To Slap or Not To Slap

Politicians are trying to make it a crime if you slap your child. I don't believe in spanking anymore but if that had been a crime when my children were young I'd still be serving time in prison.

A father (somewhere) tried to discipline his unruly daughter by refusing to allow her to go on a school trip and she took him to court. She won. How the heck are parents supposed to live with these little beasts if they aren't allowed to give them rules to follow?

Being a grandparent brought out the softer, more reasonable side of me and I came to realize that spanking was usually not necessary. Time out and corner sitting worked just as well or even better. I still believe that a quick whack can sometimes be needed to remind the little terror that you mean business, though. That would probably bring me jail time.

Working parents have a hard enough time trying to keep their wild and woolly children in line. If they have to fear imprisonment every time they try to enforce house rules then they either won't want kids or they'll prefer the child leave home as soon as legally possible. If one of my children had taken me to court for grounding them I could never have looked that child in the eye again without huge resentment. I'm sure the love connection would have suffered and therefor the family bond would also have weakened. Is this what our bleeding heart liberal courts want?

We should be very worried about the state of families these days. There is so much divorce, gay marriages, and underage and unwed mothers that the family unit is disintegrating.

The courts need to not only stay out of the bedrooms of the nation but they should also back off about normal discipline handed down by the parents in a family. There is a massive difference between ordinary discipline and abuse but the powers that be don't seem to understand this.

Personally, I would never hit a child again but I also wouldn't get all bent out of shape if I saw a parent give a bratty child a whack on the butt. It's not the best approach to discipline but it certainly doesn't qualify the parent for shackles.