Spanking........

And in conjunction with the rant I just posted, add this. States such as California (surprise, surprise, surprise) are trying to pass or are passing laws to make spanking illegal. Say what? Hello, has no one learned the difference between a spanking and a beating? Apparently not. For reference let me refer you to a book I was given years ago when I questioned how I disciplined my children: "To Spank or not to Spank" by John Rosemond. It defines the difference between spanking as discipline and beating a child, which most reasonable people wouldn;t agree with anyway.
I don;t know who out there has kids and who doesn't. If you have managed to raise your kids to be respectful, responsible, polite, caring people without spanking, more power to ya. I don;t advocate it to be used in every circumstance anyway. I would much rather parent by talking, grounding, etc. But how do you get the point across to a 2 yr old that she is not to touch things? Do you remove the items where possible out of her reach until she is old enough not to break them? Or do you teach her to respect them by making the point that if she continues to do what she has been told not to, there will be a consequence that may not feel very good? I'm not talking about taking the belt to her, I am talking about a light slap to the hand---actually I would put her hand in my palm, and the smack would hit about 1 % of her hand and 99% of mine. She heard the slap more than felt it. But it made it's point. With my first 2 kids, we put everything up. They still don't know, at 12 and 14, not to touch certain things--neither do my stepdaughters at 14 and 16. But my 5 yr old will tell you that you can;t mess with this or that. I couldn;t tell you the last time I spanked her----she is getting old enough to ground from tv, video, cd player, playing outside or with certain toys. But at 2, or even 3, no she was not. I gave up spanking my boys when I married my husband-because I did not believe in treating his kids and mine unequally, and I was not about to spank them and have them scream child abuse to their mom when they got home. My husband also did not spank my boys. We have gotten really good at making them miserable in other ways. Grounding is the biggest because if you can;t have or do something, isn;t that what you want? Makes the point.
But this is another case of where the govt wants to tell us what we can and can't do in our own homes. They can;t even put criminals in jail and keep them there for any amount of time, and yet they want to criminalize how some choose to discipline their kids. Again clean up their own house before they start messing with mine.