No, punishment is violence. Violence, a fact of life, is a part of nature and their world. The question implicit is what are the tolerable/intolerable externalities of violence and how to manage the potential risks that *you* fear in accomplishing the desired behavior modification in the child. However, please do reconsider whether you must resort to punishment/violence at all or if you can think of more preemptive ways, prior to the child enacting the behavior, without hurting feelings and wasting energy (which can have long term lasting undesired impacts.)

**You must lead by example.** And show that it works. And, very importantly, not confuse matters by associating the desired or undesired behavior with interpersonal physical, emotional, or economic return.

If you associate the behavior with physical punishment, the child will associate the behavior with punishment when you are present. It will become a game of cat & mouse in which the child will either try to circumvent and do the behavior when you're not around.  OR, worse, the child may compare such behavior as equivalent to other types of behavior from their peers and seek to punish them. 

If you associate the behavior with emotional punishment, then the child will hone more subtle & sophisticated ways of circumventing and manipulating your emotions in relation to the behavior. They will then apply those same emotional tricks to other people in life. 

If you associate the behavior with compensation, then they will come up with a pricing/blackmailing system in which they behave in certain ways depending on degrees of payment. If you take away, then they may try to take something away from you, for example, peace and quiet.

If the child gets accustomed to punishment, then they will identify punishment as a normal part of their everyday existence; the cost of just simply living, so to speak. They may even get used to their actions and regular dose of expected punishment and believe that such a plight is a part of their life story. 'I do this because that's just me. So it's okay.' 'I get punished because that's what I'm about.' Then, you have a potential repeat-offending future criminal that you're raising because, through repeated exposure, their sense of risk has been desensitized.

So, WATCH OUT! How you treat them can turn on you. I heard a Native American once say that, in his culture, parents understood that, one day, the small child will be big and the big parent will be small.

Children learn through observation and witnessing the benefit of your example. And, by personal association/identification, they must personalize the values you wish to cultivate inside of them. This does not preclude you from expressing yourself and also demonstrating how to deal with other adults who see the world differently and play by different rules.

But, remember, how they observe you teaches them what are the most effective ways of living through life.