Thank you for your compliments. Yes, we're both extremely pleased our children are so open with us.

I got caned at school for various pranks. It was a religious school where it was still allowed in the late 1980s. It became something of a one-upmanship bravado thing among some of us. My siblings and I were some of the worst offenders (me, my sister, and my two younger brothers), because we were, on the whole, a bunch of rebels. But the rules of that school were so absurd that you could be punished for breathing in the wrong direction. So we decided to make it worthwhile.

I don't approve of corporal punishment (except in, er, activities between consenting adults). Some of the people I went to school with were properly traumatised by what happened.

But back to your point... Yes, horrible that you couldn't go to anyone, and yes, things are only starting to get better now (though I fear far too much still goes on undetected).