Quote From: jettavyou were not spanked, you were abused. Yes, I have given my girls a swat on the bottom, does that mean I am an abusive parent? No way. I do not slap my children across the face and talk down to them. I do not lash out at my children and they definetly are not fearful of me or their father( of course he spoils them) and they are even aloud to throw temper tantrums and slam doors. They are aloud to tell me how they feel,(of course my little one is just starting to talk), we have family meetings on accasions and we talk about our day and all sorts of things, even behavior and discipline and believe me, my 4 1/2 is a great communicator. I can take my girls anywhere and have no problem and as I said in another post, and if they do misbehave, we leave, we discuss and discipline takes place and no I do not give a swat on the bottom for everything, as a matter of fact, can't tell ya the last time it happened. I am a firm believer that discipline must fit the behavior and I have found that spanking isn't needed in my home but I still do not have a problem with others who do it and if my child needs a swat on the bottom, I will not hesitate to do it, NO parent is perfect, even those who don't spank. You are basing your views on your experience which you have every right to as you were abused, loved as I believe you were by the sounds of your post but you were abused. just whatever you do, please do not categorize people like me in the same category as your mother cause I personally do not abuse my children. and I am confident of that. I don't have a probelm either way, either a parent spanks or they don't, neither one makes them a bad parent and paretns on both sides can abuse their children, I have witnessed it. When I was in foster care, if I would have expressed my emotions such as yelling, slamming the door, tantrums, sometimes I would have been hit with an object (which is abuse to me) or sent to bed with no dinner (which in my opinion is abuse), it wasn't a matter of whetehr or not that I was spanked, making me go to bed hungry was abuse and I would NEVER do such a thing to my children. So what exactly is abuse, I am sure every one here could come up with a definition and they would all have something different in them but what ever the case, you were abused as a child and I don't blame you for not wanting to spank and like many parents(spankers as well as non spankers) I know you have great, well behaved children because you love and respect them and kids know the difference..........
When I spoke with my mom as an adult and a parent about my childhood, she was stunned and appalled. She firmly believed that she "spanked" us. She did not recall ever "spanking" any of us in anger and she pointed to how well we all turned out as evidence of the success of her methods. I held back from letting her know that it was actually in spite of her methods. We turned out well because of the good parenting of my father and because of the positive parts of my mom's nature but the "spanking" could very well have stopped that if we'd had different natures.
Ask your children what is in their minds as you're hitting them. I don't doubt that you are in no way an abuser but I think you'd be surprised by what they think of those tactics.
Take yourself back to how you felt as a child when someone so much larger and stronger was able to lash out at you. I agree with you that there are many types of abuse and, like you, I don't think a swat on the bum is abuse but I also don't think it's the best way to correct behaviour. We're bigger than they are and, fortunately, we have more life experience than they do so we should be able to use our words and set an example by our own behaviour. Since you can't remember the last time you spanked, I think it sounds like what you were doing was working well but it was more likely the fact that you listen and value your children and you obviously respect them.
My guys don't have temper tantrums ... I think that's just their nature, not an example of my good parenting. They don't slam doors except the screen door which slams on it's own and they're polite and happy but they're not Stepford kids. It's easy to be a good parent if you have good kids :)
