To Spank or Not to Spank
Last week I saw I piece on CNN.com about police in Albuquerque meeting an arriving Southwest flight at the gate after the flight crew notified law enforcement about a woman allegedly slapping her 13-month-old daughter. Basically, the baby was fussy, and the mom was witnessed slapping the child with an open hand once in the face and repeatedly on the legs in an attempt to get her to stop crying. During the “incident” the father and mother were fighting over the mother’s continued yelling at the baby. And to top it all off, the baby reportedly had a black eye, which the parents later told police was the result of a dog bite.
Southwest Airlines took some heat for this incident because the flight attendant reportedly took the infant from the parents. She did return the child before the family deplaned. Police interviewed the family upon arrival and released them after determining that there were no signs of abuse. According to the police report the mom slapped the baby because the baby kicked her first. Seriously. When asked if she felt it was OK to hit her child, the mom nodded her head yes and responded, “She’s my daughter.”
I think the entire story is crazy. Even crazier were the 2,500+ comments on the post and another 1,000 on Facebook. Not surprisingly there were loads of comments that cited some variety of “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Since the Bible was brought up repeatedly, I figured I’d pose the question here. Do you think that spanking is a biblical means of child rearing? If so, where do you draw the line?
I’ll go first…
I do not believe in spanking as an acceptable type of discipline ever. Never. We don’t spank, never have, and never will. I believe that the four verses in Proverbs that reference “the rod” and child rearing are four of the most misused, misrepresented verses in the Bible (shepherds used the rod to guide and protect not to hit their sheep).
When I was a practicing counselor, my last job was working with children who were victims of sexual abuse or violent crimes, or who were witnesses to murder. I’ve seen many children hit in the the name of discipline. I’ve seen the black and blue bodies of children who died at the hands of abusive parents. I know that the majority of us would never take spanking that far, but those images will stay with me forever, and they make it very difficult for me to see this issue in shades of gray.
I should also note that our nonspanked children are all very, very well behaved :)
that picture is pitiful. if spanking results in the kid cringing in the corner — then i’d say a parent went too far. i grew up with spanking as a way of correcting bad behavior and i don’t think any of us were permanently messed by it. we were messed up for other reasons ;) but i certainly see a disconnect with correcting bad behavior with by means of fear/pain.
Yeah, I suppose my bias did show up in the picture I chose :)
SPANK! i grew up if you were bad you had to be punished i cant tell you how many times i see kids in returants walking around the mall or a grocery store being just HORRIBLE kids!! or even when i im giving haircuts!! oh my god the kid is moving screaming biting me spitting on me and the parents just lets them!! im sorry but thats NOT ok!!
Someone told me once that the only thing kids learn from spanking is that it’s alright for a bigger person to hit a smaller one. And I pretty much have to agree with that. Not that I’ve never spanked my kids, but when I did it never resulted in my kids listening better. Also, they are repeatedly told not to hit others, at home and at school. How is spanking then an exception for adults?
Sarah, I agree that I see a lot of today’s parents going the opposite direction. And I feel frustrated when I see parents “watching” their kids misbehaving and doing nothing about it. I usually have no problems verbally correcting these kids behavior ;)
You’ve hit on a nerve for many people. I’ve never seen moms come out of the woodwork on anything more than this issue on many of my yahoo groups. I sense that spanking moms feel they need to seriously defend themselves and any child who is not spanked will go to hell. Most of what they quote is from Proverbs, which is fine and good but I like to remind people that Solomon had 500 wives and 400 concubines with who knows how many children. So do we really think he was father of the year and we should sell the farm on his parenting thoughts? I’m not saying proverbs isn’t full of thoughtful wisdom but Christ’s example is far more valuable for us. He always dealt with children with tendeness and mercy, encouraging adults even to be more like a child. And his greatest commandment certainly should make us all think. And I tell my children “treat someone how u would want to be treated” and I can’t imagine when Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourself he meant we should go around smacking our kids and not expect them to do the same with others.
I totally agree that children should be corrected and disciplined. I hate when kids are out of control in public too. I don’t think that spanking is the answer though.
I agree, it does send a double standard about hitting others.
People really do get passionate about this don’t they? By the way, I’m speaking soon in the Detroit area. You should come!
Not to spank. I think if the Super Nanny has taught us anything, it is that spanking is unnecessary, even in the most dire of behavioral situations. The key to any behavioral modification is consistency. Sure, kids who have been spanked (myself included) turn out okay. But I remember feeling not so much hurt as humiliated.
