My general feeling is that spanking is never really a necessity, just an attempted short cut for controlling a child’s behavior. If you really think about it, it’s beyond bizarre that the only person you are legally allowed to hit is your child. What possible defense is there for that? The common response - ‘‘It’s my kid’’ -suggests to me that children are still very much regarded as property more than human beings. I have no doubt that it makes children more aggressive - and no, aggression is not a good thing - the word you’re looking for is assertiveness.
That said, I’m not going to freak out on someone just for spanking their kid. I’ve seen X-rays of children with shattered bones and read news stories about mentally disabled children left starved to death in 100 degree heat with maggot-infested bedsores. In the grand scheme of things, spanking is pretty low on the priority list.
And I’m real big on context - it seems reasonable to me that there is some context in which spanking may be the best option. I think it might be particularly effective when done very, very rarely. The closest thing I can think of is the one time I ever smacked my cat - he was doing something that put himself in imminent danger and there wasn’t any time to politely ask kitty to stop eating the jagged metal. If I smacked him all the time, my reaction wouldn’t have been very effective at stopping him from hurting himself, but because I’d never done it before, he got the message right away. And I felt guilty afterward. And that’s good.
X I believe spanking is never appropriate, as it too easily becomes abuse.
I’ve spanked my older daughter a handful of times but I know for a fact that it was out of anger and not a suitable punishment. It’s a last straw thing. The last time I did it she was around eight or so and I realized then it was wrong for ME to spank. I don’t like a look of fear in my child’s eyes, whether she slammed the door one too many times or got caught stealing. There are more effective ways to teach, and my job is to teach effectively. I’m not saying if you’re spanking your child you’re abusive, I’m just saying I know I’m not anywhere near the minority when I say I spanked in anger on more than one occasion.
Later on I worked in CDC classes with some pretty severely disabled children. You learn quickly who was spanked. I don’t mean abused, I mean spanked. Those kids are no more responsible with their work, better behaved or any more respectful than children who are not spanked. They just get that same look in their eyes my daughter had when they get caught. It’s not about knowing they’ve done a bad thing because they’re too impulsive. They’re scared they’re about to be hit. We were never allowed to spank the students so we learned other methods of discipline. It’s just like anything else you want your child to learn. Primarily teach by example. When you fail do you think a spanking will teach you anything? Why do you think it’s more sensible to teach children through spanking? What is the point? The hot oven thing makes no sense. They learn by touching the hot oven that it’s hot. They don’t need swatting to get that through their heads. If your child is so impulsive they run into traffic you need to have better control of their feet, they don’t need a smack on the behind to learn it’s against the rules to run into the street. Spanking really just has no purpose.
Now I have a child who doesn’t respond well at all to any physical punishment. She has autism and her reaction is not easy to control once she gets started. I have learned infinite patience with a strong guiding hand. Both my girls are a delight 99.9% of the time so I think I’m doing a good job, and maaaaybe I have an idea here worth considering for other parents. But I’m always surprised how tightly people cling to the notion that sparing the rod is spoiling the child.
IMO of course. I don’t judge anyone else for spanking, I just don’t do it and I’ll open my mouth when someone else brings it up.
A problem I have with a lot of these studies is that they assume parents are getting pissed off and hitting their child in the heat of the moment.
That’s not at all the same thing my father (and I) did with me. Whenever I had one coming, I was sent to my room. I had to sit there for a good ten or twenty minutes before my Dad came in with the belt. During that twenty minutes I thought long and hard about how I’m going to change my behaviour to keep this from happening again.
So basically, it was a time out followed up with an ass whipping.
I think I stopped with CP on my sons when they were around 6 or 7. From that age other things became more effective like grounding and no PlayStation.
My dad didn’t stop CP with me until the day I stopped crying when he gave me ass whippings. (about 10 or 11)
It seems like the last time this came up, someone pointed out that what those studies called “moderate spanking”, and the lightest level they talked about, was once or twice a week. But in my mind, appropriate spanking happens half a dozen times throughout your entire childhood, when you’ve done something Really Bad and are too young to see why: faking drowning, or sneaking off at a crowded mall to go back to the store you wanted to stay in, or kicking the dog, or getting out of your carseat on the interstate. Stuff that a parent cannot see repeated.
I would like to see a study showing that kids spanked less than twice a year really suffer long term harm, and in the short term there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that these sorts of Big Lessons do stick better.
If you start this early it works beautifully. My daughter is almost 14 months and at 9 months when we started sleep training her we followed the Super Nanny’s technique. 3 days of taking about 45 minutes to fall asleep was all it took and now she goes to sleep immediately when you lay her down. If she cries you know she has a wet diaper because she doesn’t cry for no reason any longer.
