"C. Gregory" ) writes:
as far as the rest, i am making a concerted effort not to spank him, and it
made me realise that i was doing it out of frustration, which is dangerous,

I think it's really great that you've realized this.

Some parents spank as part of a planned system. For example,
in one family, the kids would get a certain number of points
for not doing their chores, etc., and when they got up
to a certain number, they would get a spanking. In those
cases the decision to spank has nothing to do with the
parent's emotional state. (But if you're going to
have a system like that, why not just design a system
that doesn't use spanking?)

But in many families (and I believe in most families
that spank), spanking is a reflection mainly of the
way the parent feels. I think most of these people don't
realize this: they think they're using a system,
but in fact they don't have a system that can be
objectively described; it's more like "when the
kid does something that goes too far, I spank them."
Whether it "goes too far" or not depends largely
on how the parent is feeling at the time, as well
as partly on what the child did. Often parents
will have a build-up of frustration from several
misbehaviours in a row -- or their frustration can
be partly from things that have nothing to do with
the child.

But it's really great that you recognize what was
going on inside you at the moment you decided
to spank.

One-year-olds can do a lot of damage very quickly
(such as pulling all the books off three more
bookshelves in the time it takes you to put
the books back onto the first one).
It can be really hard keeping up with them.
Frustration is one feeling that can easily come
up. But there are other ways to express your
frustration.

One way is to tell yourself "I am going to come
up with a Plan for handling situations like this!"
and then when you have some quiet time, think
up a plan for what you will do whenever your
child does that. (For a lot of things, you can
make up a Plan before the child even does it
the first time, but if you're frustrated, it's
probably because the child is doing something
you hadn't thought of a way to handle.)
Just the decision "I am going to come up with
a Plan!" can give you a feeling that in a sense
you're in control.

There are other ways to handle frustration,
like walking out of the room. Or telling your
child "I'm frustrated!"

You're right that it's dangerous to spank
out of frustration. Here are some quotes
from "Beating the Devil Out Of Them: Corporal
Punishment in American Families ..." by
Murray Straus:

[p. 85] "Clinical work with abusive families
has shown that much physical abuse starts as an
attempt to correct and control through corporal
punishment. When the child does not comply or,
in the case of older children, hits back and
curses the parent, the resulting frustration and
rage leads some parents to increase the severity
of the physical attack and kick, punch or hit
with an object. ..."

[p. 86, quoting a parent] "It all started when
Camille [age 14] slammed the door on her little
sister's leg. Camille was in the bathroom and
realized there was no toilet tissue. She asked
her little sister, the 9 year old, to get some
tissue, which she did do, and apparently her sister
wasn't rushing out of the bathroom fast enough
and Camille kind of pushed the door, and in the
process, she caughter her sister's leg in the door,
and with the child screaming as she did from the
pain, it got me very angered ... And I think at
that moment I lost control completely, and I went
over and I swatted Camille with my -- you know,
my hand, and Camille turned around and she swung
back to strike me, which she did do and that got me
even more aggravated. And before I know what really
was going on, I had pounded Camille several times.
She had run a tub of bath water to take a bath,
and suddenly I realized I had knocked Camille
into the bathtub. And apparently I had struck
her in the face, which by no means was intentional.
But she had a swollen eye, and she didn't say
anything to me that night."

--
Cathy