I was 50s child so smacking was not frowned upon ......to be fair as a child I may have been smacked but it is not memorable so if I was smacked it certainly did me no harm. Teachers were allowed to but it was usually just a slap across the back of the legs or your bottom ...not hard ...and again I was not smacked by a teacher ...I always had too much respect for the teacher so would not have misbehaved.

Fast forward another 20 years or so and I was teaching myself ... and yes teachers were still allowed to smack children and the occasional smack was meted out ....but it was not the norm...

Then I left to raise a family and returned just as smacking was stopped in schools.....different times with different attitudes to childrens behaviour . It was not necessarily the stopping of smacking that made any difference as quite honestly it was a rare occurrence in any event ....in my opinion it was the whole different way that adults started to treat the children.

Children seemed to be revered by the adults ...little demi gods within the household . Due to different economic reasons quite often both parents would work and children were showered with toys and gadgets ...possibly to compensate for the lack of time that parents had to spend with the children . Quite often some of the children had a host of different carers , childminders , grandparents , before school clubs , after school clubs , teachers etc all within the space of a day ....possibly all with different rules and attitudes . A lot for some children to cope with , especially the younger children. Add to this marital/ relationship breakdown too....single parents struggling on their own....not easy.

As a teacher of very young children it did seem to be apparent that some children did not cope well with the turmoil of their daily lives and this led to behavioural problems ....I have been physically attacked and verbally abused on countless occasions by extremely young children. Smacking them back would not be the answer.....even if allowed .

There is no way back to the type of childhood that I experienced as a child ...children today are viewed and treated much differently . Most parents today do not wish to smack their children but ultimately it is the parents responsibility to ensure that their children are brought up correctly . In a loving stable home the odd light smack administered as corrective behaviour should not leave any child with lasting psychological damage but it is up to individual parents to determine what is best for their own child.

Some children may even be less damaged by a quick light slap rather than being subjected to other types of control such as deprivation of a favourite activity or being ignored etc . The physical punishment may be preferable to any emotional punishment .

Its a difficult issue but ultimately it should be the parents decision ...