"Should a smack, as part of good parental protection, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

"Should a smack, as part of good parental protection, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

That's the Referendum question we have to answer by the end of the week. I've already given my answer: I ticked the box "NO" and sent it off as soon as I got it (the voting slip mailed to me). To me the question was pretty simple, and I'm amazed at how the Anti Smacking Brigade keep trying to claim the question is ambiguous. It's not.

Do you think a smack (i.e. not 'the Bash') should be a criminal offence? How ambiguous is that? Not very. Of course the problem comes when a parent who has belted their kid gets caught and then tries to argue it was just a smack.

Parents will need to be taught the right way to smack, so someone will have to produce an instructional video. "This is Good" [show light open handed smack] "and this is Bad" [show parent whacking kid's butt, hard, possibly with a wooden spoon]. Maybe CYFS will run a TV campaign - won't that be interesting for tourists?

The thing is, I've never smacked my own daughter, ever. I've felt like it sometimes, but never done it. And now that she's seven it seems pointless. She already knows everything (or thinks she does) so behaviour modification is futile.

So I don't believe in smacking children personally -- but if you want to smack yours then I don't think you should be arrested for it. Unless of course you smack him/her hard enough to leave a mark - at which point you've crossed the line into abuse.

So anyway, let me finish this blog with a true story - told to me by my daughter last weekend. After I'd voted.

Evidently when she was a tot, when we had a nanny, the nanny would smack her every time she wet her pants. I know when my daughter 'fibs' and I knew she wasn't lying about this. Suddenly we (her parents) understood why my daughter never used to go to the toilet, why she held on all day, why she would invariably wet herself at dinner time (after the nanny had gone) because she couldn't hold it any longer.

We thought the nanny was great (she was with us for 4+ years) and we remembered when she said she couldn't understand why she couldn't toilet train our daughter ("I managed with all the other children I cared for"). So now I'm pissed off, and she can go f@#k herself (the nanny). Who gave her the right to smack my child?

So think on that when you decide which way to vote in the Referendum.

(And think also about your own kid. Just because you think you've told them to tell you if someone does something to them doesn't mean they will.)