I haven't needed to lay a finger on my nephews after I introduced timeouts with their noses planted in the middle of a big white wall. :)

Once you see the results of it, your children growing into well matured adults, then you and your children will see it as a positive experience. Funny, spanking has been the oldest form of discipline, even wise Solomon saw spanking as being something which will save the childs life when they grow up, not reasoning and the soft 'give in' approach. It has such bad light because it has been abused so many times. Corporal punishment is only wrong if it is dealt for minor offences or if it is done out of anger and a means of venting frustration. Overall, it worked for me because when I was a child, I did not fear someone grounding me or making me sit in the corner. The thing I feared the most was pain, getting that belt out! We do it not to show power, not to frighten our children but because we love them and we want to deter them from that behaviour which will get them into trouble as adults or hurt themselves and other people. I believe that corporal punishment when used in love is good, but I am one to believe that it should only be used as a last resort ie when the child has done something serious like being outright defiant or hurting someone else or stealing etc. But otherwise, there are other means of disciplining your children and a lot of it is psychology. Eg positive attention - only giving your child attention when they do something good but ignore them when they are bad (well I wouldn't take that too far). Well I've seen from experience that these days, parents have no control of their children and the children end up growing into thugs, but in those days, when a parent said 'be quiet,' the children were far more inclined to listen.

My sister in law told me once I could spank my niece and nephew if they misbehaved, but I'm such a softy I couldn't bear to lay a hand against them even if they're running around like little savages.

I could barely beat my marines, and they were grown men. I can't really see hitting kids as a good option.

I don't hit, I finger count to three, but by the time I get two fingers up, the kids are running to clean their rooms, etc. I believe the fear of what could come at the count of three is more powerful than any corporal punishment. To this day, I still don't know what I'd do if they called my bluff and allowed me to raise that third finger...

The days of "spanking" my kids are over now that they are young teens but this was always part of my dicipline style. There will always be a time when kids overstep boundaries. In the cases when it was outright defiance and or clear breaking of family rules this is what they could look forward to. At the time it was what they feared the most too. Not like now when "grounding" which takes their precious social time and other priviledges away from them. Some kids will never need this type of dicipline but in my opinion most will. Its all about solidifying boundaries, which any kid must have or they are lost. The idea that you hear nowadays that this type of punishment is abuse is not accurate. There will always be those who go overboard or lose control, those will always shine a bad light on this type of dicipline but It worked on me growing up, and from what I can see so far, it worked like a charm on my kids.