I think when Super Nanny does this with older kids it is as much about teaching parents how to discipline as it is about training the kids to go to sleep when you put them in bed. When parents find a type of discipline that works it is easy to stick with that because you know it works so using physical discipline for one big issue makes it much easier to default to physical discipline for all issues.
I spank my children and I let them know the behavior that will get them a spanking.
If you get out of your bed one more time you are getting a spanking
If you go in the kitchen and playing the knife drawer again you are getting a spanking
If you keep playing after I told you to clean up your play room you are getting a spanking
I give them multiple chances and time outs then the spanking is instituted with plenty of warning. They are testing you to see if you will punish them in the way you say you are. I believe in following through and not telling them you will do something then not doing it. I always thought it was ridiculous when my mom threatened to ground us “for life” or take away our TV/Nintendo “for ever” and that obviously never lasting. So I don’t ever threaten anything I can’t follow through on, and I think spanking is a reasonable and viable option when they know it is coming and have the choice to avoid it.
I have two children, both of whom were kind of a handful when they were little. Spanking didn’t work at all on the oldest; the issue immediately stopped being whatever it was she’d done and became that you hit her. Time outs and talking worked for her.
The younger one was a completely different matter. When she got out of control, an open-handed smack on the bottom got her attention and turned her behavior around immediately. I probably spanked her fewer than five times, total. Once she was old enough for other methods of discipline to work (around four or so), I never spanked her again.
It depends on the child, on the parent, and on the family dynamic. I’d never spank someone else’s child and I never would have given someone outside the family permission to spank mine. But not all physical punishment is abuse (and some non-physical punishment is). It’s like most things, especially when it comes to family culture - there’s a wide range of behavior that’s normal and acceptable. I think spanking (reasonable and non-injuring) is in that range.
I think there is always a better alternative, but when you’re a parent who has worked all day and cleaned the house and bathed the kids and broken up a few fights and they just won’t go to bed I can see how some parents do the easy thing (spanking) instead of whatever might work just as well but require a lot more patience and energy. There were certainly days when I was really pissed and felt like hitting something, but I never ever hit my kids. I mean, they’re babies, why would you hit a baby?
Also I didn’t want them to learn that hitting was a good problem solving strategy, because it’s not. For anyone.
I voted that you missed an option; I think corporal punishment is approrpriate only in VERY limited, rare circumstances, to the point that you likely never need to use it, and beyond a certain age is not appropriate at all ever. My personal opinion is that it is much more limited than option #2 implies.
Obviously, this is simply my opinion and the way I raise my child. YMMV.
So for those of you who say spanking is never acceptable, are you the parent who goes “Now Johnny, it isn’t nice to throw that car at your sister’s face. Stop Johnny. It’s not nice” While your kids pelts some other kid with objects, or throws a fit in the middle of the store, or sits in your lap smacking and kicking the crap out of you while you say “Now it’s not nice to hit, Johnny, Mommy doesn’t like to be hit”
When I good smack on the butt would stop that crap right then and there. I see too many kids who pull fits and act like general brats and their parents is so afraid to spank them the kids runs the show. Talking it out doesn’t work on a out of control 5 year old. My children don’t pull epic temper tantrums not just because I spank them, but I’d like to think it has something to do with it.
Just because you can’t see a solution to that scenario besides domestic violence doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Sure there are parents who aren’t good at non-violent solutions to misbehaviour, but at least they can say they’ve never assaulted a child.
The majority of anti-spanking, spanking is violence and abuse comments are disappointing, however. It’s thinking like that which gets CPS called on a parent who has the gall to spank their kid who is pulling a fit in walmart. Parents fear disciplining their own children, it’s upsetting.
nitpick - Spanking and corporal punishment aren’t exactly the same thing. I don’t remember being spanked but I remember being… handled roughly a few times. I was not abused, but if I did something pretty bad once in a while I might get smacked, slapped, or whacked with an object of low density. By my extended family as well as my parents. No marks were ever left. The punishment was always directly after the offense (which I hear is also important in training pets.) I might do it with my kids; I have no idea yet. Spanking, to me, is different from this. It just seems so… oddly ceremonious. Plus I can imagine being much more freaked out at not being able to anticipate a blow!
Disclaimer: I have no children and am in no position to judge anybody’s parenting style. I probably just have these ideas because, as my mother always says, “people know what they know.” This is what I grew up with. I’ll think about it more seriously before I decide to become a parent.
Plus I can imagine being much more freaked out at not being able to anticipate a blow!