Disciplining your children.

What is the right way to discipline your children? With today's standards who is to say the right or wrong way. You have to be very careful because the laws now a days are really funny about what you can or can not do with your own children. I have found when it comes to disciplining your children you can make them listen and respect you without having to hit them. My children have never been hit by me (unless we were playing around), but they listen very well and are all around good children. I have had people tell me all the time how good and respectful my children are. I think if you make it so your children believe that you will smack them (even though you don't) it gives them the thought in their heads and this makes them think twice before they do something wrong. Now don't get me wrong, my children are not perfect by any means, but for the most part they listen very well and they don't do anything really seriously wrong. Now the biggest thing now a days is "Time Out", which is okay and will work in some instants and for some ages, but how are you supposed to put a 1, 2, or 3 year old on time out. When it comes to the younger aged children, "Time Out" just will not work. They do not understand the whole concept of "Time Out" and their attention span are so short that it just will not work. With the younger aged children you may have to smack their butts or smack them on the hands. You do not have to (nor do I recommend) smack them hard, just the act of tapping them on the butt or hands will hurt their feelings enough that they will usually stop doing what ever they were doing wrong. I do not think that younger children really need to be disciplined that much though, I mean really how much trouble do they really get in to. Now that does not mean you let them get away with murder, I am just saying that they do not do so much wrong that you need to beat them. I think as long as you are firm with them and you stand behind what you tell them, you with end up raising very good children. Now lets talk about how to handle the older children, I have a 6 year old little girl and "Time Out" work with her very well. I think that "Time Out" work the best for that age group. I also have an 11 year old girl and a 12 year old girl and I have found that the best way to discipline them is to take things way from them that they really enjoy or stop them from going places where they enjoy going. Today's children are very materialistic and are very into video game, so if you take their video games, computers, and/or televisions away from them, this will do more damage to them then any type of beating could ever do. These are the different ways I have found to discipline children for all age groups and still be politically correct.