And what are we saying?

"Well, I got slapped as a child, it did me no harm!”

Well, the evidence suggests otherwise! Anyone who argues that it is OK to inflict violence on a very small human being has probably suffered some harm.

"How else do you stop a child from running into the road?”

Depends on the child’s age. Boundary setting. Child guards. Vigilance. Patience.  Gates. Constraint. Reason. Logic. Love.

And thus the playground reinforces what they’ve been taught at home: force prevails.

By no means! That would be just as bad as wanting them to suffer.

 The Needs of The Punisher

Hitting children is intended to cause pain.
may argue to the contrary, but if that is not the intent, what exactly is the point?

You've probably tried gentler, more benign approaches, abd, presumably they have failed.
So you get to the end of your tether. Perhaps you warn the child, “You carry on and you’re in for it!”

Of course, s/he can’t really know what IT is that s/he’s ‘in for’ ifs/he’s never yet been smacked.

S/he disregards the warning; you’re fed up, exhausted, running on empty.

BANG!

The last resort; a brief ‘vacation’.

 And the next time? OK, now the child knows: IT means HIT!

Hit means hurt! Hurt means suffer.

You now hope that any future threat  will be a deterrent, clearly understood to mean:  “Be warned: Be good or be sorry!”
Failure to deter indicates a failure to communicate.

This failure is not the child’s, but it is the child who will carry the burden of blame.
It is the child who will be seen as the transgressor.
It is the child who will be made to feel a guilty, anxious, unworthy sinner.

You may be willing to go on hitting hir until she ‘gets it’ because, of course,
you don’t want to hit, to hurt, to punish in this way, you just want them to stop provoking you to inflict pain on their bodies.

The determined hitter will claim that hitting is intended to stop the child from doing what is dangerous, wrong, naughty, bad.
The determined hitter will also persevere because s/he believes it makes sense and makes the child good!

Right?

Wrong!

It makes the child feel bad – which, as I said before, is partly the intent of the punishment. Bu the bad the child feels is the wrong kind of feeling.

In what way wrong?  In the sense that it is designed to make the child aware of a transgression by teaching her to be worried about aggression. YOUR aggression!

Wrong also in the sense that many children will also feel less worthy, less valued, less loved for who they are.

Yes, you may tell the child, “I love you but I don’t like what you do.” Sophistry.

No matter that it is condoned and legal to hit children; when we love people, we do not hit them. That pause in the love may be fleeting, it may be explicable, even forgiveable, but, at the moment of impact, it feels nothing like love!

Oh, we compel children to believe otherwise, but at what cost?
It diminishes their self esteem, it narrows their horizons (e.g. they may grow up to be adults who hit their children!),
it makes them wary of or intimidated by authority figures, it can also render them less patient, less tolerant, less compassionate and less than they might be.
They may not know how diminished they are because, in some ways, they must ‘defend’ their parents behaviours and their Right to behave that way.

Why? Well, if a child cannot believe in parents’ love and goodness s/he is bereft of hope. If the child cannot believe that their parents would prefer not to inflict pain, they may approach despair.

For many reasons it is unbearable for the child to blame the parent .
The child must hope to retrieve the love and acceptance that is lost.
The child cannot know that it is a temporary loss. Indeed, if she accuses hir parent, “You don’t love me!”
the emphatic denial, the instant refutation of the accused will further confound the child.
Hir only hope it to believe what the parent’s denial. Given the child’s experience and interpretation of the frown,
the shout, the stinging leg, the sense of distance, who can they blame for feeling emotionally and physically bad?
Who to blame when the people who give love, succour, nourishment, the people they rely on for their very survival are willing to hurt them?

For the child there’s only one answer, really, “It must be me!”

That is, “It must be me who makes my parents want to hurt me! It must be who makes them feel so bad. It must be me who makes them hit me. It must be me who makes them have to hurt me, because they don’t want to do it! And if I am that powerful, it must be me who can make it better for them. I’ll try to be good. I’ll try to please them. I’ll make them love me.”

So far so good, and the child may be good, for quite a while, or most of the time. But, being children, they will fall foul of parents who are willing to hit them, especially those who argue for the moral and legal Right to do so because such parents, almost by definition, tend to have less patience, and be very willing to teach their children the untruth that they learnt: a little slap does no harm and a great deal of good!

Usually, it is what s/he learnt and what s/he seeks to emulate – being a good parent by teaching a child what s/he learnt as a child.