This week we’re tackling an incredibly sensitive and divisive subject: spanking as a form of discipline. Four women have agreed to share with us the reasons why they chose to spank their children, or why they opted not to. This series is not meant to convince anyone that spanking is either right or wrong, but rather to give us each the chance to hear from mothers who have chosen different from us. It also gives us the opportunity to thoughtfully reflect on (and possibly re-evaluate) how we’ve chosen to parent our own children. Find all installments from this series here.
I will be totally honest, I hesitated to write on the subject of spanking for obvious reasons.
In this cultural age, the idea of spanking has been tossed around and made to be something that I know it was never intended to be. When you use the term, often it creates an image of physical harm, neglect, and extreme discipline in someone else’s mind. It has been equated with abuse, which was never what it was supposed to be.
And while there have certainly been cases when people have taken spanking too far, I do believe that in many instances, it is a loving, and appropriate, form of discipline.
In raising my own children, I agonized a bit when they reached the age of them exercising their own will and my having to correct them. I knew that it was a fine line to walk of allowing them to grow and flourish and become the person that God intended them to be, while also guiding them and teaching them in the hopes that they would become adults who love and serve Him.
What I eventually realized is that as a mother, it is my job to model Christ-like love to my kids. And in doing so, I must deal out discipline to them that is loving, appropriate, and filled with grace. When I’ve thought about the consequences I have experienced at the hand of God, sometimes they have been painful. Pain, in the case of discipline, is often a very effective deterrent for disobedience.
Now hear me clearly, I am not advocating in any way, shape, or form for hurting your children for the sheer purpose of hurting them. I am not giving the okay to beat your kids. There is a massive difference between spanking done properly and abuse.
Instead, I am advocating for a form of discipline that allows the parent and child to have an understanding of each other, in the sense of boundaries and limits, in which when the child crosses a clearly set boundary, there is a consequence.
Spanking is not a discipline method for every sort of misbehavior. In my opinion, this is something reserved only for cases of direct disobedience. Spanking is also not an all-ages discipline. There reaches an age of a child when spanking becomes ineffective in comparison to other methods. I am a huge advocate for natural consequences being the first, most effective means of discipline, but there are cases when that isn’t appropriate.
For example, if my child has decided to start running off on me when we are in public places, particularly parking lots, the natural consequence would be to allow them to receive whatever injury would come from that behavior. Of course, we know this is extreme and not acceptable. Instead, my response would be to safely gather my child, and assuming that a clear warning was given before, to administer a spanking either in the enclosed car, or when we arrived home.
Now, when I say spanking, I am not meaning that all that’s involved is a swat on the bottom and move on. Instead, there is a whole process that I personally follow that I would recommend in order to properly discipline as well as grow the relationship of my children and I. Modeled partly on the list that Chip Ingram provides in his article, The Biblical Approach to Spanking, this is the basics of how we approach spanking in our home.
1) Warning is given.
I want to make sure that my children are warned ahead of time what is expected of them and how I will respond in a case of disobedience. For example, my two-year-old has been asked not to run in the kitchen because it is unsafe. On the first occurrence, I would say to him, preferably at eye-level so that I know he is hearing me, “Please do not run in the kitchen because it is not a safe place for running.” Then, let him continue on with his day.
2) Gauge your heart.
Children can make frustrating choices, particularly if they seem to repeat the same ones over and over again. I don’t know about you, but many times I have been frustrated out of my mind and have raised my voice or said things that I regret. This is NOT the appropriate time or tone for a spanking. The last thing that you want to do is spank out of anger. Your job is to lovingly dole out discipline, so if that means you need to take a moment to gather yourself, do it. Spanking out of anger only damages, it does not guide and teach.
3) Make it clear what they have done wrong.
I never want to punish my child and have them wondering why. This eliminates the effectiveness of the discipline completely. Continuing with the same example, I would excuse my child to their room and have them wait for me. I will give them a moment, and then meet them in their room and ask, “What did you do wrong?” Of course, a two-year-old will not be able to answer as well as a four or five-year-old can, so you could say something along the lines of, “Did you run in the kitchen after Mommy asked you not to?” This helps them make the connection between their behavior and the consequence.
4) Administer only enough of a spanking that it stings.
As Chip said in his article, a good gauge is to take whatever you are using to administer the spanking and flick your wrist. It should hurt, but not extensively.
