I think that the sentence is fair.  Her defence counsel says she's low-risk at reoffending and yet on 2 seperate occasions her "punishment" amounted in abuse of her son.  These are the situations that were noticed and reported, how many other times has she abused her son unnoticed.

Fair enough that he's not in her care until she can get her temper under control.  It's a shame that the child is in cyfs care rather than in the care of a loving family member but hopefully this mother can get the help she obviously needs to help her be a good parent.

I agree being a parent is stressful at times but we are the adults and should act as such.  There's no excuse for acting like children and no excuse for losing our tempers at our children and abusing them.  About 15 mins ago my daughter thought it would be funny to spit water at me I didn't spit it back at her, or grab her water bottle and beat it with it.  There's absolutely no excuse!!!

I am not so keen on the anti smacking legislation as I think its a tad OTT but I do think what this mother did is a bit off.  Our parents hit us when we were right little sh*ts but I NEVER got bruises or bled!.....in fact I think the wooden spoon got off worse than me...it broke....dont think it even made contact with my toosh.

I think when you bruise or damage the child, you've gone to far.  A slap on the hand or bum is pretty harmless......but I like to think you can do other things instead of smacking.

I just had a heated discussion with a couple of the ladies I work with (both have children my age).  They are pro-smacking and think that half the trouble with youths today is that they weren't smacked   I was arguing the point saying that smacking is not an effective form of discipline and that there are other ways to discipline a child which they both disagreed with.  I went on to say that children are so little and yet people think it's ok to smack them and yet if you smacked an adult it would be called assault to which one answered "yes but that's just pc bullocks too"

I think banging my head against a brick wall would be a more useful and enjoyable way of spending my morning tea break.

caitlynsmygirl wrote: I think one of the main trouble with youths these days is the ease in which they can get things, and boredom. And a lack of good role models , tv and the computer (she says as she types away ) are not parents and not role models .

Lack of responsibility and being encouraged to stay kids for too long has a lot to answer to as well. 

I cringe whenever I hear someone say "they're too young to know better" in regards to their toddlers and young children.  IMO they're only too young to know better the first time they do it.  Another pet hate is "they're much too young to be disciplined/put in timeout etc" and then a few years down the track the parents have no control over their children because they've always let them get away with bad behaviour in the past.

The comments page on the website you posted is cracking me up. 

Such as "That's absolutely outstanding and contains nothing controversial in any way. However I'm a bit confused. I couldn't find a single reference to wife beating, and we all know the benefits of that....
R, Nottingham"

Some people are taking it all very seriously and others are totally taking the piss too.

Jennz wrote: I think there seems to be this big lack of responsibility going on when it comes to raising our children. The whole 'it takes a village' idea isn't how we raise our children anymore- everyone seems so quick to blame everyone else. Parents blame the schools, who blame the social workers, who blame lack of government funding etc etc. Its about time people stepped up and started getting their villages back (says she who is completely isolated on the other side of the world ).

I totally agree!  Many parents are too busy nowadays to care for their kids and that saddens me so much.  It's great when grandparents or other family members step in and share the load but sadly it seems nowadays more and more families are doing it alone and choosing earning money to spend on things we don't need as more important than working less hours and spending time with our children.  It was highlighted this week in the news article about parents who are dropping their primary school aged kids off to school up to an hour before the gates even open so they can get to work.  Imagine the kind of trouble kids can get into in an unsupervised hour (the ones in the article were playing chicken with cars on the motorway) and lets not forget there are unsavoury adults out there that will see unsupervised children as an opportunity (like the guy that posed as a truency officer).