I might be opening up a can of worms today, but I'm going to do it anyways. My question for you is "Is it ok to spank your kids?" When I was little, my parents spanked me as a form of discipline. I can remember 2 distinct times that I was spanked. It hurt my feelings way more than it hurt me physically. However, it set the precedent that if I did something wrong, spanking was a possible consequence. I have to say that it was an effective discipline technique. All my mom or dad had to do was start counting and I knew that I better stop what ever I was doing or else I might get spanked. On a side note, I never knew what number my parents were counting to (10, 5, 3?) so by the time they got to 2, I made sure I was done being bad. Pretty smart on their part. Because of my experience growing up, I was pretty convinced that it is ok to spank your child.
However, recently I have begun to rethink my position. Harper has started to smack my hand if she doesn't like what I am asking her to do. For instance, if I take the TV remote away from her, she throws a mini temper tantrum and will smack my hand. When she does this, I immediately tell her "No hitting." It has occurred to me that telling her that it is inappropriate to hit is in direct contradiction to the idea of me spanking her (I haven't actually had to spank her yet, just thinking ahead for when the situation presents itself).
What do you guys think? If done in a loving and controlled way, is it ok to occasionally spank?
