I don't believe in using physical means to discipline a child, although I would say physically (and personally) restraining the child when he is throwing a tantrum is acceptable and something I have done. At the end of the day, the goals I am trying to achieve are:
1) stop the child from doing whatever unacceptable thing he was doing at that moment
2) ensure that the child won't do that unacceptable thing again, or at least, make him realize that the behaviour is unacceptable
With my kid, the problem is, if I were to come on too strong in stopping him from doing that unacceptable thing, he would get scared / freak out. And at that point, his brain just shuts down and nothing is gonna get through to him. So certainly I would have immediately stopped the undesirable behaviour right at that moment, but he would not have learned any lessons from the incident at all. If anything, he would only have negative emotions and memories associated with the whole incident, and I do not think that is helpful at all.
Instead, I mostly just talk to him in a plain tone, telling him that what he is doing is not acceptable. If necessary, I will physically stop him from doing whatever he was doing. Since he isn't getting freaked out, I can explain to him what the behaviour is unacceptable. It is likely that he won't have the self restraint to not do it again the next time, but when I repeat the same thing to him when it happens again, after a couple of tries, it will sink in. Quite often, he will remember that this was something he has been told not to do before, and he will stop doing it as soon as I mention it. Additionally, because I mostly try to use the same plain tone to tell him to stop, it has gotten to the point where he knows he did something he shouldn't when I use that tone.
The absolute worst thing that can happen when I am disciplining my child is -- the grandparents do something to sabotage my efforts. They generally know better than to try and harbour the misbehaving child -- I think that has only happened a handful of times, and each time it happened, I gave a stern talk to the uncooperative granny. The thing that totally boils me up is, when my kid does something naughty / he is not supposed to do, the grandparent(s) laugh at the undesirable behaviour. Laughing like that as a response is a reward to the child, and it will only serve to encourage him to do that thing some more (in the anticipation of getting rewarded for the bahviour again). That sort of undesireable reward can undo a long string of behavioural training, and to have a grandparent do that, it just pisses me off...
