10 thoughts on “Spanking”

1. I can’t envision a situation in which spanking would help.
   Even remembering those (few) times when I received a spanking, I think it had more to do with my parent’s upset than with my punishment.

2. I am not a parent, but I think it sends a clear signal to the child that their acions were wrong. Many times, my parents will not even do it hard enough to heart, but it is the emotion of it all that is the punishment.

   I think it works.

3. I think people who spank, spank too often. That being said, I do think it can be an effective tool amidst an array of discipline methods. My best friend’s mom told me if you are spanking once a week, you’re spanking too often and you either have inappropriate expectations for the age and maturity of your child or they do not desire to obey you, which is a big problem.

   From my observation, if you are out of control or angry when you spank, it doesn’t work. You have to be very level headed about it.

   I think that we will spank for complete and total defiance and lying. And then when other things hurt worse (loss of privileges, etc.) we’ll stop spanking.

4. as a parent with kids who are now past the age of spanking – yes. the quick pop on the bum to get a child’s attention, let him/her know you mean business, in response to direct defiance. mistakes don’t get spankings, and accidents are not spankable offenses. but defiance needs to dealt with. we’d sit down with our children, tell them what they were getting a spanking for, how many there would be (five would be major), and when it was over, hug on them and tell them it’s over. “works” for young kids, but as they’ve gotten older it’s more effective to take privileges away.

   there is an issue with spanking in anger – i think we did our best to never go there, but i know it happened. never getting out of hand, but without the prelims. now, it’s the quick pop – they’re 7 and 9, and they’re good kids.

5. No, we don’t spank. Other forms of discipline seem much more effective with our children.

6. We had time-outs for our kids, and also used 1-2-3 Magic, which all worked! I can’t say there wasn’t an occasional pop on the behind, but never a 3-4 swat spanking. Just didn’t work for our kids.

7. I don’t have children, but I work with kids on the autism spectrum that need intense behavioral therapy. We never hit or spank, even if the behavior is very inappropriate, because the principles of reinforcement work so well. You might want to look into something called applied behavioral analysis… I think so many parents would benefit greatly by knowing how human beings respond to reinforcement.

8. I feel VERY strongly that spanking of any kind is abuse. It’s just plain wrong.

9. Well, there are definitely some children that ought never be spanked (like children with autism) and some parents who should never spank (like people who were abused). Spanking can be abusive, I don’t deny that.

   However, as Christians we have freedom to parents as we see fit within biblical bounds and spanking is definitely within biblical bounds. I don’t think that anyone *must* spank their children to be obedient to scripture, but it is obviously recommended in the Proverbs. There are some pretty crazy things recommended in Proverbs (along with all the real gems!) so if someone does not want to spank that is entirely within their right.

   I truly feel that spanking can be a part of a loving, respectful parent-child relationship (as long as its infrequent and accompanied by a discussion of the offense and how it could be remedied better in the future.) I would disagree that spanking is uniformly abusive or wrong because of its establishment in scripture.

10. Thanks for the feedback! 🙂

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