The problem(s) with spanking kids January 3, 2008
There’s an essay in Babble today from a father who vowed never to spank but broke that vow.
I doubt there is a parent on the planet who hasn’t lost it and smacked their kid. I know I have. I once smacked preschooler J. on the lower back (I was aiming for her bum), and I have grabbed my kids too harshly on more than one occasion.
I have also gone out in my yard and walked in circles to keep from beating the tar out of them, and I’ve cried into my pillow to stop myself from hollering unspeakable things at them. I’ve called my sister and asked her if I could say to her the things I felt like saying to my teenage son.
But despite my numerous failures as a mother - and there are lots - I continue to be happy with my conscious decision to leave spanking out of my bag of chosen parenting tricks.
I am sure C will test my patience in all kinds of new ways, and I’ll have to come up with new strategies for parenting her. But I still won’t be hitting her.
Here’s something I wrote about it. It’s an essay that serves as the opening for Hilary Flower’s wonderful book, Gentle Discipline.
The Discipline of Gentle Discipline
by Katie Allison Granju
Sometimes, I really, really feel like hitting my kids.
There, I’ve said it out loud.
It’s not something I felt comfortable telling people in my earliest years as a mother. I was afraid that my occasional urges to grab, scream at, shake or whack my children meant that there was something wrong with me. I was afraid these urges meant that I could never be the kind of gentle, attached mother I wanted to be. And mostly, I was afraid I might lose control and actually do the things I sometimes felt like doing.
Now that I’ve got some parenting experience under my belt –my children are 13, 9 and 6 years old - I am less afraid of the powerful and angry feelings each of them can sometimes evoke in me. I am also less afraid to admit those feelings. I have come to discover that virtually all mothers, including the ones whose mothering I most admire, sometimes feel the urge to smack one of their kids upside the head, or at least turn them over their knee.
The problem is that far too many people give in to those urges, and that as a culture, we continue to believe that “spanking” - our benign-sounding euphemism for hitting children - continues to enjoy widespread acceptance as an effective and humane way of guiding children.
But spanking isn’t effective or humane. Study after study has demonstrated that parents who spank do not raise healthier, more productive, or more mentally sound adults than those who do not. In fact, the opposite is more often true. Yet many otherwise thoughtful and loving parents continue to buy into the myth that spanking offers important benefits, and that it’s an inevitable part of parenting.
I knew before I gave birth for the first time that I didn’t want to use corporal punishment to guide my kids, but when I would tell people this, they would respond with, “Oh, you say that now!” with a knowing grin, assuming that I would eventually give up on this ridiculous idea of gentle discipline. But I didn’t give up on it.
I readily admit that I have not been perfect in my goal of gentle discipline. I have screamed at, threatened, and come very close to hitting my children on more than one occasion, but these behaviors have never found a permanent place in my parenting toolbox.
I will never forget the one time I did totally lose it and hit one of my children. It happened when my daughter was about three years old and had decided she would no longer wear clothing. At all. Ever.
We were late for some event and I had gotten her completely dressed, but when I went to scoop her up and dash out the door, she was stripped back down to her underwear. At this point, I snapped and smacked her on her rear end. Except I missed her very small bottom and my hand instead landed on her lower back, where it left a red, hand-shaped mark.
She stared at me in horror, having never been struck in her life. I stared back in equal horror. Then she said to me in a small, quavering voice I will never forget, “Mama, why did you hit me?” I burst into tears and held her and rocked her and assured her that I was very, very sorry and that she could trust me to never hit her again. I told her that it was never okay for anyone to strike her.
That night, as I tried to fall asleep, I couldn’t get the incident out of my mind. I realized that I certainly did not want my daughter to grow up believing that sometimes, under the “right” circumstances, she deserved to be hit by the people she loves. I reaffirmed my vow to myself that I would raise my children without violence.
Despite several near-misses over the years - times when I have had to leave the room, scream into a pillow, or take deep breaths and count to ten to avoid lashing out at my children - it’s a vow I have managed to keep. And wonder of wonder, it’s working.
My children are polite, well-behaved (most of the time), thoughtful people. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and when people compliment me on the kids’ behavior, I always make a point to say that I don’t spank them. And on the days when one of them is making me feel like sticking my head in the oven, I find that it helps for me to vent to friends who have children even older than mine - parents who also avoid physical punishment - so these mothers and fathers can remind me how well their kids have turned out,without spankings or other harsh disciplinary methods.
This is why I recommend that parents of very young children who want to avoid punitive and physical discipline methods spend time around parents of older children who hold the same views. On the days when your toddler is making you insane and you feel ready to pull out the wooden spoon for a few swats on a diapered bottom, it helps to see the end product of gentle discipline: kids who behave well because they trust and believe in their parents’ guidance, not because they are afraid they will be slapped, spanked or worse.
As for whether spanking is a humane method of discipline, it is not. The fact that so many parents continue to employ corporal punishment doesn’t make it any more humane. After all, it wasn’t so many decades ago that many people believed that, should a husband feel it necessary, he had the right to strike his wife.
