h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And if that sacking was unfair, in your opinion, you might go to an industrial tribunal to complain
and the child, whose 'crimes' we have still not managed to isolate, goes where?
Is smacking, of any degree, what love would do?

The crime is going against the authority of the parent. The smacking is a punishment of disobedience rather than whatever the child did. It's the
'I told you not to do that and you still went ahead and did it',

not

'You did a specific action'.

The crime is disobedience.

It's the means to an end. Not the *only* means, but if it means that your child comes to respect authority, I think it can help. It does not have to believe that authority is infallible or that it can't go against it *once it has developed the art of reason*. But it has to know that rules are not to be broken.

What's the saying... damn, can't think of it... that's it, 'cruel to be kind'. It has it's place. All form of punishment can be seen as being cruel, but you are doing it for the greater good. Smacking has to be one of a number of ways, whatever suits the child. It suited me. I learnt not to break rules, especially not ones that had been explained to me. It did me no harm.

"Your child comes to respect authority, "

no the child comes to FEAR authority, that is different.

Have you never come across a child who STILL goes on to do IT, that has been chastised with physical punishment?

as far a parental authority, who decides who the experts are?

The rules of Islam for instance say that a hand must be cut of for the crime of theft and adulatary is punishable by execution
this is an extreme I know, but it is within the ruling of the experts of that system.

"I learnt not to break rules, especially not ones that had been explained to me. It did me no harm. "

The harm it has done it to make you believe that physical punishment for a child is ever reasonable or necessary and that it could be 'spun' into an act of kindness.

Be kind to be kind makes more sense to me.
I have never heard anyone, as an adult thank their parents for all their cruelty.

Whether I'm an adult or not probably depends on opinion at the moment, I'm only 18. But I do tahnk my parents for their dicipline; I believe it has made me a better person.

Discipline is not punishment
They are two different things which unfortuantely get misinterpreted.

I agree, mostly, but you have to draw a line somewhere.  What about shouting?  What about sarcasm?  A brief slap may heal much more quickly than a long, vicious tirade.  You can't just say, this category of discipline is wrong and this one is ok, because both kinds exist in degrees.

Personally, I think smacking should always be a last resort, but I do remember being smacked aged two to stop me trying to plug the TV in, and, indeed, I didn't try again after that.  I was smacked once and it hurt long enough to convince me, and was forgotten in half an hour.  Playground insults remain with me today.

It's a question of proportionate action, I suppose.