5) Receive your child in love afterwards.
I always offer my child my lap immediately after a spanking. Generally, they come to me with a few tears and I hold them quietly for a time, allowing them to feel the emotions that come with receiving a discipline.
6) Talk it through.
Once they have calmed, ask them if they are ready to talk with you. In this moment, I generally reiterate what their choice was and how disobedience not only hurts my heart, but God’s heart. Depending on the age of my child, I will talk a little bit about how God says that we are to choose obedience, and that obeying brings blessings. Make sure that when you are talking, your child is receptive to you. If they are still resisting and not wanting to listen, give them some more time to process.
7) Pray and model forgiveness.
This is something that I struggled to implement because for a long time I didn’t know how to pray in these situations. However, I know that their sin is not only against me, but against God. Older children can be guided to pray and seek forgiveness from God, younger ones can listen as you pray. As you have them seek your forgiveness as well, be ready to forgive bountifully. Model to them how you want to be forgiven when you wrong someone else.
8) Pick up and move on.
Now is the time for a hug, a kiss, and to move on with your day. As soon as you leave that moment, no more talking about the issue, no more rehashing it with them. Of course, if the issue continues, you will need to stay consistent, but aside from that, it’s time to continue on and leave it in the past
All in all, I do believe that spanking, when done in love, can be a wonderful and helpful form of consequence in a child’s life. If you would like more information on discipline techniques, I would highly recommend the entire series on discipline written by Chip Ingram on Focus on the Family, as he makes a great effort to point each aspect of discipline back to God and the design for parenting.
What about you? How do you feel about spanking as a form of discipline?
Do you spank as a form of discipline in your family? Why or why not? Differing opinions are always welcome, but kindness and respect are expected when commenting.
I realize not all parents believe they have emotional scars from their own childhood spankings, but I have met many who have, and I have as well. When the reasoning is a self-perception that all was helpful in ones own moral formation from the experience of being spanked as a child AND it appears as a result of one’s own parents following Biblical teaching to use spanking no amount of harmful testimonies from others can convince a parent to stop spanking. My mother did and was motivated by the spiritual and moral motivations I mentioned and it mimics the motivation of the author. What I will say is there is a vast degree of emotional pain and trauma by way of the method used to spank. Everyone focuses on the degree of forced used to spank as the measure of helpful deterrent of bad behavior verses abuse. The definition of spanking is so blindly vague almost on purpose culturally it hides many other forms of psychological damage. The long process of explaining and discussing and amount of forced used and the comforting and forgiveness that is offered after the spanking makes it all sound so spiritually beautiful and bonding for parent and child. But many techniques of a parent spanking a child don’t address the intent and impact emotionally. It is viewed as one would view oneself a sinner before God, guilty and fearful. Why do we want our children to be afraid? So they fear punishment for bad behavior, but children rely on a parent for all protection and the basics to survive so when we decide to cause them some short time of fear and uncomfortable pain, the child not yet an adult is seeing not this punishment as discipline, but rather perhaps deep fear to a point of near death. That experience is called trauma. Secondly many instances with the vagueness of describing spanking leave out a key damaging aspect of emotion, shame and humiliation. Spiritually parents want this experience to be felt in a degree of context for disobedience, for in many instances this is how Christian faith tells us we are to view ourselves as sinner before God. The problem is many forms of spanking are highly ritualized and very often include commanding positioning and forced degrees of nudity and intimate body exposure. Think about it! This scenario then becomes humiliating, terrifying, and traumatic, and it can, but not always depending on the touching and undressing, bring in sexual sensations. I was too young to understand at pre age 10 what I was feeling that was so pleasant as I was my pants were unbuttoned, and slowly pulled down, and then hands slowly pulling down underwear to be exposed before an opposite gender authority figure. Give this same corporal punishment context with a spanker parent to a spanked child in an adult situation of an attacker raping a woman? See the similarities? Perhaps you will refuse to see it as the same, even so, the emotions of fear, sexual violation, and humiliation are the VERY SAME! This is a recipe for creating not only PTSD, but sexual confusion in the child, and most often a moral Christian will have deep moral repressive feelings to block any sexual thoughts with their child, but that does not help the sexually harmed child. I’ve heard all the parental arguments about child nudity being a part of parenting family