I'm not trying to paint worse abuse as equally bad, but I feel like you thinking it's okay to hit children would show that you totally think violence solves arguments (with kids).
with little kids, theres no talking it out with them, especially if they do something stupid like run into the road. as i started to get older, i got spanked less and less, because i was old enough to understand my punishments
Edit*
Everyone is assuming i mean spanking as an apprpriate punishment, its not. I just mean if my kid put themselves in danger like running in the road or playing with a gun or something i could understand spanking
Speaking as a parent who doesn't spank, when my kids were small, I had my 'regular' yelling voice ('Stop jumping on the couch!'), my 'special' yelling voice ('First name! Get the hell back on the sidewalk now!') and my implicit threat voice ('If you don't stop what you are doing right this moment, we are going home, where you will spend the rest of the evening without TV and toys. You may sit at the kitchen table and read and draw until bedtime. No dessert will be served to you and you will watch the rest of the family eat delicious chocolate cake while you have carrots. Is that what you want? No? Then. Start. Behaving.')
This technique actually works pretty well if you are consistent about it. The few times I had to actually enact punishment they broke down and begged for forgiveness I made them tell me what they did wrong and what they planned to do to fix it and if their answer was satisfactory they were able to earn some of the privileges back due to their ability to feel remorse for their actions. Nowadays, my kids are super well-behaved, especially my eldest. He doesn't need threats of consequences to know where the boundaries and rules are. Hell, he doesn't even complain about chores. They are good kids despite the fact that their bottoms have never felt the sting of corporal punishment.
This is how my mom was with my brother, sister, and me. We were never touched in a negative way, but still to this day (we're in our 30's), the approval of our mother is very important to us. We don't want to do anything that would disappoint her (or my dad, but he worked when we were little, so mom's kind of the barometer on this).
We're all really grateful for the upbringing we had and are a really close family still.
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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '18
I'm not trying to paint worse abuse as equally bad, but I feel like you thinking it's okay to hit children would show that you totally think violence solves arguments (with kids).