To Spank or Not To Spank...

Great Debates
81

Almost Perfect, my parents also made me write essays, and I freaking hated it, lol! I definitely think that once kids are past a certain age and have the capability to understand reason or are able to reflect on their behavior, there are more effective ways to punish someone. But young kids, kids say under the age of 6 who can’t write essays, or 3 year olds who need immediate consequences or reinforcement to discourage or encourage certain behavior, just aren’t mentally or emotionally mature enough to fully comprehend why certain behavior is wrong. It’s the difference between the ego and the super ego. Say a kid sees a jar of cookies but mommy says “you can’t have a cookie”. Kids who are only in the ego stage of development will take the cookie if they think they can get away with it, and they won’t take the cookie if they think they are going to be caught. The superego starts to develop around age 5, and that’s where the kid sees the cookie jar but decides not to take the cookie because it is wrong, not because there is an opening where he or she isn’t likely to be caught.

So I think that once kids reach the age where they can understand the concept of right or wrong beyond how it affects punishment or reward, things like essays or being grounded, punishments that incorporate reflection on why they are being punished in the first place, are wonderful tools to use. And obviously kids can be too young for punishment (a 12 month old baby has no concept of right or wrong, but they act more on instinct and basic needs). But there does seem to be that period of time between kids who act on instinct and kids who act out of a greater sense of morality or right and wrong where punishment is most effective as a case of classical conditioning. And if a time out corrects behavior until a child can learn the greater moral implications of such behavior, then that’s great and there shouldn’t be a reason to impose another form of punishment. But if a child reaches for a hot stove and gets his hand slapped away as an immediate signal that their actions are dangerous, or if a child is out with his mother running errands, begins to tantrum because he can’t get a toy he wants, and an immidate time out isn’t exactly feasible in that situation, a light swat on the behind is one way to immediately tell a child that their behavior is inappropriate. I don’t think spankings should be an automatic response or form of punishment in every situation, but it does sound like they are effective and a deterrent to further bad behavior when administerd properly. And if they aren’t effective, a parent needs to try to find another way, because I don’t think the answer to an ineffective spanking is to hit the child harder next time.

82

To quote a particular post, just press the **Quote **button in the lower right corner of the post. If you want to quote multiple posts, click the button next to that – the one with the "+ on it – and then **Quote **for the last post you want to quote.

I don’t expect you to find a site that discusses spanking without taking a position on the issue, but some sources are more reputable than others. As I mentioned previously, the American Academy of Pediatricians does not recommend spanking. While it’s certainly possible for doctors to be wrong about things, when it comes to advice on raising children I am more inclined to trust a professional organization for pediatricians than something like “Chastise with Love”, a website that looks to be maintained by an anonymous individual with no claims to special expertise in child-rearing or children’s health and development.

You’d have done better to start by questioning your assumption that kids are any brattier today than they were in the past. For what it’s worth, I’m over 30 and I remember plenty of awful little children from my youth. Older people complained about “these kids today” then…just like they did when my parents were young, and when their parents were young.

Have you seen any evidence that spanking is better than other forms of punishment? Because while there are experts who will argue that spanking is less effective and more harmful than other forms of punishment (see for instance the Alan Kazdin quotes in the APA *Monitor *article you linked in your OP), and others who argue that it’s as effective and no more harmful provided it is done in the right way, I haven’t seen any reliable authority on children’s health or psychological development claim that spanking is essential. While a lack of consistent discipline and boundaries is bad for children, I don’t believe any child ever suffered from a lack of spanking per se. I don’t think anyone would bother to defend spanking at all if it wasn’t traditional.

And yet some people manage to raise well-behaved children without spanking them.

Nature doesn’t care much about good and bad behavior. Pain is a signal that something physically harmful is happening to an organism, not that it has done something morally wrong.

As Hello Again mentioned previously, punishment is actually not the best way to change behavior. Reinforcing the desired behavior is typically more effective than punishing undesired behavior. Some forms of punishment (including but not limited to spanking) can even serve to unintentionally reinforce undesirable behavior in cases where the child is acting out to get attention.

83

Again, I don’t think that all parents who spank their kids are child abusers or even bad parents.

But I do not understand the argument that spanking is necessary or somehow more appropriate for children under six, and less so for older kids.

First, I have never had the urge to strike a little kid. When I have seen others do it, I have recoiled.