I recently got into a spirited debate about it with this girl:
http://www.kingdomtwindom.com/2010/07/expert-answers-series-1-question-2.html#disqus_thread
Some people are just very defensive.
I gotta say I usually agree with you, but in this case, I don’t.
I grew up in a VERY abusive environment. I know what it’s like to get slapped around as a teen for asking a question. I do NOT do that to my children.
However, what I’m about to say might leave me with some hate mail… and I’m ok with that. We DO swat our kids. Our kids respond well to time-outs so that is our discipline of choice. But there are times when the degree of danger they get themselves in (like running into a busy street) or bad choices (like repeatedly landing in time-outs in ONE day) lead to a swat.
With that said, we have some guidelines.
(1) We never swat in anger. It’s usually after we’ve already sat down with them and talked about the upcoming consequence.
(2) We don’t swat till after the age of 2 when we KNOW they understand WHY they are getting this specific consequence.
(3) We never swat more than 3 times. Usually 1 swat makes the point.
(4) We only ever swat their bottoms.
I HAVE noticed that when we give swats (and it’s rare. you can ask the Goodwin’s who actually stayed with us for 2.5 months) the problems is RARELY ever repeated. In our pain, we remember.
I’m with Crystal. That photo above does NOT represent a child being reared up correctly. But that child could very well have been one that isn’t even being physically disciplined, but verbally abused.
This situation you talked about hurts my heart on a million levels… but the most painful is her saying, “i’m going to hit because she’s my daughter.” There is a HUGE difference between punishment and discipline. I will never punish or slap my child because he “kicked me” at 13 months of age. That’s ridiculous. But God has LOANED me my children… and though I fail on many levels, I do believe Brian and I are raising (and disciplining) them in ways that are honoring to God.
They’re not “MY” kids. They’re HIS kids that I’ve been given the privilege of overseeing till HIS return. So yes. I spank my kids (well… the oldest one for now). I believe it can be an appropriate form of discipline. And yes, I believe it’s biblical, even.
but sometimes, i believe it’s PART of the answer.
i believe in proper spanking too… but sometimes, it’s more than just not spanking. sometimes, the parent isn’t even disciplining… or doing their job… PARENTING. that’s a bigger annoyance.
I gotta say… I agree with every word of this.
Like I said in the post, I am very biased due to the amount of abuse I saw when I was in the counseling field. It’s left me somewhat of a black and white opinion on this. My job was part counselor, part investigator and the things I saw especially in child murder cases have impacted me.
That said, you are an amazing mom. Sooner or later the day had to come where we disagree ;)
This story made my heart hurt too. you’re so right about 13 months being ridiculous. She was far to young to understand what the discipline represented even if it was appropriate. The black eye scares me more than anything.
I haven;t seen Supper Nanny in ages! Is that even on any more?
One more thing about the story, I can’t believe that the flight attendant and Southwest took heat for this incident. I commend the flight attendant for intervening if the fact in this case really were as they have been reported. An open slap to the face of a baby with a black eye should not have been ignored, IMO.
agreed. if i had seen that, i would have intervened as well. or at least said something un-ignorable.
holla to my girl!
i can only imagine how it has impacted you… but just because you see it very black and white doesn’t mean it’s not a very gray matter. Just because your food is over-salted the one time you go to a restaurant doesn’t mean they oversalt at EVERY restaurant.
how you parent is your preference. how i parent is mine. neither of us are abusive. we are both raising our kids up to follow Jesus. and i believe we’re both doing it well. just because you don’t prefer to discipline with a swat doesn’t make the rest of us who DO choose that route (with good reason) sinners.
i’m sure that’s not what you meant in your post, but that was the overall tone both Brian and I received from it.
I really feel there is a huge difference between spanking and abuse. I was spanked a few times as a child, but it was always accompanied with a talk with my parents about the situation. I also believe it depends on the individual child. Spanking didnt have much effect on me cuz I was a stubborn little kid. My sister on the other hand was really sensitive and my parents never spanked her once. They knew just speaking with her in the “adult” voice was enough for her (that would have made me laugh)
I now live in a culture where even discipling your child is unacceptable, and kids are the most unbehaved, disrespectful children I have ever seen in my life. There must be some sort of discipline, spanking or not, to deal with children.
I’m a spanker…not just cuz I happen to believe it’s biblical, but because it works…..for us. NEVER would I slap my kids anywhere but their behinds and NEVER at 13 months old. I hate to think what I would have done if I were on that plane, witnessing the actions of this mother, but it probably would have landed me in jail.
