How Did YOUR Parents Punish You as a Child?

I was never spanked. My brothers were. I remember being sent to my room--once. I guess I was just "good"! LOL

My mom is Italian so guilt and "the look" were all that was needed.

My mom was a screamer! I have to say, I'd rather have had one good slap then having to hear her scream like a crazy person.

My mother claims she spanked us as children, but she must have stopped by the time memories formed, because I don't remember it. All they had to do is give us "the look" and we did as we were told. I don't remember any punishments. They set a great example of behavior and manners. I have not had to punish my daughter at all, either.

I was born in 74 and my mom spanked occasionally...I still remember them, even some from when I was about 3 years old. Not because they hurt tremendously, but because I remember feeling so hurt that she was that angry with me. She was supposed to be my safe person.

My dad was a hitter, even into my early teens. It was humiliating and traumatizing...he'd have these rants on rare occasions when he just went ballistic, slapping my face, pulling my hair, basically it went on until my mom yelled at him to stop and he would eventually calm down. They went into counseling eventually and he apologized to me one day and never did it again. Thank god he never did it to my little sister or brother.

I really think those episodes made me feel worthless - I mean if your own father could treat you that way, how good/special/cool can you be? I'll never forget that feeling. It troubled me throughout high school and making friends was sort of hard for me at first - then I found an awesome group of girls.

For the record, we do NOT hit in my house - have 2 kids, no spankings or hitting ever. My husband is a very gentle, kind man, and we are teaching our children to make good and moral choices through examples and love. I think that parents who hit are frustrated and have lots of their own problems. Taking the time to explore the root of a behavioral issue in your child and redirect that behavior is parenting in my opinion...not changing their behavior through fear. There are consequences emotionally if you hit your child.

My mom didn't discipline us--she was a single mom with 5 kids (dad left us when after they were married for 12 years) and she was completely overwhelmed by us. Her parents were strict, so she went the complete opposite route. My mom is my best friend today--she always wanted to be our friend more than our disciplinarian. She always said that grounding us was too much of a hassle because it hindered her plans and life too much. We were brats, truthfully. My siblings all had severe rebellious phases as teenagers and young adults and are still paying for it (children too young, drug habits, etc.).

I'm now raising my kids differently--my mom thinks I am way too hard on my son (he's only 2.5, and she thinks whenever he cries for something that he needs it--like that bag of M&M's she ran up 3 flights of stairs to get for him when he started quivering his lip when i told him "no"). We'll see how my kids turn out :)

Eesshhh.......I'm only answering because my mom doesn't know about this site! We were spanked and hard. My mom used a wooden spoon, a brush, a switch, a belt....whatever she could grab and use on us. And God help us if we moved and she hit something other than our arm. Mom would feel bad about it but would lash out that guilt in anger and start beating us. Wooden spoon with a hole in it hurts when it hits your arm or back.

It's because of my mom's disclipine tactics that my husband and I have discussed other alternatives for punishment when our daughter gets older. I am so much like my mom and am afraid to issue spankings because I don't want my anger over the situation to escalate and go overboard.

Guilt, guilt and more GUILT. I'm still feeling the effects of my mom's punishments. :D

Raised in the 80's.

Mom - Swats with a hairbrush, metal end of a fly swater (OUCH!) or just the hand if there was not time to obtain a weapon.

Dad - just looked at me and I cried (when he was around, that is).

I honestly don't remember every cursing or anything that would deserve a bar of soap, so maybe that is why I just got the "beatings" lol. I really was a pretty good kid, and the hairbrush only came out once in a while to prove it.

=)

Born in '74. Mom worked second shift and Dad was a SAHD. Mom never raised a hand, but also wasn't around for most of the discipline (she left for work about 40 minutes before we got home from school and we were usually in bed by the time she got home).

Dad didn't regularly discipline. It was fend for yourself craziness with 3 brothers. No regular routine for anything. We didn't have baths but once a week if Dad remembered. If he finally got fed up enough or we (usually my brothers) did something really bad (because of no adult supervision) he would have us pick a switch off the tree and then we got it.

We also beat up and cussed each other out on a regular basis. Friends used to complain that it was too loud at our house. No kidding. It was.

I became an elementary school teacher and used to think corporal punishment was OK. None of the schools I taught in had corporal punishment so I had to learn to discipline using other means. Guess what? There are other ways that WORK!

Why would I ever hit my child? I have some of the best behaved kids out there without laying a hand on them. It's called positive reinforcement and logical CONSEQUENCES....not punishment.

I'll get off my soap box now. It just brings back hellish memories of it all done WRONG!

Wow.
We got a spanking for severe punishments. The belt usually. But that stopped by age 10 or so. Restriction (from going down the street to play when younger, from using the telephone, from going off with friends when older) was more often the order of the day.
We were never hit with "whatever was handy". Either the hand or a belt. Very simple. And NEVER in the face. Never slapped. Always were told to bend over the sofa and took the spanking on the rear. Usually when Dad got home from work. Mom didn't do much physical punishment. We never had our things dumped out in the floor. But occasionally Dad would go around the house after warning us that anything we wanted to keep we'd better put away. If we didn't he threw it out. I think my older brother had to wash his mouth out with soap once when he was about 7.

