For how long, and what do you do when they disobey? Sure, you can send your child to time-out, but what do they really think? "oh, this isn't so bad. I just have to sit here for five minutes and then I can play again." Spanking (from my experiences) is more like, "shit, I don't want to punch my brother in the face anymore if my dad is going to spank me like that again."
Everything you wrote makes sense, but what I'm trying to get at is in today's society, simply spanking your kid is looked down upon by many people and it annoys me.
It depends on who it is and what age they are. Obviously I'm going to punish my 5 year old kid differently from my 15 year old younger brother.
How old were you when this happened?
If you were around 10 and this was your first spanking, then yeah, I can sort of see why you were a bit defiant. However, when you grow up with something like that, it's part of your life style. You can't truly be mad because you knew you'd get punished for it. That conscience. "You probably don't want to talk back at dad if you don't want to get spanked again." Eventually, that becomes the norm for you. You grow up thinking, "No way in hell is my son going to talk back to me!" and so on and so forth.
When I say spanking, I mean like one or two pops. If I cursed, my dad would bring me to his room and pop my behind. I remember this one time I was playing with my brother and we were just swinging plastic swords at each other. I decided to jab him, and for whatever reason, the sword ended up going down his throat. After pulling it out and my brother ratting out on me, over exaggerating that the sword went down to his lungs, my dad proceeded to spank me twice. Did he believe my brother? Probably not the "all the way down to my lungs" part, but yes. Was I mad? a little, but more because my brother over reacted. It was never really a pop and go kind of thing though, my parents would always hug me afterwards and tell me they loved me. Maybe then I didn't care, but thinking back, I realize how much that meant to me.
There is a reason why children are spanked and not adults. Children are still learning the difference between right and wrong. Adults have already developed their personalities and traits. It's extremely more difficult to change an adult than it is a child.
Yes, that is true. But wouldn't they feel more comfortable if that was the norm? "Come on, everyone is doing it". Truth is, they probably wouldn't, but there would be those few who would. As for the kid who was still a douchebag, well, there are some things you can't change I suppose. But part of spanking is the approach I believe. There is going to be a different reaction from a child who is spanked by his/her father who uses spanking as a warning compared to parents who try to explain things and give a warning if the situation isn't all that bad.
I honestly strongly agree with Tiger in this. Spanking or physical means of discipline aren't necessary imo, and are generally rather counter productive. My dad used to spank me. Not often at all, but my reaction to it would be a lot more like Tiger's. For me it would be more like "Shit, I don't want to punch my brother in the face anymore if my dad is going to spank me like that again. I'd rather have a go at my dad instead." And I'm not at all a violent person either. But that to me made me violent towards my dad.
However, the thing is that no method works 100% of the time because every person is unique. So it really depends on the child. Meaning I really don't think spanking is an absolutely terrible thing, but I don't think it's a good thing either. If it can be avoided then that's probably best as it's also kind of fairly demeaning on the kid. And what Tiger said about how children treated that way generally grow up is absolutely true. Again not 100% of the time as it depends on how the child interprets everything and what they make of it. Most of the douchebags I know do come from a family that uses physical discipline. A lot of them not even necessarily abuse or anything either, just the spanking and such. At the same time I know a lot of other very nice people who had been treated the same, though they do tend to be more closed minded and traditional. So I'm again just saying that it really depends on the person. For me spanking really only did make me more violent at the time. And from what I hear, that's quite common with others as well. But there still are some people who actually agree that it helped them, like you.
