I’d never say a caning is a minor punishment – even a mild caning is, or should be, a fairly big deal for the child experiencing it. It is meant to hurt. It’s meant to hurt quite a lot, enough that the child does not want to experience it again, and that others observing its effects never want to experience it. It is and should be very unpleasant. But very caning doesn’t need to be an awful experience – one stroke of the cane should be something the child prefers to avoid, but it doesn’t need to be any more than that. Six of the best, or whatever the maximum allowed is, should be something truly to be feared, and I believe it is. But it is still something that is over and done with fairly quickly. In a matter of minutes.