I understand from where you come Sailor. (Well, that just felt odd to hear what that would sound like spoken! )
I do spank my son on occasion. It's rare that I have to though. He's five and he's a good kid, luckily.
But there are those days where nothing seems to be getting through to him. It starts when I pick him up from his after-school care. He won't come. He wants to keep playing. He hides from me. I have to chase him. Which is fun sometimes and I don't always mind. But I'm a single dad. I have to go home, make dinner, get bath ready, take out trash, do laundry, clean house... then hopefully we have time to play together or something.
But on those days, he just won't cooperate. I start with trying to reason with him, make him understand that we have to leave so we have time for stuff later. I get him into the car and he wants McDonald's. I say no because I already have dinner planned, or it's not a good McD's day, and the whining begins, and the kicking or pushing on the back of my seat.
Maybe I let this sort of thing go on for too long on those days. He gets sent to his room, grounded, etc. And sometimes none of that works. He needs to understand that... I... mean... business and that his behavior is unacceptable.
Unlike some people, I'm actually very, very uncomfortable with using my hand to spank. I don't want him associating the same hands that hold and love him with corporal punishment. And the most he gets are one or two licks. But it is enough.
By comparison, my parents, really, my mom, almost seemed to relish wearing my ass out when spanking. This became very, very clear to me when as a very young teen I stopped yelping or crying when spanked. At first the spankings were more fierce. But as time went on, the spankings stopped altogether. I guess she thought that since I wasn't crying that they weren't working. This brings to light an uncomfortable connection between her satisfaction in spanking me and my reaction to it, almost sadistic in nature.
Anyway, when it gets to the point of a spanking with my son, he knows that that is the final straw. And afterwards, he's like a changed person. He's not afraid of me or anything. He is actually more affectionate. He cuddles up with me and tells me he's sorry. I tell him I'm sorry too and we talk about it calmly.
I hate, hate, hate spanking my son. I do. I've actually shed tears before, doing so. But it's not for me, it's for him. The real world is much harsher than I am. The law will not normally give a person chance after chance after chance and neither will employers. And he doesn't need to grow up with the expectation that they will.
Am I the only one who has noticed that many kids, teens and even some in their twenties seem to have such feelings of entitlement? Perhaps this is not unique. Perhaps every generation feels somewhat this way about the generations that come after it. But... what about these kids and their parents who sue schools because their child failed and won't graduate with their class? WTF? You fail! If you fail, you don't graduate. It is as simple as that. These kids have no idea what it's like to fail because their parents never let them feel what failure is like. They bend the rules to where failure is no longer failure. Stupid. And it's a factor in the destruction of the fabric of our society. We are raising generations of wimps.
I want my son to know that when he fails, I'm here for support, but still, he failed. We work harder next time so failure doesn't occur. He misbehaves, he doesn't get to keep misbehaving.
I want my son to be strong enough that he takes failure as an acceptable risk and moves on. I also want him to understand that there are consequences to his actions and he won't always get off easy. Although, the way the western society is going, I don't know that someday this might not be so true.
YMMV
