Should a government ban spanking?

I was browsing the web and came upon an article in cafemom that Philippine is about to ban spanking. Well there are many comments, for or against the idea there, you can read them here.

Spanking is not a matter of black and white to me. There are a few aspects with the concept like:

Is it for the government to tell me how I can raise my child?

What makes it right or wrong to spank your child?

You can talk about many aspects of this subject, but I'm going to stick with these two for now.

I think governments should have some control, to be able to limit child abuse, but it should be in the form of education. I don't think any educated and mentally sound parent abuses his or her child. And the ones that are not educated or ill they won't care what the law says. They do whatever they want to until they are caught. So just banning spanking won't help anything, except that it can have a bad effect on the future of our kids.

Some kids may grow to be spoiled children not able to handle the pressure of the society, just because their parents didn't know how to discipline them without spanking, or just gave in to whatever the child wants because they were afraid they might do something against law. I've seen parents who are afraid to say no to their kids just because they would throw a tantrum and they are afraid other would think they are abusing their child. Fear of abusing children is so high on some normal families that they are afraid to discipline their kids.

Personally I'm against physical discipline of any sort, and I never punished my children like that. But I believe you have to raise your children and discipline them in all different ways possible. You can't say that every child will respond to a specific form of disciple like timeout, even the one who does may decide not to on a day or another.

I was raised in a country that physical discipline was normal, even in grade schools, when I was in grade school. Thank God everything has changed since then and it is a no no at least in schools. My parents never gave me physical punishment of any kind. There was one exception though, once my dad gave me a slap in the face, when I was around fifth grade. I can clearly remember what the slap was for. It was because I was helping my brother a 3^rd grader at that time to cheat on math. We were driving and my dad was asking him multiples and I gave him all the answers. When my dad found out the slap was his first reaction and he after that told me cheating is not right and I should never cheat. Guess what, I never cheated in anything and didn't help anyone cheat after that. Even if I think of cheating in a subject my heart rate goes up and I sweat like there is no tomorrow.

I told that story to say sometimes when you want to engrave a right value that you see your child is going the opposite way you have to make a big deal about it so it will stick with them forever. It doesn't have to be physical but if it's only once or twice let it be. This won't work for the parents who spanking is their form of discipline. I wouldn't remember that slap if my father was physically punishing me all the time. I remembered because he would always talk to me and informed me of my mistake and that slap showed me he meant business and this is a mistake I should never repeat.

So far I have only slapped the back of my daughter's feet once softly, to make a point. And that was because she kept climbing her drawer and standing on top of it just next to the window. I did everything I could think of from timeout, to changing the position of the drawer, reasoning with her, telling her what would happen if she falls, and taking away her toys. Nothing worked until I slapped her feet, she cried a bit and asked me why I did that, and then I hugged her and told her because I loved her and didn't want her to get hurt. She didn't climb up that thing since that day.

So I'm keeping spanking for those rare moments that nothing works and I need to prevent them from something dangerous or teach them a right value. What about you?

Until later,