“Unfortunately a fair percentage of even quite young children age 8/9 have grasped that parental threats are hollow as a result of child empowerment via child abuse laws. The result is that many parents are greeted by open angry defiance about any sort of discipline or even attempts to enforce rules in the home.”
That is true. In my case, I did two things to deal with it. First, my kids never went to a public school (I’m not that stupid), and second I made it VERY CLEAR to them that if they EVER discussed discipline in our house or anything else that might make a Generation-X female social worker mad at us, that junior would quickly get a new set of parents. In other words, I practically dared them to turn us in. Needless to say, they were perfectly happy to get a light spanking once in a while when they acted up.
And that’s the problem - children are trained to tell the truth to authority figures. That is a HUGE MISTAKE. The only persons that I EVER wanted my kids to be truthful with were me and my wife - everyone else, including grandparents, can go to hell - as some things stay in the family. If more parents explained that, then less of them would lose their kids to some over-hormoned social worker, with a chip on her shoulder.