Something to think about...

(alternative title:  I don't think I'll be spanking my kids)

I ran across a Peaceful Parenting website the other day, and this gem was part of a discussion:

Legal definitions: Assault is an act that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent, harmful, or offensive contact. The act consists of a threat of harm accompanied by an apparent present ability to carry out the threat. Battery is harmful or offensive touching of another.

...so it's legally ok to spank a child, but not an adult that is fully capable of defending himself.

(paraphrased, because I can't find it again)

While I was looking for that to get the exact quote, I did find this story on a private board of a popular online parenting community:

"When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time.

One day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking - the first of his life. And she told him that he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, "Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that you can throw at me." 

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence.

And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery - one can raise children into violence."