"Use your words" and spare the child

"DON'T HIT HIM, he's smaller than you!" she screams, grabbing him by the arm and depositing a "small controlled" wallop on his five year old behind. "Don't hit him he's smaller than you"?

What is it with adults? Have they never heard of irony or hypocrisy? What gives anyone the right to hit anyone else?

Picture it. You've been standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes. As the bus pulls up someone goes straight to the front of the queue. There's only room for one more. But it's your turn. What do you do? a) Use your words - "Excuse me I was here before you" - or b) smack them hard on the legs.

If you smack another adult it's assault. If you smack a child, your own dear child, it's a "right" to be defended.

Most children lash out sometimes. The "use your words" mantra we employ in our house doesn't always work. When you're tired and angry and two years old with only a few words to rub together it's hard to make yourself understood, to defend your corner, without resorting to hitting. But that's when you're two.

And how much easier it is to deal with the two year old when you have a model with which to work: "No hitting, there's no hitting in this house."

Victoria Wood once asked: "Why do people take their kids to the supermarket to smack them?" Parents who smack often do it in situations where they themselves are under pressure. Another day, another time, the child might commit an identical offence and escape the parental hand.

Parents who smack their child have lost control. Parents who don't hit their kids also shop in supermarkets. Children who aren't smacked also whine and moan and threaten to jump out of the trolley. But there are alternatives to venting your own frustration on the smooth skin of a small child.

Of course children need boundaries as they learn those tricky social skills. Of course children overstep those boundaries. But there are alternatives to smacking.

"Using your words" is a good one - telling your child that you are tired and angry, that you have run out of patience and that drawing on the wall of your freshly painted kitchen is an act not to be repeated. Give them a cloth, make them clean up - even help them.

"Time out" is another popular one in our house. It is not cruel and does not involve locking a three year old in a bedroom. Making them sit on a chair in the same room as you is often enough. This is a good one - often, more than the child, you yourself need "time out" to regain control.

Rewarding good behaviour works far better than "punishing" negative behaviour. "Oh, well done, your room looks fantastic." These are just a few alternatives to corporal punishment. Of course they don't always work - but does smacking? If it did, surely raising your hand to your child once would be enough?

Smacking a child is transgressing that child's human rights, the bodily integrity to which we are all entitled - big and small.

"No one is going to tell me that I can't smack my own children."

But why? We accept that the State has a right and a duty to intervene if you are sexually abusing your child or if you are smacking your child "too hard". The State has already pulled up a chair in our living rooms, so why not let it move a little closer to the fire?

An anti smacking law is a statement of intent. A statement that we are not barbarians, that the perverted logic that it is all right to smack a small person but unacceptable to smack a big person will no longer be tolerated.