An "attaboy" (or attagirl, as appropriate) should suffice.

Something like, Mia if you stop screaming at the top of your lungs and bouncing on the bed we may take you to Chuck-e-cheeses later.... So she can bounce and scream....

Heh. I wouldn't imagine using it for negative behaviour. More like when the child is doing good, reward it (even if most of the time its just positive verbal reinforcement).

I dunno about using it in the case of arguments. For me to ever use it I'd have to be an exceptional circumstance. I really don't like using violence, but I can't categorically rule it out.

Spanking isn't "violence" by definition. It is discipline. Just because there is physical force does not mean it is violence. They are distinct concepts. Lumping it in with violence is a good way for people to side against it without even understanding it just by associating it with violence, since we understand that violence is always bad (which isn't the same as unjust or unnecessary, but generally still undesirable).

I don't think that it will really work to pick and choose when you spank. You either spank or you don't. Picking and choosing would likely just confuse the child and ultimately be unfair. There's no harm in spanking properly. Do not think of it as extreme. It's not.

I wonder if teenagers would even need to be disciplined if it wasn't for their hormones making bad or risky behavior seem worth it. They are generally otherwise old enough to understand and appreciate what's wrong with their actions. Spanking isn't really appropriate when they reach that age. They're old enough to negotiate with, but naive, and sometimes susceptible to their hormones. All you can really do is try to limit their ability to fuck up their life. It's mostly just about riding out the storm.

The only way to get a child to stop being whiny and violent is to ignore it.
Teach them that such behaviour doesn't get them any response or attention, only then will they find other ways to get what they want.

No one can stand being bored, and there is nothing more boring than trying to get a response out of someone and be completely ignored.

The common advice on the internet is to not feed the trolls. We know that every response to a troll gives them more energy. The same thing goes for children.

If only not feeding trolls killed them... It merely weakens them and makes them go dormant.

Like I said: to spank or not to spank, that is the discussion, and it still continues.

I think we can all agree that smacking your infant on the legs to get them to stop crying is a bad idea. "No Greater Joy Ministries" has 5000 likes on FB. Some people are so gullible you can piss in their mouth and tell them its lemonade.

The key is to not react to their trolling.
Only react to good stuff.

If you keep punishing your children for doing things wrong, they will only become afraid of telling you when they mess up. They wont come to you for help when they're in trouble, which means they can get really deep into heavy drugs for example as they don't dare seek help.

The only thing violence teaches children is how to hide things from their parents.

It's important to explain to your children why they're getting punished and that you love them anyway. You most certainly can make an effort to explain to them that they can come to you first about stuff and if they do come to you first then you should certainly take that into account and maybe go easy on them. You do have to watch out for them to try to exploit that though too.. It's important that they don't get away with it if they come forward. They should still be punished. It just might be a lighter sentence for them being honest and coming to you for help. In any case, punishing them for their mistakes will not make them afraid to come to you if you talk openly with them. It's a different part of you entirely. Children that are spanked are not afraid of their parents 24/7. Only when they feel guilty for something.

Of course, I believe that a child that is spanked will probably be more afraid of trying something like drugs. Drugs are a very serious thing, and it's up to parents to tell the kids that. The kids that know the severity (at least in their parents' eyes) and are spanked can only imagine how much it's going to hurt if they are caught. At least, at a young age like 8 or 10 where a lot of kids seem to be getting into it now. It's sort of early for a heart-to-heart at that age. They can't possibly understand. They should just be too afraid to even try it.

As a matter of fact, I was surprised to find out that my high school love interest apparently tried smoking when she was only about 12 and even encouraged her even younger cousin to try. And she was a "goody-two-shoes" Christian girl... I would have never dreamed of it. I was afraid to go anywhere near a cigarette, even in high school, let alone elementary school!

There are some things that kids just won't talk to their parents about easily. They'd be ashamed to. You know your parents are going to be disappointed and rightly so. IMO, it's better that the kid is afraid of screwing up than for them to be unafraid of screwing up and unafraid of telling you about it after. Some of the things that they could screw up (especially these days it seems) might leave them too dead to come to you about after.

By the time children are in high school the spankings should have stopped. So it's a non-issue at that point. They are effectively approaching "young adulthood" where they have to start making their own choices and being responsible for them. Still though, I think that a teenager that was spanked growing up will be more afraid of getting caught than one that wasn't.

My parents were pretty much there for us. I was still afraid of them catching me doing something wrong, but at the same time they did make the effort to let us come to them with things and other than them being awkward about relationship stuff I did feel pretty good about talking to them about most stuff (as with most kids, I was most comfortable talking to my mom because she was softer... I think that a broken home leaves the parents unbalanced in that sense and unable to really be there for the kids as a team in the ways that they should).

My brother started smoking in high school. He got caught a few times too. Didn't get spanked or anything. He was too old. My parents treated him like a young adult. They tried to openly talk sense into him, grounded him, etc. Didn't really matter. There was no stopping him. His friends smoked. You really can't do much about that. A person is either able to stand alone or succumbs to the peer pressure.

To this day he is a slave to cigarettes. He has tried to quit 3 or 4 times now, even with some success, but eventually succumbs to it again. I don't think there was anything else that my parents could have done. He made his own choices, and he was never known for making good ones. Some people use their heads, and some people can't seem to when it counts. I know that growing up he was afraid of getting caught by my parents though. I witnessed fear of the repercussions help to keep him out of serious trouble on many occasions.

Any kind of discipline (that matters) will train a child to try to hide things from their parents. If they aren't trying to hide it then they obviously aren't afraid of the punishment. That doesn't stop them from doing it. They're just not afraid of getting caught doing it. Arguably this might help you to spot really extreme shit more easily, but at the expense of failing to teach them any values and letting them be an asshole their whole life, as well as letting them do a bunch of stuff that you shouldn't. Also, if you never punish them then what are you going to do to stop them when you do catch them with something serious? By the time they're 12 or 14 if they're not afraid of the consequences yet then it's too late. You won't be able to control them. Period. If you try they'll just run away. They'd have been taught their whole life that their decisions don't have any real consequences. You can't just suddenly start in with consequences that late in their development.