I knew a guy who made a BIG DEAL when his kids were little to present the paddle to the sitter. "Now WHO am I giving the paddle to? And WHO is in charge of the paddle? And WHO will use the paddle if it is necessary? And WHO will behave in such a way that the paddle WON'T be necessary?" LOL!!! Not quite the same, but the one neighbor will explain to her 4yo that Rachael is "his authority" while Mommy and Daddy are gone. And we need to listen to our authority. What if the authority says it's time to go in, and you aren't done playing yet? What are you suppose to do then?
My two girls actually have three sets of grandparents. Set #1- my parents - would never spank, in fact my mother always did the opposite and give in to everything they want and undermine my discipline at every turn which infuriated me to no end - my dad passed away almost three years ago and my mother is in a nursing home so now it is a non issue. Set #2 - ex husbands parents - papa who has been dead five years would never spank my kids but nanny would if necessary and I gave her full permission and they each maybe got spanked once. Set #3 - my husbands parents - do not babysit! They are alcoholics and while I will bring the kids to visit while my husband and I are there which is maybe once or twice a year they would never be left in their supervision. We never ever got babysitters and if we did I would not want the sitter to spank my kids. My girls are 9 and 15. I will spank my 9 year old when she gets a smart mouth on her which is something we have been dealing with for about two weeks and we are steadily working on. The 15 yr old will get her iphone taken away but I used to spank her when needed. Now baby #3 will make his or her appearance in September. The only grandparent who will have access to this child will be nanny (ex husbands wonderful mom) and we will giver her permission to do what she feels necessary when she babysits. She is so kind and loving and we know that if she ever spanked it would be for something huge.
My mom went a little nuts in the spanking Dept on me, doing it well into my high school years - of course, then it was more like beating or hitting any part she could get her hands on. But regardless, it didn't work - discipline techniques working being defined as teaching me to obey and respect her. Of course, grounding didn't work either. And I was grounded my whole sr year. So needless to say, knowing how similar I am to my mom in so many ways, I promised myself and my husband that I would never spank our kids. Just don't want to lose control of myself. We're not against spanking....but I'm sure my husband will never spank them either. And so it has never been offered to anyone to spank them. We did give specific directions to both sets of grandparents of our timeout procedure. And that works well! I think each grandma has had to warn it once. But never used. I will add that one day I was so angry, I asked my 4 year old if she would like a spanking and she looked at me funny and said "What's that?" Having to explain really takes the anger out of the situation. I said, "its a punidhmrnt where you'll come over here. Bend over, and I'll hit your bottom." She smiled and said "sure!" At this point I'm laughing and completely over the anger. I popped her and she said, "well, it sure doesn't take as long as a timeout" lol!
