Do you hit your kids?

[MiM]

If this map is true, most of you are perfectly entitled to do so. Still, I have a hard time to see the people here using corporal punishment on their kids

[Bella Fortuna]

Nope.

[Tero]

No, and the wife stopped beating me as well. At riding 100 miles on bike. We are no longer physical.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My kids can't be beat.

[hadespussercats]

No.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If you have to hit them you don't have the discipline thing down.

[Rum]

Only ever did once and that was in temper and always regretted it.

[Clinton Huxley]

No. Unthinkable.

[Kristie]

I have swatted their bottoms, yes. I don't see that being the same as hitting them.
Let the judging begin....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have swatted their bottoms, yes. I don't see that being the same as hitting them.
Let the judging begin....

[Kristie]

I have swatted their bottoms, yes. I don't see that being the same as hitting them.
Let the judging begin....

Yes, that's an accurate depiction.

[laklak]

Didn't need to. The remote controlled shock collar did the trick nicely.

[John_fi_Skye]

I have swatted their bottoms, yes. I don't see that being the same as hitting them.
Let the judging begin....

Yes, that's an accurate depiction.

I was ready to, Kristie - ready to do just what you say you do. But I can't remember ever needing to. What I mean is, I didn't not swat them like that for philosophical reasons. I'd have done it if I'd thought it was called for. But it never was.

But corporal punishment was still allowed - nay, encouraged - in Scottish schools when I started in 1976, using the belt/strap/tawse to strike the hand. Everybody did it, and it was made clear to me that I'd have been considered not to be doing my job if I hadn't. So I used it a total of nine times in my first three years. That was far, far less than most of my colleagues, some of whom used it more often than that per day. After my third year, my belt lay in my drawer unused, but no pupil would ever think for a minute that I didn't have it, so if you like it was still used as an unspoken threat. But things were changing: in my fifth year, I met a non-belter - a very strong woman, a few years older than I was, who taught me a lot. And the following year, corporal punishment was abolished by the authority where I worked.

Every time I used the belt, I hated it. It was clear to me that in using it I was implicitly admitting that I'd failed - failed to interest and enthuse my pupils, failed to keep them on-task by my choice of material, by my formulation of appropriate tasks, by impressing on them that I cared, and by the strength of my personality. I'm not proud that I used it, but I'm proud that before it was abolished I'd developed my professional practice to the point where I was perfectly capable of enthusing groups of up to 33 urban teenagers, so that their behaviour remained OK and the work got done without any need for threats of violence.

In my 35 years of witnessing endless innovations and alleged improvements in Scottish secondary schools, I have no hesitation in declaring that the abolition of corporal punishment was by far the best, the most positive and the most educationally beneficial change.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I don't have any kids.

I have to hit other people's.

[stripes4]

No, never. I have screamed and yelled very loudly at them when they have pissed me the hell off though!!!