Our kids live such different lives than we did. Everything has changed and it still changing with speed light.

When I was a child none of us would have thought to ring child services and report our parents for spanking us or yelling. Now, just give the wrong look and you can end up answering questions and being judged whether you are good parent or not.

I remember we used to live in a four bedroom flat and me and my brother got spanked or slapped over the face so many times it became something normal. Every action had the same consequence. What I did mind was the fact that being the eldest I had to be responsible for his naughtiness like I was supposed to educate someone I hated. (we didn’t like each other much until we grew up and needed each other). I was questioned constantly about  kids in my class getting a higher grade than me. I guess my mum always thought that having the highest grades and being first in class (we talk about primary school here) would somehow tell you what I’m going to become further on in life.

The punishment methods my parents had were absolutely ridiculous and looking back I think they only made things worse instead of making them better. Every day I swore that if I will ever have children I will most definitely raise them on my own and never ever lay a hand on them but be patient, realistic and try educating them with kindness.

Just the other day I read an article about some school in Texas that is planning on reintroducing spanking as a punishment method amongst their students. “No, you haven’t woken up in some alternate universe. The year really is 2018 and teachers in Texas really are campaigning for corporal punishment to be reinstated, despite the fact that the barbaric practice was banned across most of the world in the 20th century”

“In order to achieve this, the district has asked parents to provide permission for their child to be paddled with a wooden board should they misbehave, and surprisingly many of them are not hesitating in signing their child up for a dose of physical punishment.”

If this will happen I feel like our society is just going backwards rather than forwards. I had moments when I thought I’ll definitely lose my shit and I would have screamed and screamed but I never shook, hit or shouted at my child and will definitely not planning on doing it from now on either. It is a barbaric method that only harms children long term. Don’t think that just by punishing them you solve a problem now and they understand that they were not supposed to say/do whatever they done and everything is fine. Because it’s not.

That child is growing up believing that this is the way in life. Violence of any sort is just normal. Screaming, shouting and hitting are what we all do and it’s just not true.  I will definitely try and raise my child as best as I can and in the same time being very honest about reality and what is going on in the world but most of all I want her to know that abuse of any kind is wrong on all levels.

And with this, I believe that she is growing up to respect me more than she would if I would just punish and hit her for every wrong little thing she might do.

We all have our methods of parenting and we all do what we think it’s best for our children. I look back a my childhood and I do have amazing memories but in the same time I do have some bad ones related to punishment and bad words. I remember some days how I felt about it and how confused I was about what I am supposed to do next. I grew up not knowing to say no and trying to please everyone as this is how things got imprinted in my brain. Now, I see that things are not exactly as I thought and maybe this is the main reason I swore to do things differently.

So, dear parents, what’s your opinion on spanking? Yay or Nay? (please be as honest as you can)