life for necessary hygiene, health care, and medical needs. Most of not all of those references involve less fear, less humiliation because it’s not a punishment context, and less sexual shame or arousal. It’s a difficult controversial topic to put sex and spanking in the same sentence unless we are two consenting adults who enjoy “Fifty Shades of Grey”. I challenge you to read Dr. Patrick Carnes book, “The Betrayal Bond”, in it he explains the origins of sadomasochism, child abuse, not viewed as such, trauma never quite seen or believed that happened from spanking. Many adults live with some degrees of such desires but Dr. Carnes a world renown addiction counselor explains they are living with a form of sexual addiction from that childhood trauma. The spanking that disturbed a child’s sexuality as this early age found and connected the dots with being punishes with spanking and sex. Most often in secret not to be explored until later in life. But it can become an compulsive sexual need. More frightening is the fact many parents developed this betrayal bond addiction and don’t truly understand it’s origins and find it odd and misunderstood. Except if it becomes a deep repeating need, then a partner in the bedroom can help, but sadly so can a secret life of shame with it that requires they as parents do what their parents did for discipline, what their faith sacred texts command of them. To obey Gods command to spank their children for misbehavior and despite the strong sexual taboo between parent and child, a parent can secretly release some of the sexually addictive calling they are trapped with from their own sexual trauma, by ritually spanking their own children, thus endangering them with the very same sexual disturbances they suffered as a child. This is how sexual addictions can pass from one generation to the next. I have a link to a case in real life where this discovery of sexual abuse intersects with child spanking that got the parent put in jail if any one disbelieves my claims. I also have a link to a anti-child abuse web site where I share my story and the own of the site shares her story how she witnessed her mother spank her brother and later found out the mother was “acting out” an adult BDSM fantasy in the manner she had punished her son. Please pass this sad but very well undisscussed aspect of spanking children on to others! We need to ban all spanking as there are other ways to teach and discipline children that spare them their body dignity and don’t cycle sexual abuse and later adult sexual addictions with spanking or other forms of sadomasochism. I apologize if the topic is too graphic, but the experience of many children involves a degree of forced nudity and our parent adult culture wants to continue to believe is had no impact on them, which is a lie.
I’m 69, so I grew up at a time when child spanking was practically commonplace. Children’s bottoms were essentially understood to be available for corrective warming and reddening. My mother and my oldest sister were my nominal disciplinarians, but while they sometimes threatened to spank, I was only ever punished by the withdrawal of their affection.
Never getting the spankings I deserved (for such transgressions as stealing, lying, being rude and playing with matches) made it that much harder for me to learn the critical lesson of Actions & Consequences. When I was eight and our mother was away at Teachers College, my 16-year-old sister (after I’d been caught stealing the change from my sisters’ coat pockets) threateningly asked me if I wanted her to pull down my pants and paddle my bare bottom. I’m quite sure I declined to be spanked, but it simply should’ve been done. I knew how wrong it was to steal, but being told how close I came to getting a bare bottom spanking failed to keep me from eventually stealing again.
When I was 14, I amused myself one afternoon in the basement of our new home by setting paper airplanes on fire. In a matter of hours, a real fire broke out in a corner filled with cardboard boxes from moving. The fire department had to be called, and we were out of the house for several months while repairs were made.
Even though the fire was ultimately said to have started electrically, my reckless naughtiness somehow became known. Surely it was worthy of serious punishment, but I don’t recall even getting so much as a smack. As shy and sensitive a boy as I was, I know my mother had qualms about spanking me. Still, depriving me of spankings did me a developmental disservice. I have to wonder if a boy of 14, who’d been raised with occasional spankings, would ever have entertained the notion of playing with fire.
I’ve never been a parent, but I do believe child spanking has real value as a disciplinary option. A healthy child’s bottom can be safely and soundly smacked across the lap of adult authority. My emotional development suffered by my never being meaningfully punished as a boy…never getting the spankings I deserved. The experience of having their bottom properly warmed (over-the-knee with pants down) leaves every growing child with a clear choice thereafter; they can either behave or be spanked.
To her credit, my mum did say in her later years that she would spank me if she had it to do over again. Our relationship in my teens was sometimes quite awkward, I think because we both recognized the times when I should’ve been turned over her knee and taught a lesson – as only a good old-fashioned spanking can do.