I HAVE a confession to make: my name is Ruth Campbell and I have smacked my children.

I know, following the legal curbs on smacking introduced a year ago, this could possibly lead to me being hauled off to the nearest police station for questioning, but there it is, I've said it now.

What makes my Alcoholics Anonymous-style revelation even worse is that, embarrassingly, about 14 years ago I wrote a heartfelt column in The Northern Echo pontificating about how it was never acceptable to smack youngsters. Ever.

Then, I was an idealistic, inexperienced first-time mother with a baby under one year old. I argued, perfectly logically, that it was nonsense to teach children, for example, that violence was wrong by administering a slap.

We should treat children with the same respect we show adults, I said. Smacking them was assault. It all made perfect sense to me then. Theoretically, it still does now. But, of course, one small baby isn't capable of behaviour requiring even the mildest rebuke.

Today, with five children, aged three to 14, the reality of our noisy, hectic and, at times, pretty stressful family life has altered my views. I apologise wholeheartedly now for what must have seemed like sanctimonious posturing back then, especially to those harassed but loving parents struggling to cope with much more demanding situations than I was at the time.

While we would all love to have the time and patience to take an errant child to one side and have a calm, reasonable discussion about why it is wrong to poke his younger brother in the eye with a stick after he has been repeatedly asked to stop, this is not always possible.

In the real world we're tired and exasperated, the phone is ringing, pans are spilling over on the cooker, another child starts to misbehave and we're going to be late to pick up their eldest brother from rugby practice if we don't get organised, sharpish. One swift smack on the bottom and, like magic, the stick poking stops.

While I'm not proud of occasionally - and it is only occasionally - administering such a short, sharp slap, I do think I am capable, even when driven to the brink of despair by my beloved boys, of distinguishing between reasonable chastisement and cruelty. To confuse the two shows a lack of understanding of what children who suffer real violence and abuse are going through.

Interestingly, Tony Blair confesses to having smacked his older three children occasionally, but not Leo, the youngest. As a backbench MP he was at home more with the older three, who were close in age and no doubt much more of a handful than Leo on his own.

How many of those well-meaning campaigners, both in Britain and the EU, now calling for all smacking to be outlawed know what it's like to be at home alone with three or four squabbling children rampaging round the house?

F OLLOWING my comments about my youngest son's gorgeous blond curly hair, which I can't bear to have cut, a farmer's wife contacted me with a story about her husband. Now a 51-year-old, macho Yorkshireman with a fine, but short, head of hair, he too was once blessed with golden curls. When he was a toddler, his mother used to dress him in a little smock, which he didn't mind. But once he started school and had friends home for tea, he used to ask her to put the photos of him away: "I don't want them seeing me when I was a girl, mum." Even now, the family talks about that time "when he was a girl". "But whatever you do, don't put his name in the paper," implored his wife.

Clearly, the poor man is still traumatised by the whole experience. I wonder if I should make an appointment with the barber?

RUMMAGING about in one of our bedroom drawers the other day, I discovered an old note I must have hastily stuffed away in there more than five years ago. It read: "Dear Tooth Fairy, Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could tell me what you want to do with a seven-year-old's tooth for £1? Very, very, very sorry to bother you, have a good night, Love from Charlie." I showed it to Charlie, now 12, this morning. His bigger brothers all laughed. But, recovering from his initial embarrassment, Charlie was quick enough to add: "Yeah, I can't understand why I never did get an answer to that one" - once he noticed his wide-eyed six-year-old brother listening in.

Published: 19/01/2006