Confessions of a smacking* mother

*Edited this post because I was get­ting weirded out by the searches peo­ple were using to find my blog.  I under­stand that sp@nk!ing has an alter­na­tive mean­ing and I would pre­fer if those alter­na­tive folks would go some­where else!

Do you smack your chil­dren?  Have you ever smacked/spanked your children?

I do. I did. I have.  I am a spanker.  I smack Squidge if and when I feel she needs it.  There I said it.  Should I now wait for child ser­vices to come knock­ing on my door?  Should I feel shame?   I don’t think so.  I don’t beat her sense­less.  I don’t take a switch to her bare bot­tom and whip her until she bleeds.  What I do is warn her that she is doing some­thing wrong.  I give her ample warn­ing.  I then tell her I’m going to smack her.  I usu­ally smack her bot­tom.  Some­times I’ll ask her to put out her hands and I’ll slap them.  I try not to smack in anger.  I’m much big­ger than she is and smack­ing in anger could result in bad bad things hap­pen­ing.  Should I admit that I have smack her in anger?  If I do admit to it will I be cru­ci­fied?  Such a scary and sen­si­tive issue but I feel like I need to say some­thing. I have spanked her in fear.  When she ran off from me and was almost hit by a car.  I smack her bot­tom and shouted at her.  I’m sorry if that upsets any­one but it’s how I dealt with it.  Has she ever done that again? NO.  Has she tried to run off and refused to hold my hand while walk­ing down a busy road? Yes, she has and at that point I stopped knelt down and had a chat to her about dan­ger, cars and need­ing to be cau­tious.  I reminded her of the last time she ran off and how upset I had been.  She held my hand and all was good.

Should I con­fess the time I smacked Squidge because she was scream­ing so much she was mak­ing her­self sick?  I good swift smack on her bum and she quickly qui­eted down.  She was stuck in a loop, couldn’t breath and I felt that was bet­ter that shak­ing her.  Should I apol­o­gize for that? Is that wrong?

I had cof­fee with a friend the other day who shushed me when I men­tion I smacked Squidge.  She shushed me and then looked around the cafe to make sure no one was look­ing at us or had heard us.  She was gen­uinely con­cerned for me and what might hap­pen if some­one over­heard us.  I told her I didn’t care if some­one heard me as I have not done any­thing wrong.  My child is an intel­li­gent, funny, out­go­ing lit­tle girl who has a healthy bit of fear of her par­ents.  I am not her friend. No mat­ter how much I enjoy our out­ings to libraries, cafe’s and shops our rela­tion­ship is one of a par­ent and a child.  My role is to raise her to be a kind and intel­li­gent per­son. Our life is not a con­stant bat­tle where I am smack­ing her daily.  I can’t remem­ber the last time I did smack her.  The threat of a smack­ing is enough.  Hell some­times a deep sigh will get her to stop what­ever it is she’s doing.  Fear it does a body good!

I think some­times as moth­ers, as women we are a tad bit judg­men­tal. We cru­cify women for tweet­ing after some­thing hor­ri­ble hap­pens to their child.  We get up on our high horse and judge women for feed­ing their kids fish fin­gers.  We for­get that we’re all just doing the best we can.  That for the most(no absolute state­ment here as I’m sure some­one would set me straight) part we love our chil­dren and would jump in front of a bus to keep them safe.  I love Squidge with all of my heart and every cell in my body.  Does that mean I’m going to let her run roughshod? No it doesn’t and she knows that. My par­ents spanked me and I think I turned out OK.

I think she’s doing OK too.