I frequently hear people discussing, wether physical punishment is acceptable. I think its more about the intensity. Psychic punishments can be extremely harmful, too.

It is important to understand the sensitivity of the particular child and react adequately. As a unsufficient reaction and uncorrected inacceptable behaviour will harm the child in the long run, too.

I guess there a couple of situations where somebodey (and here I am not exclusively speaking about children) gets into a mentals state where nothing but a physical stimulus reachis her or him, but usually there are so many better ways.

My three favourite ones (as a teacher):

• Starring into the childs eyes for five seconds
• Approaching closely (face to face less than 50 cm / 0.5 yd)
• Instead of criticising "You talk to loud" asking "Why are you talking so loud?" Than at least wait for an answer for five seconds.

I love specially the last one because sometimes a child has reasons and she or he can be correctet by logic or at least understood.

For me as a theacher it is extremely problematic when a child is often yeld at or even beaten because there "receiver" is set by that to a super high "threshold" and my comparatively "weak signal" is not reaching her or him.

I have to punish rarely and usually just point out bad behaviour which is corrected by my students quickly.