I have worked along side DCD (which is DoCS in wa) for many years and they are under staffed under funded over worked and under appreciated. I would definitely have to say they are much more likely to err in the opposite direction that is to say that children who should be removed don't get removed, because of the sheer number of procedures that MUST be followed in order to remove a child from an abusive situation. I find it incredibly difficult to believe this situation where ALL your children got removed when one had A bruise. The school would of had a history of previous cases of incidences, before any professional contacts DCD they must have more than one sign of child abuse which would include not only physical signs but emotional signs as well, and oh yes they are there. I work in a company that works regularly with abused children the signs are all very similar and common. Teachers are now trained to recognise the signs of abuse. Whilst we don't have it here yet I believe NSW is mandatory reporting, therefore the teacher must report abuse or risk their job and criminal proceedings.
Now as for the subject of smacking:
I do not and never have never will spank my child, I believe that parents do have a choice and I work in social services(i'm a youth worker) I was badly abused as a child and refuse to inflict any pain on my daughter at all. I am firm with discipline and while we do have our normal tantrums like all kids do for the most part she is a sweet, smart loving girl. I do not see the point in smacking. After all how would you react if your child walked up and hit another child because your child did not like what they were doing?? Would you smack your child for doing that? I also always thought the hitting of inanimate objects by toddlers really odd. As in when they fall down parents hit the floor and say naughty floor and eventually the child emulates this behavior? Whilst I'm not by any means saying that smacked children become serial killers or criminals , I feel violence is never a solution and its very hard to teach our children this if WE use it as a form of discipline. After all as an adult if you were to be "naughty" and break the law do the police come and hit you??? No they arrest you and put you in prison or lock up depending on the severity of the crime. I see that as much more similar to a "time out" situation. After all isn't our job as parents to raise good people who will become good adults. I know my past and the present job i do makes an impact on my decision regarding this. I do see severe cases of child abuse on a daily basis but I am more than capable of differentiating between abuse and smacking.
Also as I previously mentioned I was "smacked" as a child although our smacking involved a leather belt, other times it was much worse. I would like to point out personally this did not turn me into a better person far from it. I was a terrible teenager (hence my job now) I was involved in drugs, crime, homeless, sexually active at 13. I stopped caring what punishment i would get, I stopped caring about myself. In fact I spent a lot of time doing things just to piss my father off. So to think that any physical violence is the way to get "teenagers these days" to behave you are so far from having any resemblance of a clue.  

Quoted from kaliha

...  So to think that any physical violence is the way to get "teenagers these days" to behave you are so far from having any resemblance of a clue.  

Well how rude are you?  

For your information, I was smacked (not beaten) as a child and am a well adjused adult and was the same as a teenager.  I'd suggest that your behaviour as a teenager had more to do with moral standards than anything else.

Quoted from kaliha

{edited}

I work in social services(i'm a youth worker) I was badly abused as a child  

Are there any youth workers who have not been abused?
It is a sad indictment of the youth system to have abuse victims/survivors
as case workers, they have too many issues. Your post shows signs of being a ramble too, I wonder what it would be like to be one of your charges?  

DALE: I say "spare the rod and spoil the child."
HANK: Dale, "spare the rod and spoil the child" means you're in favour of spanking.
DALE: *pauses* I don't think so.

Couldn't resist.

well said BabyKitty...


and I'm shocked that the Ok votes are leading this poll  

Obviously trolls! I cannot see any of the regular members/posters voting that way, I hope!

I didn't remember the topic being here, but when it got bumped it made me think back to smacking my daughter when she was ... I don't remember how old, but I took this big back-swing like she really needed to learn a lesson, then swung my arm sort of at a normal speed and slowed it down to a light tap.  I don't think she could even tell through her nappy that I'd touched her at all.  My wife broke composure, as we were trying to get across that she was doing something that wasn't acceptable, and laughed at me hysterically.

Apart from that I've smacked her twice that I can remember, and I don't remember what for.  My wife has lost control a handful of times.  We've found, both now and when she was much younger... like 18 months when I first tried I think, that time outs are incredibly effective providing they understand why.  Kids don't always have the capacity to understand why they're disciplined and once they do have capacity, they can easily lose that capacity once their distressed, offended, or whatever, from the discipline itself so its important to try to do it in a way that they can understand afterward.

So far, the big problem that I can see which people fall into is not having the initial patients to ignore a lot of crying and/or temper tantrums, acting back at it in some way shape or form (hitting in the case discussed here) and then compensating for that behaviour so their kid doesn't think they are unloved, but it ends up teaching the child that if they complain enough, they can get what they want and in some cases that might involved being smacked... far from an ideal way to build an ongoing relationship with a child.

Something that made a lot of sense when put into words, that I was told recently, also, is that punishing a child for something one day and then being too lazy to bother the next is obviously couterproductive because the message a kid gets is ... well it has to be clear, and kids are going to be selfish and probably wont learn from a half measure but will simply learn that its a gamble... they'll understand that and still take the gamble of how a parent will react rather than thinking "I shouldn't do this."

I've smacked my daughter a couple times, and I've watched parents fall into counterproductive behaviours of going from one extreme to the other, anger and than compensating for acting out on it.  As for smacking itself, it doesn't really seem to be the way to go at this point in time with my daughter turning 3 soon, and when I have done it, it wasn't the way to go.

In answer to the question about it being okay or not, I don't know.  I don't feel its okay for me.  I've seen it happen where I didn't feel it was okay or was at the very least overdone.  I know some parents that seem to have good logic behind parenting that involves occasional smacking, though I'm not around enough to have an opinion on it.  They also have more kids than I can imagine handling myself, which is part of why I wonder if its more forgivable or justifiable in some way in their particular case.

This thread is old... I'll have to come back and see if I've posted before.  It will be interesting to see how my attitude would have changed or stayed the same.