One of these days, our attitudes about hitting kids, the most vulnerable members of our families, will similarly evolve so that we will look back on the practice of “spankings” as another form of domestic violence. These are strong words, but I believe them.
Getting through the days, the weeks and eventually, the years of parenting without using physical discipline is, in itself a discipline. I find that having made the promise to myself that I will not resort to hitting provides me with the parenting “North Star” I can use to re-orient myself when I feel angriest. And I have also found that when I am feeling most out-of-control in my parenting, it’s a signal to me that something else is going on in my life, something that needs some of my attention and reflection.
In picking up this important book by Hilary Flower, you have taken a first step in finding your own parenting “true north. In it, you will find many specific ideas and strategies for raising healthy, happy, well-behaved children using gentle discipline that really works.
And remember, on the really hard days, there’s always the tried and true method of finding a place in your home where no one can hear you, closing the door, and screaming at the top of your lungs until the urge to throttle your child passes, at least for the moment.
Copyright Katie Allison Granju — 2004 — All Rights Reserved
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And here’s a wonderful essay my friend Jeannie Ouellette wrote on the same topic. A quote:
That’s the thing about being fully committed to not hitting your children (or any other family member, for that matter) — it completely clarifies your position and your priorities. Despite all your other failings and fits of temper, whatever they may be, you will not deliberately cause your children physical discomfort or pain, and you will not perpetuate violence as a solution. As much as it challenges you to find other, more effective approaches to guiding your children, it frees you from the tyranny of decisions about when violence is justified, and how much violence is appropriate.
When I look at my daughter playing in the room beside me, I know that hitting her purposefully as a response to unacceptable behavior is a ludicrous concept, and one that she herself, having never been stricken in the name of justice, and having heard her entire life that hitting is wrong, would recognize as inherently unjust. I wish every child could grow up with an intact sense of physical integrity and dignity.
When I told someone that I do not believe in spanking my son, she told me that I would have a different point of view if my son was a “certain kind of kid.” I guess that implies that gentle disciplinarians who have nice kids are actually acting out of willful ignorance? Huh?
Franky,I find the whole argument proposing that some kids MUST get hit because they respond to nothing else indicative of lazy parenting. It sounds a lot like the “There are black people and there are n*ggers” argument. On that note, I hope that future generations regard spanking the way that our generation regards slave-holding and, for that matter, spousal abuse.
Well, my kids are sometimes “that kind of kid.” The boys in particular can sometimes really try my patience. But I still don’t think hitting them would be effective, humane or give them the right kind of message about who I want them to be.
-Katie
While I totally agree that striking a child is not the answer, it seems to me that the Gamble parents are doing as much to damage their child by NOT PARENTING HER as corporal punishment would cause. While allowing for comic license, it appears he is describing a child who is reacting to a serious lack of limits. This is neglect. Neglect is abuse, just as much as spanking is abuse.
Great post, and thank you for sharing those essays.
They are definitely great reading! I just found you and hope you don’t mind me checking out your blog. 
I do spank my children, but it is always in a loving and controlled way. I have NEVER hit my children in anger. If they are in need of a spanking, and I am too angry to do it, I won’t. But, I can not tell you how many times people have come up to me and asked me why my children are so well behaved. I have three girls 6, 3 1/2, and 22 months. All of you mothers know that these are not easy ages. I also home school so I am always with them. They know that they are loved and know that their parents would never hurt them. I’m sorry that our society has turned spanking into something that parents do out of anger and end up essentially abusing their children. But, every time my DH or I do spank our children we spend that time alone with that child, and we don’t leave the situation until they are able to tell us why they got the spanking, ask for forgiveness and then are forgiven. We walk away from that room laughing and smiling. They, in that moment, know that they are very loved.
I told my bitch of a mother-in-law once that we feel that it is NEVER acceptable to hit a child as a means of punishment (or any other reason).
She looked at us, aghast. “Slapping is perfectly acceptable as a means of discipline,” she sniffed. “If you had children, you’d know that.”
I looked her right in the eye and said, “Slapping is just one short movement of the fingers and thumb to punching. And if you had my kind of childhood, you’d know that.”
A large part of the reason why I have opted to forgo motherhood in my own life is the “discipline” with which I was raised. I believe it to be cyclical, and I would rather die than continue the cycle with my own kids. I have a very bad temper. I didn’t want to run the risk of visiting it upon my own children.
I was spanked as a child. My mother feels “it is sometimes the only way to get a child’s attention”. I feel if that is the only way you can get their attention, then you do not deserve their attention. My hubby and I have made the conscious decision not to hit our daughter. There have been a couple of times I’ve had to hold myself back from it. She is 3 1/2. She is a really, really good kid and I am so blessed, but as with all little ones, there are moments she tries my patience. I am not proud of the way I have yelled at her a couple of times. I am glad it has only been a couple of times. I read the book “Gentle Discipline” when she was younger. Great book.
