The effects of beating children

Those of you who follow my blog will have seen that I recently have made several posts about a blog which, in my opinion, was promoting the beating of children.

A comment was left on that blog which, to me at least, summed up the matter. I thought the comments were worthy of repeating. I know that some readers feel that my reaction to these comments were OTT, but the less socially acceptable beating children is, the less we tolerate the use of violence to control children and the more people use other strategies to discipline children, the less cases like babyP we'll have. To the proponents of smacking, I'll say this. If the line is drawn in the sand with a zero tolerance of violence, then there are no grey areas and no excuses. When I left school in 1981, I lived in Stockholm for a while. I was surprised to find that the Swede's had banned corporal punishment decades before. Were their schools overrun by thugs? No. I'll accept that in some schools discipline has deterioirated since Corporal punishment was abolished, but I don't believe that this is due to the new rules. I just think that it was the result of poorly administered schools. If it was down to the ban on corporal punishment, then every school would be overrun by thugs.

Anyway, here's the comment.

"My Dad beat me and it did do a load of damage. I used to think 'whats that for' see he beat cos he could, bad day at the office dear, oww never mind beat da kid.
WTF.
In the end the beatings made me give up, give up on them as parents and me.
Im lucky I got out
Think it through...ya approving of someone twice ya size beating on ya.
Sorry I can't go with da 'this is so post ironic middle class babble, beating kids is wrong and dats the end of it.
Ya post sucks"

Couldn't really have put it better myself.

By the way, I'm just back from a weekend football tournament at Butlins in Bognor Regis with the Watling FC Under 9 team. Ten boys went with the team. All were a credit to their parents, a great time was had by all. These are things I want to define my relationship with my kids, not fear of being bashed.