Just to emphasise here, for those who misunderstood - weaselqt is NOT remotely suggesting spanking her 15 year old or any other variation of a woodshed whipping. It's just that when someone suggested it AGAIN, it made her wonder how the rest of us think on this issue.
Times have changed. When I was a kid, the teachers would use a cane on the serious offenders. My class teacher used a metre rule to hit kids with, in class, and a bit would break off each time.
My mother would on rare occasions use a belt to hit us with, if we had been VERY bad. I got the belt once for being much later home from a friend's place, than I should have been.
As my sisters had kids, my mother kept a wooden spoon, brightly painted, in her kitchen. All she had to do was threaten.
I took a leaf out of her book and when it was the turn of MY kids, I invested in a red plastic fly swat. It was nice and whippy - it whistled nicely, but bent so much it could barely be felt. But the kids were as afraid of it as if it had been made of red-hot iron. The kids would hide the fly swat - I'd buy lots more and have them stashed round the house.
However, my kids were raised in child care because I worked for the first few years. The centre didn't smack the children, not ever. To be consistent, I learned the techniques the centre used and found them to be even more effective. The fly swat became relegated to just swatting flies.
Now the picture has changed even more - a couple of months ago it was made illegal in New Zealand to smack your kids. Aussie authorities are talking about bringing it in here as well. What they're really after here isn't the mother who gives a gentle swat on a padded rear for extreme misbehaviour, they're after those mothers who really wallop into a child in public just for crying tiredly, or falling over, or something simple. A tired parent whacking at a kid really hard, purely as a result of their own frustration - those parents will be in court so fast their heads will spin. And this already happens in both Australia & New Zealand, before the legislation. They just wanted to reinforce tat it's not OK, and to legally draw the lines in the sand. or in this case, in solid cement, locked away in that clear-cut position.
So next time someone suggests a woodshed whipping, tell them to get with the times and make sure their legal bills are all paid up, because that thinking will get them into big trouble in a number of countries. Even to suggest this could soon be illegal. Sometimes I'd like to make it so, anyway, if only to stop those people from telling me a good spanking is all that's needed.
My favourite reply is, "So that explains why you're so intolerant..."
Marg