Don't Spank

You can probably tell what my position is on spanking children. I will try to approach it clinically since the decision to spank is usually an emotional one rather than a cognizant one. From discussions with spankers and my own experience with spanking and not spanking, I have concluded three main factors are involved with the whole spanking or not spanking dilemma:

     upbringing or, "that's how I was raised and look at me."

     behaviorism or, "by jove, it works!" and,

     humanistic or, "yes it works, but is that what we really want?"

    During my own upbringing, I received less than my share of spankings. My parents weren't TOO big on hitting us as punishment for behavior. More often, my father would lecture us for an hour or so and as a teenager, I sometimes wished he would have hit us rather than talk and talk and talk. However, as an adult I appreciate that my parents wanted to talk to us and get some philosophical transformation rather than just blind compliance out of fear that we would get hit. I do recall one time that I called my brother a bad word and my mother's hand came out of nowhere to smack me in the mouth and it hurt AND scared the heck out of me. Then there was the time I experienced my big brother getting spanked - it is memorable because I remember he put a book in his pants and it broke the yardstick used to smack his bottom. He got a little bit more to compensate but it was what it was. I have seen my brother use corporal punishment on his sons but certainly not excessively and I am sure he is not a proponent.

    The idea that we raise our children the way we were raised isn't a novel one. There is an adage in teacher education that says, we teach the way we were taught. I will speak to the child-raising tendency to perpetuate the way I respond to the pedagogical one; all children are different and to suggest that using one specific method of responding to all of a child's behavior is just myopic and ineffective. That being said, too many parents use their parent's strategies becuse they haven't learned or developed strategies of their own - similar to teachers. If a student teacher hasn't experienced an event in the classroom - for example, a fist fight - then they may respond in a way that they have seen used in response to another type of dramatic behavior or not know how to respond at all and freeze up. Either way, it takes education to learn new ways to respond. Parenting doesn't come with a handbook so it isn't surprising that parents revert back to the way they were raised. In the case of spanking, it is a relic of a different time and I feel parents should learn new ways to deal with "misbehavior" (which is a whole 'nother discussion).

    Behaviorism teaches us, among other concepts, that a behavior is likely to be repeated if rewarded and less likely to be repeated if punished. Spanking embodies that concept. If a child exhibits an undesirable behavior, they get spanked and they are less likely to repeat it. Conversely, if a child exhibits a positive, desirable behavior, then they should get rewarded. However, if that was the case, parents would be "rewarding" children constantly because - believe it or not - children really do want to make their parents happy and behave as such most of the time.

    Spanking our children DOES work, no one can convince me otherwise. If a child is doing something and you hit them, they will most likely stop. But, stand at the door into Wal-Mart and when someone walks in, punch them in the face. Then, when they turn the other cheek and walk to the OTHER door, meet them there and punch them in the face. Most likely, they will not go to that Wal-Mart again. If a child does behavior A and you hit them - they may try behavior B. If you hit them again, they will stop behavior B and probably behavior A too. However, they may very well try behavior C. That Wal-Mart patron will probably go to a different Wal-Mart, they will probably tell a manager about the person punching them when they enter the building. Well, with your children you ARE the manager so they are helpless and they may try behavior C and exhibit the behavior somewhere else, like school, the playground or the babysitter's house. Regardless, you havent taken the time to teach them what the appropriate behavior is - you've only punished the bad choices. But wait, you DO teach them the right behavior, AFTER you punish them. My suggestion? Just teach them the right way without the aversive stimulus.

    So that is my conclusion, we probably spank because we were spanked. we spank because it works to stop a behavior. We spank, but God help me that isn't the way we want to raise our children. We don't want children to 1) be afraid of their parents, 2) learn that we deal with conflict or disobedience by hitting the offender and 3) perpetuate an environment of violence.

    Our children are people first - if you wouldn't hit another adult who doesn't do what you want, then don't hit a child ( I know that is a sticky one because people DO hit other adults when they don't get their way but that is a different sociopathy). Parents can learn to respond to their children in less violent ways. Don't kid yourself, hitting your children is violence. Whether or not you believe it is a legitimate way to raise your child - it is violence. Hitting is such a basic response, it is akin to anger in that psychologists suggest that anger is the externalization of another emotion usually anxiety, embarrassment, fear or humiliation. Hitting is the externalization of an emotion. The question I ask you to reflect upon is this, What is the emotion inspiring the hitting? Exasperation (That is it I can't take it anymore)? Frustration (I have told him time and time again)? Embarrassment (I can't believe you are acting like this in the store)? Offense(Who is this 9 year-old to be defying me)? The next time you feel your child needs corporal punishment, resist and ask yourself, why am I going to hit? Just once, stop and ask yourself that question.

   I don't expect that parents will stop hitting their children in response to misbehavior but it is my responsibility on behalf of the children leading us in the future to ask parents to stop hitting them in the name of teaching them the right thing to do. Spanking is the stark antithesis of "teaching" and I beg parents to learn new and more creative ways to teach their children well.