I'm not exactly sure how my parents did it, but they never needed to resort to inflicting pain to make me understand why I shouldn't play on the street or why I needed to make sure the stove wasn't hot before I planted my hand on it (I feel like watching me to make sure I didn't play in the street/kitchen before I was old enough to understand the danger was part of it). Now, I was a pretty compliant child by nature. If I can understand the reasoning, I am inclined to do as I'm told, and that streak is still with me. But then you have my brother who is much more defiant than I am, and I don't think my parents ever even resorted to a single spanking, even though he was a trouble child in his early years as I understand it. Children shouldn't fear their parents, and that's all you'll ever get if you hurt them. Your supposed to be their protector. You protect them, you don't abuse them. I basically agree with this, except I do think limited physical discipline can be effective at a very young age. I can count the number of times I was spanked/slapped on two hands, all before the age of 6-7. It very rarely happened and was never aggressive, but if it happened, I knew I'd [bleep]ed up bad. And I never made the same mistake twice.