As the mother of a 3 yr old, I have no idea what other way there is to make a child sit quietly through a 2 hour meeting. There's no WAY my daughter could do that or that I would even expect her to. There's no way I could beat her to do it either.
I only vaguely remember most of this. I remember my father telling a story about how he had me in the bathroom because I was acting up, and I climbed up, grabbed the sides of his face and put my face in his face. I guess this was before I could speak (and I was an early talker too!). But anyway, it gave him the idea that I was telling him off or something so he bent me over his knee and continued the "discipline". Another story I remember is my grandmother trying to stop my father from taking one of us to the bathroom during a meeting. He told her he would discipline his children his way as head of the family (or something similar) and she best get back to her seat or she could take it up with the elders. My dad also had a metal pipe, prob 3" in diameter, that he would joke was his "rod", in reference to spare the rod, spoil the child. I remember him doing that at book studies in our house. He never used it on us though. We usually got a belt or spatula at home, and a hand at the hall. But these are stories or jokes he would voluntarily tell in front of other JW's.
And as I remember, we got spankings after almost every meeting until I was about 9. My dad was an elder and almost always had a part, there were four of us and my mom. How do you think that scenario always played out?
I know I didn't have it nearly as bad as others and I don't think this kind of "discipline" is unique to JW's, but other churches have Sunday schools and such for children. They understand that it's unreasonable to expect an infant or toddler, or even just a child, to sit through boring talks for hours. It just baffles me! Why haven't they done something for the children? Why??