The arguments for smacking are that children need to be reminded of what’s wrong and if they don’t know that, they will almost certainly do it again, but if they are hit, they will think twice about doing it again. Also the punishment should match the crime because if they do something really bad then they should get hit hard, not softly or vise versa. The punishment has to be immediate otherwise the child would think that they have got away with it and another argument is that a “little tap” doesn’t hurt and this statement is true because it teaches the child a lesson without the parent using excessive force. The final argument for smacking is that “it’s your child, do what you want” which is true but you shouldn’t go over the top with them.
The arguments against smacking are that “it’s wrong, it’s physical abuse” and parents teach children not to physically abuse anybody, “If punching is wrong then so is smacking”. Again parents teach their children not to do this, “ it gets more forceful every time” and really it would because if a child keeps doing the same thing, the parent would think that they have to hit the child more and more forceful for the child to learn. “Parents do it to release their own frustration” which they might do but the frustration has come from the child and it has been building up inside the parent. The final argument is that the child will think that violence is the only way to sort out a problem.
The alternatives to smacking are that you can ground the child and I find this quite affective as I can’t do anything while I am grounded or anything about being grounded. I know that this is effective because I was grounded a few years ago for poor behavior at school and I found that week very boring and dull. Another alternative is to make them stay in there bedroom. I don’t think that this is a very effective way because the child is staying in there room an d not being able to do anything for just one night where as if there grounded, they cant do anything for quite a while. I know that this isn’t very effective because I was once told to stay in my room for one night, but though I found it boring, it wasn’t as boring as being grounded. You can stop the Childs pocket money and I think that this is a very effective as the child cant go out and buy things that they want and as a result of this, they will not want this to happen again so I think that they will behave in the future. I have no experiences of this so I do not know if it works but as I said, I think that it will work. I believe there are two other effective ways and these are to make the child do chores or take away a possession (i.e. take away a mobile phone). If you make a child do chores they will find it very boring and time wasting as they will have less time to go out with there mates. I find this a very effective way of punishment as I don’t want to do chores and I found this very boring and I felt that I had learned my lesson.
The way that my parents were punished was that when my mum said she got told off at school she was punished by having to do things around the house to help out. The ways that my dad said that he was punished was to stay in his house and that he wasn’t allowed out of the house and this shows that punishment hasn’t changes over the years as both of these punishments happen nowadays.
My opinion is that children should only be smacked if they have done something seriously wrong and that they should not be smacked because a parent wants to release their own frustration as that is wrong on the child. I feel that the alternatives do work and that what ever is done the child has been taught a lesson.