I think the line is drawn when there is anger involved. I was spanked, many of my friends were spanked and we spank our children all of which were and are well-behaved, non-violent people. Never in anger, never in public. It’s always done with love and correction in a room on our own. It’s not even meant to hurt.
However, I do believe that consistency is more important and it’s possible to raise a child without it.
I have always quoted the verse about spare the rod. Your comments have made me want to research it further. However, there is too much overwhelming evidence that I’ve seen personally that spanking doesn’t hinder but helps for me to believe otherwise.
This story is about abuse. What happened on that plane is a mother lashing out in the moment, in anger toward her child – a baby, at that. That’s abuse. The surrounding discussion about spanking is a red herring. If you define “spanking” as what happened on the plane, who in their right mind would support that? Come on. I feel this is why it’s hard to have a good public discussion on the issue of spanking. Of course parents shouldn’t lash out physically in anger toward their children. Almost every parent I know who spanks does so in a very controlled, private, calm, and even loving manner. This is how I was spanked as a child. I was notified that my behavior would lead toward a spanking. If I persisted, I was removed from the situation calmly, usually by my dad. We would go into another room where he would quietly explain, or have me explain why I was going to be spanked. I was then swatted a few times on the behind, only enough to leave a sting, never a lasting mark. Then, my dad would tell me that he spanked me because he loved me and that he didn’t want to see me behave in ways that would be destructive for me in the future. EVERY spanking session ended with a hug and him telling me he loved me. He never once raised his voice, never once treated me roughly. I was never hit in anger. I don’t even consider those spankings “hitting.”
Parents who don’t spank can be abusive in their own ways. Yelling, harsh tones of voice, emotional alienation, etc. can be much more damaging than the scenario I just described. Any discipline can be administered with love or in anger.
That said, every parent who chooses to spank must place restrictions and boundaries on how they do it. Anger must be controlled in any discipline situation.
We are undecided on whether or not we’ll spank, but I just hate to see abusive practices labeled as spanking, and then all of spanking gets lumped into the same category. That really destroys any chance at good dialogue.
So, I just reread this and realized it sounds like I’m angry at you! Totally not. Just at the societal debate on the issue…. Just clarifying!
When I was a kid, I got spanked. Where ever the hand landed… meaning, back, head, face, arse, legs, where ever.
When I got older, I was still a pretty rotten kid. So I got hit harder, with more objects. Hairbrush, incense burner, paddle, shoe, pool stick, to name a few.
When I was 16, the day before I was 17, my mom picked up a garbage can and hit me on my spinal chord (at the base of my neck/head). It knocked me down 12 stairs, and I couldn’t feel my legs for 24 hours. I was hospitalized, and temporarily in a wheelchair.
The last time my mom ever hit me, it was full on flailing fists. She hit me for about a minute straight in the face. I do not hit women. I stood there, and when she stopped hitting me, I spit blood on the ground, and in the most serious tone I’ve ever used, I said, “You will never hit me again!” She burst in to tears and ran away. I walked out the door and didn’t talk to her for 3 years. My sister told me later that she was afraid I was going to come back and kill her, because of the look in my eye. (One was already swollen shut)
My point is this:
When you start with spanking, where do you stop? If spanking doesn’t work, do you grab a harder object? Do you punch? Do you kick? Do you knock them down the stairs? Do you hospitalize them?
I believe every child is different. And sometimes a spanking is probably necessary, but like Jenni said in her comment, there HAVE to be guidelines and accountability. My dad only hit me once. (it only took once) but he stood by and watched my mom beat the hell out of me on a weekly/daily basis. There has to be an understanding that it can’t be done while angry, and the parents have to back each other up while looking after the best interest of the child.
I’m rambling. Abuse is very real to me, I have scars (Emotionally and physically) that effect the way I think, and effect who I strive to be as a dad. My daughter is only 10 months old, so I don’t know how bad they can be yet.
All I can say is… before discipline takes place, there has to be an understanding of what the discipline will be, and how it will be carried out. ya dig?
Honestly, spanking falls in line with my view of God these days, which is “obey or I’ll hurt you”. Not surprised its embraced by so many Christian parents.
amen!
i’m so sorry for what you’ve endured. sounds like your mom had more issues than she would have ever admitted.
in everything we do… we MUST have boundaries. i don’t thing we should ever “swat/spank” with random objects. i believe that’s responding in anger… out of control… not thought out… abusive. that is NOT discipline.
your story sounds very similar to mine growing up. my mother was the abuser. my dad only spanked me a handful of times… and i still remember the reason for each and every one. purposeful. understood. deserved (if i should say so myself).
