During the 19 1/2 years I had children under 18 I spanked exactly 3 times.
Once for the kid who would just not believe that the stove was hot and would not stop trying to touch.
Once for the same kid who was trying to climb the shelves in a movie rental store.
Third time same kid climbing on top of his dresser where he had a rope waiting that he had somehow managed to loop around the light fixture in his bedroom. He wanted to be Tarzan that day.
He was my good kid
I never spanked his sister, not because she behaved better but because she never put her own life in danger from anything except the wrath of me. Other punishments worked so that’s what we used.
I have a two-and-a-half year old daughter. My wife and I have never spanked her, and I can’t imagine doing so. We count to three when she’s misbehaving, and if the misbehavior doesn’t stop, she gets a time out. She hates being in time out, so this is pretty effective.
I would rather not teach my daughter that “might makes right,” and it makes me sick to imagine her looking at me with fear in her eyes.
The problem with asking this question is that first you have to define spanking.
Once in a conversation with two people I really like, they both admitted to spanking their children and I was horrified at how casually they treated it.
Then it came out that what they called ‘spanking’ is what I call a ‘swat on the rear’ and what I called ‘spanking’ they call child abuse.
Leaving aside the physical pain, I was taught that only parents who love their children spank them and that parents who don’t spank don’t love their children.
Every time I got a spanking my father was telling me he loved me, that he was doing it for my own good, that he hurt him more than it hurt me, and he was sorry he had to do it but it was my fault for making him do it.
Later on I was reading an article on battered wives and how their husbands will say the same thing, how it is her fault, he only does it because she made him so mad, its only because he loves her so much and if only she wouldn’t do things to make him mad he wouldn’t be forced to punish her. look what she mad him do.
That is when it hit me how incredibly sick it is to beat your kid and tell them that it is out of love.
A swat or two to get a kid’s attention when you need to get it now! is one thing.
Spanking is another.
I’m not a parent, and admittedly I’ve been out of the loop in the US for some decades, but while I can understand a decision never to spank, I’m a bit bemused by anyone being “horrified” at spanking. My grandmother in Arkansas would go out and cut a switch and wail into me with it, and I would never consider her a child abuser. (My mother was much worse.)
I personally was paddled by the vice principal of my junior high school. Maybe I could sue the bastard if he’s still alive, which is doubtful.
Amusing sidenote. My youngest brother who I was the legal guardian for until he reached eighteen use to say “Couldn’t I just have a spanking?” on occasions when his punishment was being denied access to television or video games.
When my kids were little I spanked them sometimes in addition to other punnishments. Now they are older and doing very well and no one gets spanked anymore.
My kids are both full grown with little ones of their own now. I spanked, but reluctantly and on rare occasions that required it (said child was about to cause bloodshed, bodily harm, or was crazy out of control). When they were little, a small swat on a diapered butt was more of a wake-up call, and maybe one real spanking a year until they were 7 or 8. As with my parents it was rare and the last spankings we got were probably around 7 or 8 years of age. Maybe a bit younger, whenever dad could bring in the lectures and “reason” with us that is. It was the same with my kids, they didn’t get spanked at all past the age when reasoning and evil psychological parenting tricks began to work.
Even as kids we used to tease my dad “PLEASE daddy PLEASE, can’t you just beat us like the other parents do? Not a lecture please”!!! Apparently one parents as they were taught, for my kids say the same of me. My daughter says she remembers very few spankings but lives in dread of “the talk”.
I was beaten as a child (belts, slapped, “switches,” bloody noses). It only stopped when I got big enough to hit back, and I did. Then it stopped immediately.
I would not, and never did, subject my son to that abuse.
My biggest threat was, “Knock it off, or we’re not going to the book store!” Good thing I raised a little nerd.
