Child rearing 101

having lived with my 'family' for about a month or so, there were quite a few occasions whereby Kai started crying for no apparent reason and i never once saw my landlady/landlord hit their kid to 'teach him a lesson'... and today was esp funny. Kai didn't want to wake up to go for dinner and started crying.. after initial stern attempts to make the kid stop, the parents decided to cry along with their kid.. and so from the living room (where i was sitting trying desperately to twist my wire), for a few min, i heard this communal howling emanating from Kai's room... and i really felt like laughing... i dunno, i just felt that their way of bringing up their kid is so different and 'fun'.... such stark contrast to the caning or threats of policemen arrest or 'babu-singh-kidnappings' that i'm so used to... or for that matter, many of us are used to... the group confession of having once been caned by our parents before, and comparisons of the diameters of the canes our parents used to own (at In and Out some weeks ago) still remain fresh in my mind... =P and the scary thing was (which i didn't really dare to voice out then) that out of the 4 girls and 2 mums present then, 3 of us agreed that the best way to discipline the kid is to cane the kid.. else the kid wun learn.. i didn't say anything, cos i really dunno what i would do... does caning really work? is it a very Asian thing to do? i should ask my landlords one day what they think about caning...