So what did your parents hit you with?

I was never hit or spanked although my grandfather often chased me about the house threatening to do so with a razor strop.

The "BELT"

Wooden spoon*

__________________
*later snapped in two by my little brother in what will forever be known at the Kicky household as, "The Trumpet Lesson Incident of '79."

My parents never hit me...I never felt their discipline was unwarranted. But I did get spanked...Their favorite thing to use was a switch I got to pick. And I had to pick it right too. Too little and they would go pick a doozy. So I had to pick one that had a little heft and preferably not too flexible...those things stung when they hit your leg. The fear of being spanked was always worse than the actual spanking though.

I recall a peach tree switch, from the women folk. Won't get into the rest.

Hah, my mother was after me once with a flyswatter, and that darn thing
broke when I used my hands to fend her off.

The belt(s). I visited my dad once as an adult and went looking in one of the cabinets for some old pictures. Stuffed back there behind some albums were about 4 belts that we had hidden from our parents as kids. Unfortunately, they always had more. Sometimes they improvised -- the orange piece of toy race track, a stick, whatever.

Yeah the fear. I don't remember being spanked that often - I think it was the fear and I was also a wimp when I was little too afraid to get into trouble.

I remember an old boyfriend telling me he used to move his butt with the swing - that way making the impact much less.

My husband, when he got into trouble would run and hide out of her reach and then do something to make his mom laugh - he got away with murder with that tactic

I used to scream so loud - even before the spanking - to make
certain, the neighbors could hear it. It worked with my mother but
my father was not as reluctant.

In my opinion, spanking is hitting.

I never got spanked, I did get swatted once for telling my mother to f-off.

I was spanked once - not hard - by my mother in an incident I understand now as an adult, mentioned before on a2k, when I was eight and let the doorman let me into our apartment (I had no idea that was somehow wrong), and slapped by her once when I was, oh, eighteen. I had put tea bags on my eyes - I seem to remember it was her suggestion for tired eyes, and the pillow got tea stains. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that I sassed upon remonstration. Now, of course, I wish we could have really talked then.

Whatever year that was, I was still living at home and going to univ near by.
If I was eighteen, say, then she was fifty eight. As a family most of those years we had her clerical salary and my afterschool hospital work pay. Money trouble in River City. And she would soon start with the alzheimer's.

Anyway, no memories of ping pong paddles or whatever. Guilt, yes, but that's another whole bag of beans.

No, there is a difference between hitting and spanking. You hit when you are angry and have no self control...spanking is done when there is disobedience or disrespect. And it is not done in anger. Hitting can have lasting effects on a child...spanking can too -but in a positive way.

Some parents call it spanking when they are hitting a child...but they are angry and have no self-control. The child has pissed them off in some way and they are using them to vent their frustration.

A parent with self-control would never spank a child when they were pissed. Never in the midst of my parents spanking me did I think they were being mean. I knew what I did and it was clear and defined before I did it what would happen. I knew I deserved it. Kids that are hit...don't deserve to be hit. And the righteous anger and the emotional scars that come from it are understandable.

From where I was standing...there was certainly a difference.

Some things never change.

Well, opinions vary. I'm a million years old and remember my one spanking, the light weight kind.

mismi - I see the distinction, but it's still hitting.

i don't believe that spanking has positive effects, but that's how i was brought up. there was no spanking (forget hitting), nor even yelling at home. mom would raise her voice every now and then, but when she got angry, her brain would flood with (to us) the funniest curses that came from her rural childhood -archaic village dialect that had the most bizarre expressions..... so her anger would result in our giggle fits, almost always. i can't imagine my father yelling, i don't think it ever happened. one look of his was enough... sense of disappointed worked way more for me than threat of any punishment.

i did get one singular spank on my butt in my entire lifetime - when i was kicking my sister with a wooden shoe with full force repeatedly...

It is a point of view, of course. Though present law would probably see spanking as hitting and thus illegal, i think. not sure though.

Neither myself or my brothers were ever physically disciplined. I think it has made us better, kinder people who look to verbally negotiate instead of reacting violently when people don't behave as we would like them to. One of my brothers has a terrible temper, and without physical violence, my parents taught him how to control it and channel it in a healthier manner. I would never hit a child. I think if you can't outsmart and out reason a child you should not be a parent. I cringe when I see parents smacking their children, I wouldn't even hit one of my dogs. Why would anyone think violence (spanking included) is a good way to teach anything?

To see me get spanked you may very well have seen it as hitting...I never thought my parents were hitting me...it is a point of view. I knew they loved me and that they were not angry with me.