The Bigger Picture: There are no circumstances when hitting a child makes sense. When we move to control our children with fear, we have stopped parenting.
Our attention is in entirely the wrong place - fixated on their behaviour as opposed to the real problem. They are facing a struggle, but we are pushed to the edge.
The difficulty comes when we, the parents, lose it. We get annoyed, frustrated and feel we've run out of options. Nothing we do is working. We even start to believe our child is "bold", and trying to get one over on us on purpose. This is where we've lost the plot completely.
Our children are not manipulative or bad. They are struggling and need us to provide insight, sensitivity and support. Instead, we try to "teach them a lesson". We teach them something, all right, but it is nothing of any use.
The roots of troubled children are in troubled parenting. We want our children to stop showing upset, anger or hurt in their behaviour, but we're not prepared to address the reason behind their frustration. All they learn from this is that their parents are deficient in the skills they need us to have in order to get through really difficult experiences.
We shatter their hope, limit their worlds and, on top of this, really stun them by seeking to enforce control through verbal or physical violence (regardless of how moderate).
They get an initial shock from the shout or slap, but then they come to realise that we don't see their humanity or intelligence working. We have no insight into what is going on for them, and no skills to do anything useful. We don't trust them, believe in them or have any real idea how human beings work.
It is essential that people share their struggles. Our children - extremely perceptive and intelligent - rely on us to be there for them. They need us to listen and understand. Instead, we plan to frighten them. The fear shuts down their thinking and generates hopelessness, compounding the behaviour in the future. What's most strange is that after 10 or so years of this, we lament that they don't turn to us in times of difficulty.
Every parent loses it at some stage. We do not become superhuman with infinite amounts of emotional space simply because we've had children.
We do not escape our own struggles because we're now validated as guardians of a new, much younger human. We get pushed to the edge, and need to have supports and strategies in place to deal with and manage our struggles. Most importantly, we need to realise it is us who have a lesson to learn, not our child.
It is interesting to notice how we feel about our children when we lose it. We fabricate all kinds of lies about them to justify our defensiveness that we're supposed to know better. The fact is that young children will always be much more intelligent and lucid than we are. I was stunned to discover that after saying to my son, "Hang on a minute, I'm starting to have a hard time", he'd back off!
It's not a slap he wants to provoke. He doesn't even want me to struggle. He loves me too much. He just wants a hand with something painful and it has never occured to him that I might be too jammed up to give it.
We should celebrate it when our children trust us to show us how awful they feel inside in whatever way is available to them. To notice this, understand and respond in a useful way is worth its weight in gold to both our children and their relationships with us.
It's certainly worth enough to go and get the skills we need to be of better use to them. Our children learn infinitely more from loving hands than those that smack them. They learn much more from a loving, considerate environment than one of manipulation and control.
We need to hang in there - past our own difficulties, past our own ability to know what to do, straight to connecting with them - and really believe in them.
This doesn't mean we neglect firmness altogether. It simply means we keep thinking about them.
Children need structure. Although less destructive, it is not completely helpful to replace "slapping" with no resistance at all. One may hurt them, but the other gives them no opportunity to work through their difficulties. Their feelings simply run wild.
Ironically, a lack of boundaries also leads to hopelessness. On the other hand, structure with warmth and love can have profoundly good effects.
It is important to see things from a child's point of view - an honest, trustworthy, genuine perspective. Children only become manipulative and controlling when we (be it unwittingly or accidentally) teach them to. They never begin like this. There is always intelligence and logic behind their behaviour. It is our job to look for it and be helpful.
No matter the age, humans can always reach each other when we demonstrate our respect.
Shalini Sinha is the life coach for the new series of the Health Squad on RTÉ 1, Thursday 8pm.