Smacking... for or against?

Well the silly season is well and truly upon us once again. Yes, the anti Smacking brigade is up to old tricks.

The Commissioners for Children have decided that smacking is against the child’s best interests and wellbeing. They want a total ban on smacking.

Sorry, but NO!!! I can accept that some parents do go to far, when chastisement becomes more, when it is a form of bullying and even assault. Maybe I was lucky and had good parents, but I remember being smacked, and the shock and humiliation of it. Yes I know its trite, and a cliché as well, but I really do believe it did me no harm whatsoever. I can state that I know it made me aware of right and wrong, and that punishment was likely to be forthcoming if I did anything wrong.

I remember being punished at school, having the strap and cane, and if I was in the wrong I said nothing to my parents, but if I knew I was right and the teacher was wrong I knew that my parents would back me to the hilt.

No doubt all those over 35 years old will have memories of teachers who actively loved using the cane/strap/slipper. It was this mentality that the No Corporal punishment in School’s rule tried to stop. All they had to do was make it harder to give corporal punishment, not cancel it out all together. But as always that task was too hard for them, we had a total ban.

This leaves us now in an untenable situation were the children and youth of today have no fear, they know people cannot touch them, they feel they are above the law. We have allowed our politicians and the “do gooders” in society to ruin a whole generation of our youth.

Unless we as parents draw the line in the sand, and state "this far and no further"! we will lose more of our children, allowing them to become yobbos.

To my mind it all comes down to common sense, something that the government seems to have far too little of these days.

I remember my dad telling me that he hated smacking me, and I said to him "One day I'll be big enough to hit you back!” He retorted, "That is maybe, but I guarantee three things Alan,
1. You won't want to,
2. You will thank me one day, and
3. You will not know how I feel until you have children of your own. Then and only then can you tell me if I was wrong.

Take it from me he wasn't! And if truth be known if I am half the man my father is I will be a happy man.