Its less prevalent in Asia than it used to be.

I got hit as a kid. It wasnt a big deal. But we dont as a rule, discipline our own son in the same way.

I got hit a lot as well. It wasn't a big deal. My brother got hit a lot as well. I grew up antisocial and my brother grew up super social.

It is not the hit, it is the words. Parents manipulate their children using words, and that's worse in my eyes.

Agreed - my dad spanked me, but my mother spoke her contempt for me with words.

The bruises healed much more quickly than the emotional scaring.

damn, this hits too close too home. I'm still so messed up after all those words. and I am 34 now. I forgot completely about the bruising as it never existed, but those words haunt me forever.

I know this is not the forum for it, but here's what helped for me:

1) Write every horrible event down in excruciating detail. For me that gave my mind the permission to forget/heal/move-in.

2) Explore the possibility that the abuser was abused themselves and that while that is not an excuse, it does make it more comprehensible. If you do find the a chain of abuse, then recognize that you have the wonderful opertunity to break the chain. It won't be easy.

3) Recognize the problem of over compensating - I was abused, but I over-compensated by smothering my children with love. I needed to give them a bit of space.

4) Talk about it to people that love you. A hug is nice. For me, I internalized the abuse and thought that I was unlovable. I am weird, but people do love me - that's a surprise.

Good luck with your healing!

Thank you for the recommendations, I think no matter how much I tried inner healing it just never works. It worked for a while but then it erupted again, as soon as, say my parents do something that I think is wrong, my anger erupted. I definitely have traumas. I don't have kids yet, but I think there's a chance I will continue this chain of abuse, though I will do my best not to.

Yeah, I talk to my wife, that's all. She's too nice, her family comes from a good background, I don't want to burden her by telling my family's story.

Depending on where you live it many also be a criminal offence - I agree with the policy here that "Children have the same legal protection from assault as adults."

https://www.mygov.scot/smacking-children/

And yes, I am a parent.

As a parent you are simply betraying the unconditional love and trust your child has in you.

So what is the child betraying when he/she hits the parent?

The child hasn’t had the opportunity to develop their reasoning faculties or learn to weigh the needs or desires of others with their own and circumstance.

As parents we have the choice to use reason and patience. We can understand that children are developing and need support from adults to do so effectively. To hit them would show a lack of understanding, control, reason, and temperance. These are bad things to teach.

> To hit them would show a lack of understanding, control, reason, and temperance. These are bad things to teach.

This is true, certainly.

> The child hasn’t had the opportunity to develop their reasoning faculties

You're mistaken if you think that poor self-control is predicated on a lack of logical reasoning.

But anyways, point is that no trust is lost when a parent hits a child; children don't apply that kind of transactional logic to personal relationships. We only learn that much, much later when we get to the politics that underlie school and work environments.

There is. Children might grow up to despise their parents, like I do with mine. They won't see them as more than a nuisance, and will wish the parents were dead.

Please do remember that children are humans who still learn how to interact socially. They often lack ways to express feeling and don't yet have full impulsive control. Last but not least, they live as their parents are.

Hitting is abuse only if it's frequent and the child becomes fearful of it, but this is not nearly as sexy as hijacking the word "abuse" self-righteously.

Isn’t the whole point of hitting your kids to make them fear it and therefore not do whatever it is that made it happen? (whether or not this works or wouldn’t be accomplished in a more humane way is a different story)

You don't need violence to reach this goal.

I agree, but to say it’s not abuse until fear exists means that hitting kids is always abuse, which seemed to contradict OPs point.

My kids got to play in the front yard because I knew they wouldn't run out into traffic.

They didn't run out into traffic because they knew that doing that was stupid and dad would swat their butt.

Consequently, my children got to meet people walking on the sidewalk. They got to explore the neighborhood and walk to school at a young age.

A reasonable trade - a bit of dicipline that opens up their world. It has served them well.

At some point, you are going to have to use some sort of force to confine or constrain to prevent the child from engaging in unwanted behavior.

No matter what flowery language or loopy logic you use to avoid the subject, you are applying force.

Is it better to have well-thought out uses of force instead of just hitting the kid when they make you angry? Of course. But don't pretend that living in the world requires no discipline at all.

> At some point, you are going to have to use some sort of force to confine or constrain to prevent the child from engaging in unwanted behavior.

Physically confining or constraining is not the same thing as using deliberate infliction of pain as a punishment.

> No matter what flowery language or loopy logic you use to avoid the subject, you are applying force.

Force is not the issue.

> But don't pretend that living in the world requires no discipline at all.

Discipline is a third distinct (but overlapping) category from physical constraint and pain-as-punishment.

Confusing the three different issues is not helpful.

"well-thought out uses of force" was certainly a part of school life in the post-war years, yet it couldn't stop teenagers, rock'n'roll, mini-skirts and hippies.

We are not talking about "no discipline at all", we are talking about violence against your children. Humans you brought into the world and you shouldn't have done that if you hit them.

It is not abuse, if it used for the kids own good. Yes it is not always effective but in some case it is.

From what I understand physical violence towards children has been universally panned on research.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking

In some case it can be appropriate

https://time.com/3387226/spanking-can-be-an-appropriate-form...

It is abuse. As a parent you are in a stronger position and your child will will trust you because you are their first and primary focus of this new world their are growing into. Violence against children (and most of it happens in families) will destroy this trust.

That depends on how you hit your kids. It could be abuse but not always.