Well I mentioned earlier in this thread that I helped raise a child who's father walked out on her, I was a "surrogate" father for probably the first 5 or 6 years of her life. And she was well behaved and good natured and I never had to physically discipline her.
It's not necessarily holding back per se. It's just in hypothetical situations like this, I wouldn't necessarily know what I'd do unless I was in that situation.
Like those who say they'd never cheat, yet never really had to push someone off of them.
Okay, that makes a bit more sense.
I will say this; growing up, we watched my cousin (12 years my junior) a lot, and he was (and still is), and absolutely awful child. He was babysat by some real scumbags when he was very young, and it definitely negatively affected him to a great extent.
He would take absolute delight in disobeying and causing trouble. He would never take no for an answer. He would just get more and more frantic and hyper in his bad behavior until it basically reached a point of no return. Outside of actual physical violence against others, he was pretty much as bad as you could get.
And only once did I ever have to take any physical action against him; once he was trying to let our dogs out the front door (I think that was it, I don't quite remember), and I physically held him back from the door until he said he'd stop.
And, admittedly, he hurt himself a bit from struggling with me and trying still to get to the door, but I didn't do anything to hurt him in anyway.
That's the farthest I'd ever go.
And, I will admit, when you have a child who's become as...damaged as my cousin is, consequences are very much needed. My mom's or my own form of parenting would be totally ineffective. But even then, there are still other methods that can utilize.
