I Got The Cane Or Slipper In The Sixth Form

All sensible people know that it works

It certainly works as long as it is not used too often

@Oldmanjimbo: moderation in all things

I actually believe that lesser forms of corporal punishment can and should be used frequently but the cane is a very serious punishment and should be used sparingly

Thank you for your comment. It must be interesting to have used CP in a school environment, and observed the long-term results from the other side, so to speak. You are so correct in defining a typical school caning as a serious punishment, and one to be feared and avoided at all cost. It’s often joked that the principal response to a caning is to be much more careful not to be caught again, and there is some truth in that too. But the reality is that for me – and I believe most of my friends, the risk of a caning was a usually an effective deterrent to egregious misbehaviour. But when the worst happens, and you were caught and caned, in my case certainly, its on-going deterrent effect was such that it brought about genuine change and improvement in my attitude and behaviour, and I can tell you I was never caned twice for the same misbehaviour at school.

Just briefly commenting on your other observation, I also agree with your approach, where caning was only administered with discrimination, and only inflicted when lesser punishments, such as the slipper had failed, or (presumably) where the offence was so serious it admitted no other punishment. At my school, whereas slippering was administered so frequently as to be unexceptional (unless it was your bottom getting the slipper of course!) a caning was always something of an event, and although administered in private, the punishment was always made know to the relevant cohort, to act as a deterrent to them, as well as the poor victim.

@Oldmanjimbo I agree entirely. The punishment should be proportionate to the offence and it is useful to retain something like the cane as the nuclear option for serious misbehaviour.

@MaryWat I have always thought that the objection to spanking that says if you do it the child will just become sneaky is among the most moronic statements of all time. Spanking works exactly the way you say. Which is why people try to avoid being spanked. Show me a kid who doesn't sneak to avoid being grounded & I'll show you a kid who is either breaking grounding or grounding that is merely a minor inconvenience. If she has an important social event coming up but an excellent, tho forbidden, activity tempts her, she will try to do it without being caught. She won't boldly do it or necessarily refrain from doing it, thus making the choice of 1 activity or the other. If she wants to do both, she will try to do both, especially if she can justify to herself that her parents' strong objection to the forbidden activity is silly or stupid. And that she is unlikely to be caught.

@nickir I often think grounding punishes the parents as much, if not more, than the grounded child. NOT my idea of intelligent parenting. And unless rigorously policed, it is so easy for a teenager to escape, circumvent or have it foreshortened. Far too much tension in the house!

I recall a number of occasions when my children were teenagers, checking they were alright and behaving in their own recreation room, and finding one of their friends there who I knew was supposed to be grounded. When my children earned a punishment, they were dealt with in a much more speedy, effective and unescapable manner.

Exactly. And if that weren't enough, the fact that our punishes the parents means that the parents start to look for ways to avoid THEIR punishment by not punishing the kid. While that is good if the parent is too strict,it's bad if the parent is punishing properly. Which is what we're postulating here.

As if that's not bad enough, suppose that you ground her for 2 weeks. Then she's naughty after 3 days. If you ground her again, your OOPS her, punishment doesn't even start for 1-1/2 weeks. With spanking, if she has a bad attitude as she's getting off your knee,she can be spanked again immediately or immediately after corner time.
You're also affecting her socialization, a fact that anti-spankers always fail to mention. Plus, the harder the system is to do right, the fewer the number of people who can actually do it right.
So even if it worked better than spanking, it wouldn't be worth doing.

@MaryWat presumably a quick whacking?

@MaryWat My parents were the same as yourself.