My parents were fairly strict, but were not mean. I think they used effective discipline. And my husband and I have followed a similar style. The punishment is more apt to fit "the crime". We never used a belt (just a hand) when spanking. Restriction from "fun" stuff is for when the kids have failed to adequately apply themselves to their "jobs" (school work). And "fun" usually means electronics (Wii, TV, Nintendo DS, ipod), not playing outside. Although, our 12 year old is currently on restriction from playing outside of our yard this week for leaving on Saturday without getting permission or letting anyone know where he was going (avoiding getting homework done).

We were never humiliated or made to feel like we were horrible kids... just that we had not done what we should or had done something we shouldn't have... and were being disciplined for it.

Oh, and I was born in '68 and so was my husband.

Uggg, brings back bad memories. Spanked w/ hand and/or belt, sometimes with a large plastic spoon (mom once broke a wooden spoon on my brother, then changed to plastic; plastic hurts waaaaaay more). Then when we got older, it was ye ole restriction. If our room wasn't clean enough, our entire contents of our drawers and closets were dumped into the center of the room (I see I'm not alone 3boysandme!) And I must have spent my entire junior/senior year on "restriction." Don't get me wrong, I was a good kid and an A student. My parents were just ... controlling A holes at the time and I saw fit to question what I thought was over-the-line discipline. Took me quite a long time to get over it. Oh, I grew up in the 70s/80s.

I'm 23 and it varied in my household. I was abused by my dad till I was 6. One of my most vivid memories was when my room was covered in my Barbies ( I was 3 or 4 at the time) he sent me to my room to clean them up, but I got distracted and started playing with them, He came down and got so mad that he threw across the room and I hit my nose on my bed and it began to bleed.
I know I was spanked a lot, slapped, and pushed aside. Then my mom got a clue and divorced him. My step-dad grounded us and took away privileges. I mush preferred that one.
HAHAHA! Denise P!!! My mom isn't Italian but would have her disappointed face where her lips where on the opposite side of her face! It was always funny to me rather than scary!

my mom had a wicked back hand....if we mouthed off watch out for her hand. at the age of 78 she still brags about her back hand. we grew up in the 60'-70's and we weren't allowed to say the word fart or take the Lord's name in vine. we would get our mouths wash out with a bar of soap...still can't stand the smell of that soap. we also got the wooden spoon. i don't ever remember being grounded and we never had the belt. but none of those punishments hurt us as a kid. in fact my parents raised four very well rounded kids!!!!

I was born mid-60's
Hit on the legs with a plastic flyswatter, made to kneel in a corner, soap in the mouth.

I did not use ANY of those on my child. Unacceptable behavior was dealt with by use of time-out as a toddler, loss of privileges/grounding as she got older. She knew that if she did not do what I wanted, I would not allow her to do what she wanted.

Born 1972 and the punishment I got most often was no TV for a week. Once in a while my mom got angry enough that she lost her cool and I got whacked on the butt with whatever was handy - hairbrush, wooden spoon, etc. But usually it was the no TV for a week, or not being allowed to do whatever fun thing was coming up (slumber party, etc.). And a fair amount of yelling. And lecturing.

Sometimes, she would put me in "time out" even though it wasn't called that yet - more like, "You sit in that chair and you think about what you did!"

We got spanked- some classify it as actually beat- grounding was a big favorite of my parents. My mom would pull all the stuff out of my closet and my drawers and off my bed and make me clean it up in her fits of rage. There was alot of screaming, smacking and hair pulling. I actually had it easy compared to my cousins... we joke now that the movie " Mommy Dearest" would have been a vacation for us.

I too was raised in the 80s (born in '78). Mom did wooden spoon until she broke one too many over my behind :) Then she graduated to a paddle (the kind that used to have a ball attached). Dad always straight spanking via hand delivery (thanks for all those handprints on my butt Dad - ha). As we got older, they graduated to "grounding" us from things, TV, playdates, activities, etc. My husband's dad used the belt (he is about 2 years older than me).

I must say all of this is a step down from my parents' generation when kids were tossed across the room, heads knocked together, the belt nearly EVERY time, etc.

I am not 100% against spanking -- it put the fear of God into me.... but it is not my regular course of punishment for my children. Time outs and losing "privileges" or items is....we reserve it for specific times and NEVER to teach our child to "not hit" as that is just silly and counterproductive.....

What an interesting question.

I was spanked, with a belt...and back then, we called them "beatings," even though they were really spankings. I did not get spanked often, but when I did, they were not pleasant, and I have vivid memories still that I wish I did not carry with me.

Overall, and oddly, I don't feel like it affected me negatively. It was just a way of life, and I suppose that since many of my friends were often spanked worse than myself, I considered myself lucky.

