discipline

I was watching an episode of Super Nanny the other day and the mother in on the show repeatedly "spanked" and "popped" her 2 year old and 4 year old children. This got me really thinking about how people chose to discipline their kids. I really dont get the whole corporal punishment thing with children. When you really stop and think about it, the parent-child relationship is the only one in which it is ok to hit someone. It's never ok to hit your spouse, your friends, your siblings, you coworkers, you cant hit your parents or anyone else. But when a child does something you don't like, go ahead and hit them...it doesn't make any sense to me. What exactly is the lesson with spanking? When you do something wrong, you'll experience pain? There is no reason or logic to it. At any other point in your life you don't receive discipline in the form of physical pain. The look on a child's face when they are physically hurt by a parent is always the same, they are confused and also emotionally hurt. We teach our kids to tell on someone if they are hurt by them but then we turn around and become the ones hurting them. It seems to me that this is the lazy way of dealing with a child. I know that Adam and I will not be taking this route with Gryffin. I don't want anyone to spank me when I make a mistake so why would I do it to my kid?