what is better parenting?

The answer, like many things, is not straightforward and clearcut as most would like it to be.

It depends, upon many things, including but not limited to:

The age of the child

The attitude of the parent

The offense of the child

The nature of the child

The location of the event

The attitude of the parent

The general atmosphere of the home...and many more.

Clearly a child can be simply too young or too old for a spanking. They should be old enough to easily understand right from wrong. They should not be a teenager.

The parent should be under full mastery of his or her emotions, and understand clearly why a spanking is necessary.

The offense should in no way be accidental, or incidental. A spanking is a harsh punishment and should ONLY be administered in the face of willful disobedience by the child.

Some children need spankings to help them understand and make the point memorable. Other children need no more than a stern glance to send them bawling to their rooms, and would be deeply hurt by an actual spanking.

Children should not be spanked in front of people. How embarrassing.

The parent should know and understand the offense, and have an attitude that they believe the spanking to be necessary to correct an offensive behavior and steer a child in a more obedient direction.

A spanking administered in a home where there is plenty of love, forgiveness, grace and kindness will be a memorable event that stands out in his memory of another act of love - in the long run. A guidance and correction that helps the child to be the kind of person society and other people can live with. A spanking administered in a home where there is persistent, unnecessary shame, a lack of grace and kindness and forgiveness will remember the event as one more in a long line of event that defined him or her as a person unworthy of essential decency. A person with no value. They will either spend the rest of their lives trying to prove their value, or they will believe the message and let everyone run ramshod over them.

A spanking should be clearly explained to the child - why they are being spanked, why it is important. A decision on the number of swats should be decided about and clearly explained in advance. A child should never be spanked with an object other than the hand. A parent should not administer a spanking while angry, but as a corrective action necessary to the future of the child. A spanking should not be given because the child was clumsy, or even, necessarily because of disobedience (I told you not to run in the house, and now the vase is broken). Only in times of willful disobedience - you know when you are in it with your child, and they look you in the eye and do exactly what you just told them not to. Ignore that and you are in a world of hurt.

Spanking should be rare, or they will cease to have effect. I remember my nephew being spanked (in public, by his angry father) and screaming at the top of his lungs, "...itdoesn'thurtitdoesn'thurtitdoesn'thurt...!" My husband took the boy out into the hallway, returned with him about 1 1/2 minutes later, and the boy was bawling, "I'm sooooorrrrrrryyyyyyyy daaaaaadddddddyyyyyyy!" I looked at my husband and whispered, "WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM????" He said, "I just talked to him."

Happy children need clear limits. Sometimes, punishment is necessary to learn to respect these limits. Any punishment should be loathed by the child (while obviously remaining harmless).

All punishment should start by a verbal rebuke followed by reasoning why you gave the rebuke. That should be enough most of the time.

For a more strict punishment, add corner time (rebuke/corner time/reasoning), or other time out. (Make it a ritual.).

Spanking is a severe punishment. In traditional good parenting, it is always added to the previous one (rebuke/spanking/corner time/reasoning).

The most important single rule is that the child must know it will be spanked, and why. For young children (2-6), willful disobedience with failure of "rebuke/corner time/reasoning" is the most common (and best reason). For older children (6-10), the classics are stealing, lying, truancy, vandalism, bullying,...

For teenagers it is important that the punishment is loathed, but accepted by the child as fair (after some time). There are many alternatives - in our family, "no television, no computer and to bed after dinner" for a (limited) number of days was a keenly felt and feared punishment. (Obviously, in a child's sleeping room, there must be no computers or televisions).

NOT Because that's violence! A child looks up to a parents as a role model. So if you don't want your child to hit, then you don't hit! There are many other way's you can discipline your child by simply just taking a certain toy away, raising your voice a bit, time outs, grounding, saying "I'm very dissapointed in you" sometime works. Spanking is a big nono and a common mistake many parents make with raising their kids.

Behaviour breeds behaviour, if u spank ur child to regain control, it will teach the child to think it is okay to hit others when they are wound up, or feel out of control and physical force is the way to deal with the situation. Also it is BULLYING. So the child can become a bully by hitting children younger than themselves. My ex partner, the father of both my children used to "spank" or "get physical" with our son. Nothing extreme, obviously.But my son was only 3! but after a while my son started hitting my daughter, who is 2, if she wound him up, and then, not long after, my daughter would think it okay to hit our dog!!! funnily enough, i ended the relationship with their father, and now none of them use physical force, hit eachother etc and it is a much happier household!

As I mentioned in an answer a few minutes ago, there's no need to hit your kids if you raise them right. The same thing is seen in dogs. I've always been friendly with my dogs and when they do something wrong, I only have to yell at them and they know they're in trouble. The same went for me and my siblings. We were rarely even yelled at and so when we did something wrong, grounding and yelling were all that was needed and we all turned out alright (no drugs, no drunkenness, no religion, no crime, and so on). I remember some of my friends who's parents used to hit them and they always seemed to be angry and doing things they shouldn't. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causality but there might be something there.

Learn to reason with the kids and show them why what they did was wrong rather than just teaching them to associate doing the wrong thing equals pain.

I think bribery is best because then their mom has to deal with their spoiled attitudes and the whole spanking question becomes her problem.

I think it should be a reason that you spank your child. Don't just do it for no reason.

Neither is better and neither is worse.

It all depends on the manner of which *any* discipline, teaching and correction is administered.