Second, age two through six is just the stage when we are trying to teach children not to give into their natural impulse to hit other people when they are frustrated. It makes no sense to me to teach this by, or even alongside, hitting children in that same age group.

Third, I find the example always given of a little kid reaching for a hot stove who therefore must be slapped utterly confounding because a) who since the days of burning wood and coal for heat has a stove so hot that a little kid will touch it and be burnt? b) why wouldn’t a timeout or some other non-violent correction work just as well in this scenario anyway?

Fourth, little children can write essays, or at least “I will not call Mommy poopyhead” ten times. I’ve never slapped a little child, but I don’t see that these kinds of discipline are significantly more trouble. And if the child acts up in a public place, take them somewhere where you can do the timeout or whatever–why would you stay if the child is misbehaving anyway?

84

(But for anyone else reading this…)

What the studies say about it is, that you trained your child to only run out into traffic when you are not present.

85

No, and No, and Yes.

You notice that nobody is using corporal punishment now in Dog training. Or Horse training. Or elephant, tiger, lion or goat training. Or Military training. Or Education.

That’s because spankings are an obsolete form of getting people to do what you want. Educating them. Making disciples of them. Making them more self-disciplined.

It’s not because tapping a puppy on the nose was un-acceptable (plenty of people still do it at home). It’s not because physical punishment of goats led to psychotic goats.

We’ve got dog whisperers, and horse whisperers, and baby whisperers, because these methods have been demonstrated to be faster, easier, and more effective.

The same is true of modern education. Pathetic as modern education is, it is demonstrably more effective than 18th century education, and one of the differences is the corporal punishment is no longer used as an education method. You don’t get whipped for making reading mistakes. You don’t get hit for making arithmetic mistakes. Even if corporal punishment is used for discipline offenses, it is not used as a teaching method in the classroom, and that was because it was demonstrably less effective than the new methods of education introduced in the 19th century.

Because these new methods were not obvious, they had to start teacher-training schools.

I’m not suggesting that “doing nothing” is an effective replacement for spanking.

I know that you have difficulty disciplining your child without spanking, have trouble seeing how to do it, have trouble believing it could be effective. You are CORRECT. If you want to learn child training, get a book, go to lessons, learn by example. I’m not suggesting that learning a new method of child rearing would be any easier than learning how to do dog training: only that for people who know how, it works better. If you start now, maybe your children will have an easier time being parents than you do now.
PS: I’m appalled at the suggestion that spanking is appropriate for pre-verbal children. If you’re doing that, just stop it. Even “doing nothing” is an effective replacement for that.

86

A child that age is going to have the chance to run into traffic when the parent isn’t present??

87

For those who are anti-spanking, what do you do when the child refuses to abide by your other punishments?

You put them on timeout, they won’t stay. You send them to their room. They refuse. You take away their privileges, they refuse to abide by those restrictions and physically contest you to get whatever you are trying to take away. They hit their siblings and will not stop. What is your recourse in these situations?

Yes, I have a difficult child (diagnosed with ODD) and yes I have faced all of these situations. Spanking works when everything else fails. It should be done dispassionately and with warning, and the child should be comforted and explained that it is done out of love to correct behavior. One smack with a hand on a bare butt is enough. It is not “hitting” it is not “beating”, it is done in a very pragmatic and mechanical way.

88

Spanking is hitting, doesn’t matter whether you’re mechanical or pragmatic about it.

If you don’t mind my asking, do your son’s therapists recommend spanking him? From what little I know about ODD, I understood that positive reinforcement is considered key in teaching the child not to repeat the oppositional behaviors that cause the kid and everyone else so much trouble.

89

All of my sons therapists have been aware that we spank. They have not advised against it, nor have encouraged it. We do lots of positive reinforcement, but when a child is beating his siblings, or destroying property, there needs to be some kind of consequence.

90

Were I in this unfortunate situation, I would seek the advice of an expert instead of turning to unqualified strangers on an Internet debate board.

91

The question is meant to be rhetorical, to make people put themselves in that situation. I am not seeking advice.

92

It doesn’t happen. If my child were to actually physically contest me, well, I’d have to do something about it, but that’s never happened. Just raising my voice changes her behaviour, pronto.

93

Yes, I’m certain we would. It’s better now than it was 30-40 years ago.

