Spanking can worsen a child's behavior

If anything I suspect that child behaviour will be better in such nations, it certainly is here in Norway.

I've seen some liveleak videos that maybe could argue that Corporal punishment being illegal is either not enforced or definitely does not work for these countries.

Children are constantly pushing and probing boundaries. They are trying to figure out who is in charge. So, when you respond to their aggression in a weak way because you’re worried about them not liking you, you lose. You aren’t teaching them to “be civilized”. Little by little their respect for you will diminish and you risk them becoming more unruly.

In more than three decades of living in Norway where corporal punishment is exceedingly rare I have never once seen this kind of behaviour from a Norwegian child and rarely from immigrant children.

So perhaps one should look to the behaviour of the parents and society in general in order to tackle this kind of misbehaviour by ensuring that it does not happen instead of simply reacting to it when it does.

It’s also lack of education. I’ve travelled 3rd world countries and spanking is quite normalized, however, it appears that for parents it’s a normal reaction.

So this is a cultural thing and change follows education.

Putting out cigarettes on a child or punching them? Yea, that is assault or worse.

Only people in a capacity of authority do the same thing to adults all the time when they're hard to control / reason with: imprison them, beat them and pin them down when they are unruly, restrain them, taze them, some countries have corporal punishment, and several other things besides.

What many modern parents did is exchange some slap and/or light hitting (which is not the same as abuse) with an arsenal of psychological manipulation, negotiation tactics, and guilt-inducing talk to get the kids to cooperate. Or, perhaps worse, giving up and letting kids having free-reign and ending up as horrible unsufferable me-me-me adults who think the world is there to serve them.

Kids aren't adults and they can't reason with logic or words. Therefore, if a child does something like bite, hit etc. (which they do often) an equal response teaches them immediately that committing those acts leads to a negative outcome. Of course, modern mentality is that this is an awful abusive way to treat your child. I disagree, I don't think a spank is akin to full on abuse and there are times when it's appropriate.

Additionally, adults that do act the way children do and start violently attacking people often get a quick response either from the individual they were attacking or the cops. Maybe they never learned consequences for their actions when they were young?

Have you ever been around a group of young men or boys when someone started something? Typically the quickest way to end it is a swift physical reaction that immediately shows you won't tolerate stuff.

Would that not entrench and perpetuate the harm that occurs with corporal punishment and in turn replicate the cycle of violence?

With spanking you are trying to affect the thought processes that lead to bad behaviour (condition them) with violence. Implicitly showing the child it's ok to use violence to get what you want. Cue tantrums, destructive tendencies, etc.

In your case you are using force (which isn't the same as violence) to achieve something. Your showing the child some things must be done whether they like it or not.

I do believe you should always explain your actions in these kind of situations because children are rational but not nuanced. You have to be much more explicit with them so they learn to understand the implicit.

I'd say the one big differentiator is pain. I'm assuming that you are using the minimal force necessary and doing your best to not intentionally cause pain.

Striking a child is done with the sole intention of causing pain.

Here is the thing, you probably not doing something wrong. As long it isn't a everyday thing, it isn't so bad as people make it to be. The 'tap' to stop, then talking with him/her works, worked on me when I was a kid, probably the only thing that did to be honest. The 'physical violence' was the awakening call, then the conversation after that grounded it.

ps: if you just slap the living crap of him, say he is bad, and send him to his room without talking with him, then sure, that is an absolutely shitty behaviour, but I don't think this is what you are doing from your text.

Withdrawing attention - say, to attend to the kid he's injured in another room - seems to change behavior much more effectively, exactly as the psychological literature predicts. Ignoring violent behavior is extremely difficult, but it can produce surprising results. It's taken a few months of this, but my hardheaded 3 year old has just started expressing sincere apologies.