OleJanx

No, it's 'This Be The Verse'...but you knew that, anyway.

kittycat1

I can't remember who said it but

'You spend your entire adulthood getting over your childhood' or something like that.

I don't see anything wrong with a controlled slap, the problem is not everyone can stay controlled.

My most mortifying experience as a kid, about 4 or so out christmas shopping with my parents, I was bored and was misbehaving, had a couple of warnings and then in front of everyone my mum pulled my knickers down and slapped my bum in public- I was horrified but I tell you what I was good as gold for the rest of the day! We generally just got a slap across the palm from my mum, but the odd proper smack from my dad. I would then cry and my dad would come and apologise later which gave me all the power back.

scrubbedexpat141

Bingo.

Made worse by the fact Dad was doing well and Mum had considerably less cash.

World Champion

I think it's ok to hit a boy, or grab him by the collar and throw him down, but not a girl. I didn't even yell at my girls.

scrubbedexpat141

Yank?

The Dean

Only one probem with smacking - it doesn't work. It makes kids more rebellious, more defiant, etc. Not immediately, but it builds up...........

The only effective punishment is to say NO and mean it and stick to it - 'you've been naughty, so I'm not going to let you go out and play football with your friends'. Works a treat.

World Champion

Ah...You're wrong..My dad smacked me around all the time and I turned out just fine.

Miss Anne Thrope

Because we just don't have enough elevated moments on here and I have a slight opening (steady) and because these are words to live by (not least a way to avoid the issue of smacking altogether), here's the whole thing:


This be the Verse
by Philip Larkin

They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

scrubbedexpat141

Crikey, that's some depressing stuff right there.

Miss Anne Thrope

You obviously haven't read much of the rest of Larkin then. And I'd definitely stay well away from Sylvia Plath also....

scrubbedexpat141

'Fortunately' not.

(I appreciate some poetry but am no expert or serious reader. I just like some poems. That one seemed a bit depressing...not bad, but depressing. A bit like reading the books that were really popular a few years ago about kids suffering abuse. Not bad books, but crumbs, horrific to contemplate.)

Miss Anne Thrope

Larkin is bitterly funny though, not just pure misery. If you read it that way it comes over quite differently. After all he is probably the only prominent poet to have referred to "wanking" (hope that gets through) in his poems. He is also the author of this, much of which you may recognise even if you weren't aware of the source:

Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Eeyore

So there was no other way to deal with you other than physically assault you?

That's the thing, really - adults like to hide behind less emotive words like "smacking", but really, it's assault. Adults would usually be quick to turn to the law for restitution if another adult "smacked" them, and they'd refer to it as assault too.

One of the reasons why I don't agree with those who would like to see the reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools is that the clear evidence is that it didn't work. Or rather, it might have worked to deter the kids who were basically good, but it didn't offer the slightest deterrent to the hard cases and persistent troublemakers, i.e. the ones who most needed deterring, because the punishment records from schools all over the country show the same names over and over and over again.

NorthernLad

A slap on the back of the legs never did me any harm.

If someone slapped me on the back of the legs in the pub I doubt I'd be calling the coppers.

Welivehere