I have thought about this issue quite a bit as I applied it to my daughter (who is now 27) & of course to my animals (dogs & horses). From my experiences, I have found that appropriate methods of discipline must be applied to "training" with love, respect, & consistancy no matter who or what is being trained.

The bottom line is that one needs to use the appropriate punishment for the one being trained that will be effective & produce the wanted outcome. IT IS NEVER ACCEPTABLE TO ABUSE!!!!!! Any hitting (spanking or slapping) that causes an injury in my opinion is considered to be abuse & is completely unacceptable. You have to be in control of yourself. Punishment done out of anger or frustration & not out of love, concern, & respect is inappropriate, leading to lack of respect in return. Beating & spanking are two different things.....beating will cause injury & is "out of control" .

I found that when I spanked my daughter even with an explaination, it had no effect. It was my responsibility to my daughter to find & determine the appropriate means of punishment that worked to train her & provide the guidance she needed for understanding the behaviors that were acceptable to our home & society. The choice of punishments depends on what works best be it time outs, grounding, taking away a priviledge, taking away a source of enjoyment, or spanking (if it works). It is important also for them to understand that the only fault is that the choice of behavior was inappropriate. They are not a bad person but the behavior was what was bad. They are not unloved or hated but the behavior was what was not ok.

Punishment without learning is useless. It is all a training process so that the one punished comes away from a punishment learning the appropriate, acceptable behavior. To acheive this, it is important (like CompGeek pointed out) that the punishment is done immediately after the undesireable behavior occurs with an explaination to the child about why & what better choice of action should have been taken & having them realize what the problem actually was.

I think it is important for us to not be worried that we are hated for doing what is right. It seems to be human nature to have an initial sense of resenting being told you have chosen a wrong behavior & the fact that you got caught (not true from animals). It is important for us to have the confidence that we are taking the necessary action that will provide guidance into socially acceptable behaviors.

The bottom line of discipline is that we love & respect & want only the best for who you are training. With that understanding, they will return respect for you & want to please you with appropriate behavior in the future. It is a time consuming process & new things will come up continually but as long as there is love, discipline will be successful & will never turn into abuse. I know this is ideal & we are not perfect & make mistakes, but if we strive to keep love as our priority in the discipline we will not be abusive.

Providing appropriate discipline is tough & takes much self control of our own. We are only human too even if we may have had a good example to learn from as a child ourselves. Being a parent is a tough job & some people just aren't cut out for it even though they have children. No one is perfect & we are bound to make mistakes that we must learn from too. The most important thing to focus on is love & respect for our children & those we train.

Debbie