I don't believe there's any time that hitting a child is warranted, you can fire as many hypotheticals as you want. Hitting your child is bad parenting.

No worries.

Sure, hitting a child shouldn't be go-to No.1. But, unfortunately, conversational reasoning just doesn't work in some cases. A four year old simply doesn't possess the cognitive reasoning to process the points of a conversation that illustrate that pouring boiling water on itself will result in scalding and a trip to A+E. How can it? It's never seen a scald and never seen A+E.

It'll understand the shock of a quick slap though. Which, more than likely, won't hurt it, but will certainly alert it to the fact that it has crossed a line in a serious way and understand that that's not the path to be going down.

That's not an excuse for abuse though, which is another matter entirely and some of the stories on this thread are ones of that nature, rather than the very occasional slap on the bum that most Irish kids would have experienced in the up until, probably, the 90's.

There are age limits involved here too. If a parent is slapping their child when that child is over 6 or so, then something is clearly not right in that relationship.

My mother always dealt out the corporal punishment in our house and that usually took the form of a quick slap when I was out of control. This was very rare, it has to be said, but it certainly made me cop on fast. My dad, on the other hand, never hit me. Which was a good thing, because he was a strong man. He wasn't tall, but he was big and well built <- time in the Army and all that.

However, my dad had a way of making me feel like absolute shit and that was MUCH worse and way longer lasting than the occasional slap that my mum dished out.

Glenbhoy wrote: »

Newspapers like to highlight such things all the same, there's also the fact that many of these things would never have been reported in prior years, particularly rape, domestic violence, standard bar/street fight etc.
I think stats in general show that violence rates worldwide are dropping, I doubt we are the exception.

Drunken fights years ago involved a boxing match whereas nowadays a few kicks to the head is the norm.

For reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporal_punishment_in_the_home

misterme123 wrote: »

This and your other posts are very much a case of a little learning being a dangerous thing.
This thread is about disciplining children by corporal punishment, which is effectively illegal, even without an explicit ban. Of course you are unlikely to get done for it, but that's the clearest way to describe the law as it stands.

What are you trying to say exactly? Because “effectively” and “explicitly” don’t mean the same thing, and it appears from your post as if you’re trying to argue that they do.

This thread is asking whether or not posters were smacked as children by their parents, and one poster tried to claim that smacking children is illegal. I simply pointed out that it isn’t, and I explained why it isn’t, and then you chose to tell me again that it was illegal, to which I chose not to respond because it would mean just repeating what I’d already said.

Now you’re trying to tell me what the clearest way for you to interpret the law is by completely muddying the waters and introducing confusion where I have already provided clarity on the issue with regard to the position of smacking within the context of Irish legislation and the law.

Perhaps if you stated your position clearly, I might better understand where you’re coming from.

Got plenty of garden canes. To be fair I was/am a thick cnut.

Dad: Apologize or I'll get the cane.

Me: Cane it is then.