I noted Ms Ouellette’ statement about being “freed from decisions about when violence is appropriate”. Sounds like a nice sound bite. However, I wonder what her feelings would be if someone broke into her house and was standing over her children with a baseball bat. Would she try and make nice with them? Call 911 and let them do the dirty work (of course they would arrive after its too late, even under the best of circumstances). Or would she chuck her “no violence ever ever ever” rule and chuck a lamp at the guys head or kick him hard in the nads???? Just to say, very very VERY few things in life are this black and white. Complete nonviolence sounds dandy until others stand to be harmed far far more by your nonviolent stand. I realize this has very little to do with discipline of children other than her tangential reference to “never having to decide if violence is warranted”. But it does bring up an interesting topic.
I have to say Ms Ouellette’s wondering why people are so closeted about spanking if it is so great…all I could think of as I read her piece was “uh yeah…cause no one wants to be called a child abuser by someone like you, that’s why people are secretive about it unless it’s anonymous”. Alicia is one brave woman to publically cop to spanking her kid. As for the two women above who were spanked and see it as part of their parents pathology: I think you have both shared enough about the interactions with your mothers to make it abundantly clear that what went on in your homes could hardly be defined as carefully thought out and applied discipline. Based on statements you have made in the past about your mothers, even if they never laid a hand on you, they would have been screwed up and managed to screw you up. It is like comparing apples and oranges to compare your parents interaction styles with a parent who may have felt a spanking was appropriate in a very rare situation. That said, I hate people like James Dobson who think spanking is the action for everything. Those kids DO turn out really messed…their parents spanked them for just about every minor infraction. Something is wrong when people have to spank their kids a few times every day. But I would hardly equate that with a parent faced with a particularly sassy kid who is trying to see just how far they can push it and then decides that a spanking might just fill the bill. I honestly thought that people who don’t believe any child should be spanked ever might have a point until I read a curriculum that a non spanker was using. (for the curious among you it is called “The S.T.E.P. curriculum) The
“consequences” that they advocated as an alternative to spanking seemed far more cruel that a quick one two to the butt. (example: a kid who has been practicing all year for a band concert sasses his mother on the way to the concert. His punishment is to miss the concert, degrade all the work he has done and have to explain to his buddies why he had to let them down..).a lot of people who refuse to spank, I have found, have absolutely no problem visiting mind games onto their kids as an alternative. they recognize that there ARE children who are motivated not by trying to please, but by finding that boundary. They recognize that setting the line can require something a wee bit stronger than telling the kid that “mommy doesn’t like it when you do that” so instead of an over and done with spanking…they do something that is far meaner in the kids eyes. You cannot compare a sadistic freak who is venting their anger at the world on their kid with a parent genuinely looking at the best ways to instill in their children the concepts of limits and boundaries. And to say that “if you have nurtured the right relationship then you child will obey because he WANTS to, not out of fear” is very inaccurate. It ignores individual personalities. SOME kids will want to obey out of love for their parents but some of them are just wired to see how far they can go till something happens. My general impression is that the smarter they are, the more they kind of push that limit. A generalization to be sure. And for many many kids, that desire to please doesn’t come around until they are much much older. As little kids they may love you to pieces yet still try and push it as far as they can. It is one thing to encourage people to try other stuff instead of seeing spanking as the answer to every issue with their kid, every bit of wrongdoing. It is quite another to label the person who believes in the occasional swat to the butt in an extreme situation as a child abuser. I am not at all surprised what with people like Jeannie Ouellette stating their opinions very very publically that parents who do believe, even theoretically, that occasional spanking can be warranted are very very quiet about it.
I don’t believe in spanking, and I’m glad that it has been illegal here in Sweden since 1979. I can not see that our youth has become any worse since that law came into effect.
I’m sort of agnostic about spanking myself. I think the debate’s become a bit too polarized with zealots on both ends of the spectrum. On one hand are the people who say that if you don’t spank, you’re going to end up with a godless heathen who shoots up the schools a la Columbine. On the other hand, there are those who say if you do spank… why, you’re going to end up with a godless heathen who shoots up the schools a la Columbine.
My daughter is only ten months old, so I can honestly say that I’m not sure I’ll use physical discipline as she gets older. I would probably lean away from it: if I used it at all, it would probably be only for situations in which she might endanger herself and needed to learn the meaning of “no,” ex. running into a busy street. But even if I never spank at all, I won’t condemn parents who spank non-abusively (NOTE: I don’t believe in spanking for every little offence, in using pipe cleaner wiring, etcetera). So if I do spank, I can’t say I’m a hypocrite who condemned spanking but then used it when it suited me.
Addendum: I read the story about the man who broke his vow of never spanking (this story might tell even people who aren’t religious that they should take Jesus’ warning about not taking oaths to heart). It sounds like the daughter has serious problems, so maybe he should take her to a child psychologist.
Amazing article! Thank you. It isn’t easy being peaceful all the time.