Welcome and thank you for joining me here today. The amount of parents that have showed up here today with me to discuss the welfare of our children is fantastic. The main reason we are gathered here, is for me to inform you about the issue of parents smacking their children as a punishment and myself to explain my opinion on this very important issue to you.

I am a parent myself and I understand how disobedient and badly behaved children can be sometimes and how hard it is to deal with them. But in no circumstance have I never smacked either one of my children no matter how mischievous they have been. So if I don’t have the need to smack my children no matter how naughty that have been, why should other parents?

Children are usually influenced by their parent’s actions. By parents smacking their children, it can send them negative messages, which can then be transferred into the schoolyard. Instead of learning more effective and humane methods of solving a problem, he/she becomes preoccupied with feelings of anger and fantasies of revenge towards their family or friends; which than can also affect the way their brain thinks at school and the way they learn. Evidence shows that smacking is not an effective punishment and sets a bad example by suggesting that problems can be solved through hitting, often in the heat of the moment. This gives children a bad outlook on life and tells them that it is alright to go around smacking other children because their parents did it to them and it supposedly solves problems.

Smacking in my opinion and many others is ‘Physical abuse that includes any non-accidental injury to a child. This may be suspected if the child's injury cannot be explained or the explanation does not match the injury.’
Many parents don’t think that smacking does affect or hurt their children but infact it does. Although spanking is not considered abuse as long as the spanking does not leave marks, it is possible that the hitting can grow into physical abuse if the frequency and force of the smacking increases. Studies have shown and experts have proved that parents who express a lot of anger in front of their kids end up with less understanding children. These kids are more aggressive and more depressed than kids from calmer families that do not smack their children. It has also been proved by experts that children that get smacked constantly don’t do as well in school because there concentrated on planning their revenge against their parents.

The only thing that can be achieved by smacking is psychological damage. From being born to the age of three the brain is still developing and if the child is being smacked and/or hit frequently then