Now, what is doubly odd is that those same parents that spanked me...would not dare to touch my son in the same way! Not because they feel it is not their place, per say, but because THEY now feel that spanking is not appropriate to do. Who knows where this is coming from? I tease them and tell them are about 30-something years too late to have a change of heart, LOL! But, in any case, totally separate from how they came to their conclusions surrounding spanking, I also feel that that there are better ways to discipline child aside from spanking. My husband feels the same (and he was spanked also! A lot less than myself) So, I am glad that, in our family, we all are on the same page with this issue.

Oh dear, my butt just hurts thinking about it. Born in 85. Let's see, plastic spatulas, cold curling iron (once, it was the closest weapon), and "pinch and twists" from mi mama (for church and other semi-formal occasions). If we heard my dad's belt clearing the belt loops on his pants, we'd all scatter. Yeeesh.

My mom occasionally brought out the belt. Other than than, she just criticized me a lot.

I always had to "come here" to get my spanking, and I always obediently went to get it. The first and only time I ever refused to go get my spanking (with belt), I was 15, instead I ran out the door, and when I returned she told me I was going to live with my father.

Wow, a lot of belts and switches and brutality, below. I think these responses make their own argument against corporal punishment.

My siblings and I were all born in the 70's. When we were little kids, we would occasionally get spanked. As teenagers, it was "grounding" (ie no going out, no tv, no phone). By far the worst (and I don't think my parents considered this punishment, but it was very effective discipline) was when my dad, who was/is a low key, mild mannered person, would come to talk to you. He is very soft spoken and by the time he got done explaining why what I did was wrong, I really felt awful. You could just feel how genuinely disappointed he was. My sister and I still remember some of those conversations word for word to this day.

I was a pretty good kid, never talked back or got into much trouble, so my dad never really had cause to punish me... other than for small things like bad grades, or forgetting to do chores... My siblings were another story. We got spanked if we did something really bad. Always with the hand though. (Although my grandma beat me with the leather strap my grandpa uses to sharpen his razor once because I failed math... We lived with her for a couple years when it happened.) We had to stand with our nose on the wall for a more minor offense. He used to do the bar of soap for cussing, until my brother took a bite and ate the bar. lol. After that it was a spoonful of tobasco sauce. :P

Oh lord! My mother was a total lunatic ;) There were five of us and she had no control over us when we got wound up, so out would come the wooden spoon, hairbrushes, slippers, you name it and we were "smashed" with it. Her literal words were "I'm going to get my wooden spoon and smash you!" Nice. We used to hide under beds, in closets, run out into the yard, etc. My dad was called in for reinforcements and his favorite tool was the belt. He rarely used it (I never got) but when it came out, look out!

I definitely don't think we were abused (this was the late 70's early 80's), but my image of my mother when I was a child was not a flattering one when she got angry. We all thought that she was nuts and out of control. Clearly the "smashings" didn't work or they wouldn't have happened to often. They were definitely not a deterrent and didn't help any of us to choose better or take ownership of our actions. In my house, the rule among the children was do what you can get away with without getting caught.

I want to model for my children calm and loving discipline and teach them not to obey for the sake of obedience (and avoiding punishment) but to make wise, responsible decisions because they realize that those are beneficial to them and are the right thing to do. My approach is to lead them to and reward good choices, and help correct poor choices so that they learn from their mistakes, internalize the lesson and apply it in the future. We just learned to be afraid and not get caught.

I grew up in the 80's. It was mostly spankings for me. My step mom was a screamer. And just when I thought it was over and I could relax she'd come bursting into my room yelling "AND ANOTHER THING..(additional loud ranting)..." Sometimes I would have to write something 50 or 100 times (I will not ....) I remember my cousins getting soap in the mouth for swearing - guess I never got caught for that!

born in 74, had the mouth washings by mom, & dad had his belt, wooden spoons, sticks, cords, whatever was handy & lots of beatings & bruises. I think there WAS issues with this as the house stereo was turned up to drown my cries, and I didnt take part in P.E. because of bruises. I thought it was normal...

I got the bar of soap for any mouthiness and spanked with a switch from a tree, fly swatter, or belt. My parents were very strict and I could just breathe wrong and get spanked. I think they enjoyed it.

I grew up extremely resentful of my parents and to this at in my late 40's (born in 60's, graduated hs in 79 and college in 83) have little relationship and no respect for them. I personally feel that spanking is just a power trip for the parents. I was taught to never hit yet I was hit. Double standard.

I was a good kid, never wild.

My daughter is a good kid, never spanked. We used grounding, took away her favorite things.... used to be toys, now it is IPhone, laptop, Chi iron, etc.

swats with abelt and grounding after we got to old for the swats to hurt anymore.

just for the record my parents never left bruises

they would take away special privelges. we were NOT allowed to ask for anything more then once because then it turns into begging or whining.

my parents did not hit us. we never really caused them any problems. we all turn out good. we were not wild kids.