My mom absolutely had issues. I had since forgiven her, and my respect and love for her is enormous. She went through a lot in life.
I often wonder what my dad thinks about it today. He’s not ‘all’ there now, but I wonder if he ever regrets not stopping it when he could. Maybe he was just as scared of her as we were. (She was about 5 ft tall, and had a bite.
Boundaries are VERY important. I don’t know if I personally have the control to limit my boundaries of physical punishment, so, with that said, my boundary is not to spank. Time may change me, and that, but until I am 100% confident that I will never cross the ‘spank/swat’ boundary, I won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
However, I agree with EVERYTHING you said in your post above.
PS. I remember why my dad hit me too. It’s because I hit him. He was 300 pounds, and a heavy weight boxing champion of the Dallas Texas Police Force. He is cripple now, and I STILL will not ever think of hitting him. hehe.
It hurts my heart that you have that view of God right now. But, I understand. I’ve been there with God too.
Ugh. That made me so sad to read, my friend.
I didn’t think that at all. You’re so funny. P.S. Are we going to get together soon or what!?!?
I think I would have lost it too. I know Jesse would have.
My youngest daughter sounds a lot like you when you were a kid :)
Speaking as a child who was spanked, I think that it is a form of discipline. I remember when my parents would tell me to go lay on my bed and from then on I begged not to be spanked. Now that I think about it they always took a couple minutes to come in my room. I think they did this for two reasons
First to make us sweat it out and realize that we should not do that ever again
Second my parents would use this time to pray and relieve their anger.
When I was spanked they were never really hitting out of anger.
However spanking was not the only form of disciplines such as time out and consequences.
If I ever have kids I think I will do the same thing as my parents because it seemed to work for my other siblings and I.
Jenni, we are on the same page with discipline. I have a 4.5 year old who does respond well to time-outs and the removal of toys and privileges, but there are times when he is bound and determined to sin, so after all other attempts have failed we will give him swats (usually 3) on his clothed bottom. We also have a two-year old who (so far) will obey when I do the “count to 3″ thing.
Nicole, I also agree with most of your thoughts and I see where you are coming from. I was spanked as a child by both my parents and my step-father. Very rarely was it done out of love or at a time when they were not very angry.
The big problem with spanking (and why I don’t think people will ever stop doing it in an abusive way) is that so many people were spanked as children, and the believe that they “turned out okay.” I believe that if most people took an honest assessment of their lives they would see that they did not, in fact, turn out okay. But the mindset that my step-father had was that if it was done to him then he could do it to his children. (And with a decade of promiscuity, drugs and alcohol behind us, I guess we turned out okay, too.)
There was a great editorial in my hometown paper this past week about this very topic, and the author said that if the “spare the rod and spoil the child” mantra were true (in the way it’s thrown around today), then our prisons would be filled with people who were never spanked, and the medical schools would be filed with people who were.
I really disagree with any form of punishment that is meant to humiliate a child or has the intent to break their spirit. I don’t believe that discipline with those motives are in any way biblical, and they are abusive. But I do believe that when you know your child and you know their temperaments, that spanking in very rare and specific cases can be an effective tool for discipline. We call them “reminders,” and that’s just what they are, a reminder that sin brings consequences.
I also maintain that any type of effective, Godly parenting will only occur when we are seeking God’s guidance moment-by-moment, with face-in-the-carpet praying on a regular basis. There are so many ways we can screw our kids up, and the last thing I want to do is repeat the mistakes my parents made just because I think I turned out okay.
So – I don’t have kids so I can’t really have any credibility whatsoever on this – but I do have opinions. That’s always helpful, right?
I have a hard time with spanking. Really hard time. Where do you draw the line with what is acceptable spanking and what is abuse? Who defines it? What about the child – what if you have one child that is devastated with being spanked and can’t make the connection between behavior + spanking?
The best question I have ever heard a counselor ask is “What is the natural consequence of a certain action of a child?” If “spanking” is not the “natural” consequence, then it’s not the right response. In other words – how is spanking ever linked to disobedience? It’s not. So why use an aggressive response to respond to a disobedient child – does that not just teach them to be disobedient and aggressive too?
Find the natural consequence of the disobedient action and then use that. That – to me – seems like it would solve more things faster.
You and I share the same view.