94

When I went to elementary 40-some-odd years ago (baby-boom era parochial school in Chicago), we sat quite still in our classes of 50 kids or so and listened to the teacher. If we didn’t, we would have to clean the blackboards (girls) or be whupped by one of the assistant priests (boys). Not that the nuns were afraid to slap us or pull ears when necessary to keep order, it was just part of the younger priests’ job to whup the boys.

I don’t remember having the slightest interest in anything at school until 7th grade, and that was fairly short-lived.I learned what was supposed to along with good penmanship, but my intellectual life was elsewhere.

When I visit my daughter’s third-grade classroom, the kids are engaged in what they are learning; they talk to the teacher and each other, they ask questions, they move around the classroom to work on different subjects and in smaller groups. They integrate what they learn in one subject with another and look forward to school. No one hits them.

If this is the trend Learjeff referred to, I’m all for it.

95

Sorry, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt when it came to using your child to score pity points in an online debate. While I’m sure it’s difficult to be the parent of a child with a behavioral disorder, “Well, I spank my kid” is not a compelling argument for spanking.

96

What kind of punishment wouldn’t do that?

Regards,
Shodan

97

Whoa Melborne, who said anything about spanking pre-verbal children? I certainly didn’t, as I have said that under age 2 is inappropriate, but perhaps you misread my comment where I said that younger kids (like age 2-3) don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to sit down and have a long conversation about the moral implications of impulsive tantrum throwing. And before you start going off in a moral outrage because you think I’m spanking an infant, I have already said that the only form of corporal punishment I have given my 2 and a half year old son is a light pinch on the cheek because he went through a biting phase. And technically, as defined by the AAP, that was a spanking. I certainly don’t regret it, since it quickly cured a month long habit of biting other kids and adults, after I had done the time out and stern “no” thing with absolutely no effect. So yeah, technically that light pinch means I have spanked my child. I don’t think he’s going to have lasting trauma for that.

98

As for people who think that there is a conclusive link between spanking and future social, mental, or violence problems, please show me the study. And the study I want to see isn’t the one where shrinks went back and asked parents how often they spanked. To me a study that can convincingly and conclusively show that spanking causes future psychological and social issues, it has to reasonably control all the variables except for spanking. For example, show me the study that took 50 households matched evenly across other variables- socioeconomic status, level of education completed by the kids, evenly matched by marital status (like homes not affected by divorce), and any other psychological or health issues like ADHD or chronic illness- where the only reasonably significant variable between these families and the families of the control group is spanking or not spanking. Furthermore, it would be much more scientifically sound if the type of spanking was reasonably controlled, ie: don’t lump a parent who slaps her kid lightly on the hand or bottom once a month for 2-3 years with the parent who whips her child with a belt 2-3 times a week for 10 years.
If a study like that exists, where the only significant difference between the control and the test group is that one group delivers controlled and light spankings and the other group does not, and that group that spanks produces significantly more psychologically or damaged young adults than the non-spanking group, then I will be happy to review the study and likely concede that even the most appropriate of spankings is likely to harm your child.

But so far in my search, I haven’t found a study that comes even remotely close. I haven’t seen anything to conclusively indicate that spankings are the reasons why a child turns into a damaged or violent probe adult, as opposed to lack of education, a broken home, another mental or social disorder, or any other measurable variable that could just as easily be the culprit. And I do concede that a child who gets beaten frequently with a hair brush or a belt is more likely to develop issues than a child who received infrequent light slaps on the butt. That just begs common sense. But as the AAP does NOT distinguish between the two forms of physical punishment, can they really conclude with any merit that infrequent light spanking is as likely to cause lasting damage as frequent, more violent beatings?

Like I said, if there is a study out there that does control the other variables, I would be very eager to see it.

99

Good thing he didn’t do anything of the kind. He gave a real life situation to make you have to actually think about dealing with a real life situation. What’s ridiculous is that a lot of you who claim to use this methodology don’t have an answer. So you prove you’re just talking theory and not practically.

It is very clear that you are attempting to attack someone rather than engage in a discussion. The irony is that that’s the same thing spankers are accused of doing.

100

Right. And if it’s just as effective, or at least mostly as effective, why would any rational person choose the other method? If you have two activities, one that is really easy and one that takes a lot of work, but both produce the same results, you’d pick the easier activity. If the easier activity is less effective, then you would then decide if the extra work was worth the increase in effectiveness.

The fact that most kids turn out fine is a big reason people just go on doing what they’ve done before.