Dear Ricky...

This appears to be a very simple question, doesn't it? It really tells much about the person doing the asking.

Here we have a parent who has children, and this parent has to ask permission to use a particular form of discipline on her children. The Nanny-Government has so conditioned an entire generation for the need to consult someone before disciplining their children. This is a pathetic and disheartening sign that people are starting to crave the Nanny-Socialist Government like a Hippy craves Heroin.

WAKE UP! They are your children. Not mine. Not your neighbors. Not the governments, not anybody but yours. If they starve to death, then you have failed as a parent. If they grow up undisciplined like little wild rats, you have failed as a parent. When you got knocked up, you accepted the job of raising those children, feeding those children, disciplining those children and educating those children. This is an entrepreneurial job - you have no boss, not even a mentor. If you plant a tomato plant in your back yard and it dies or gets infected with nemotodes - you don't go crying to the government about its demise do you? If your child turns out rotten, then torture yourself, not society because it was never society's job to rear those children.

Now, that having been established, please feel free to discipline your children in any manner you so desire, short of murder. Murder is illegal. Remember, you own your children - they belong to you and nobody else. You can use your brain or your hands to discipline your child, or even your feet, and any other tool you can make or purchase that would assist you in this endeavor. These are all tools at your disposal and certainly a rod of birch is but one option.

Concerned Parent, if you are John Howard, the answer is clear - shoot all your children, and then impale your evil little body on a sharpened stake, allowing the tip to protrude from your gaping, lying mouth. I hope this helps. (I thought the solution was obvious!)
- Vlad (sharpened stakes are my game)

Children are not "yours" to do what you want with. You are there to nurture not punish. Anytime, anywhere, anyone resorts to violence to address a perceived problem it is an admission of failure. Hence... Iraq!

All material life is violence. Once an organism has been born (poor bloody thing) it wages relentless war on all other organisms until it finally, and thankfully expires. Your children will compete with other children on a bloody, desperate and apocalyptic world stage. If you want happy stories, there are plenty of pretty little fairy tale books in the stores. BTW, I'm not advocating cruelty, brutality, greed, stupidity, fascism, neo-liberalism, or "devil take the hindmost" economics or similar crap. I think we all need to know what the real situation is.
- Dalai Lama

"anyone [who] resorts to violence to address a perceived problem it is an admission of failure. Hence... Iraq!"

What a bunch of Hippy-Single-Cellular thinking. But, what can we expect, Hippies are less intelligent than monkeys as they have destroyed most of their brain cells. I guess if my kid meets your kid on the playground and beats the living crap out of yours just for kicks and giggles, and your kid fights back, he's a failure. But, in the same vein, if your kid trys to use "peaceful resolution" "reason" and "psychology" to "ease the situation", he's a success, right?

Fact is, that my kid has been taught to recognize all of that crap for exactly what it is - CRAP! And, perhaps he just likes pulverizing little Johnny Hippy for no reason other than for kicks and giggles; or maybe just to make daddy proud.

Seem, sometimes people don't resort to violence to "address a preceived problem". They do it because it's fun, or they like it, or it just feels good, or they can win $20 on a bet. Once you take the time to try to figure out "why" someone is engaging in violent activity on your ass, you're a dead man. You better squash him like a bug before he even gets the chance, and then learn to simply forget about it, like you forgot about taking a crap 3 days ago.

yhhyhfyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

sorry just ring