Should You Spank Your Misbehaving Child?

BY SOFO ARCHON

If you’re a parent, please don’t spank your children.

Sadly, even today, a significant portion of parents continue to do so. In the United States, for example, nearly one-third of parents report spanking their children every week. So why do they do that?

There are several reasons, but here is the most common one: to discipline them.

When a child does something a parent considers wrong, the parent may use spanking as a way to teach them not to repeat that behavior. This behavior could be anything—screaming or using curse words, performing poorly at school, talking back to elders, or simply not obeying.

In the minds of such parents, spanking is a great thing. It is one of those useful tools that help children grow into mature, responsible, decent human beings. Yet the truth couldn’t be further from that.

Numerous studies have shown that spanking can cause severe psychological trauma, resulting in emotional pain, shame, resentment, anger, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

This makes perfect sense when you think about it. To a child, spanking doesn’t feel like a good thing at all. Rather, it feels like abuse. For spanking hurts, both physically and emotionally, inflicting wounds that can last for a lifetime.

Research has even revealed that spanking can alter brain function in ways similar to severe maltreatment—so detrimental can it be to a child’s well-being.

In addition, studies show that children who are spanked frequently tend to become aggressive and learn to resolve interpersonal problems through violence.

Consider this: if a child hits a sibling and the parent spanks them for it, what message is being sent? That violence is the way to handle conflict.

Of course, the child might stop hitting their sibling out of fear of being caught and punished again, but they won’t understand what the issue with violence is or how to behave better from now on. And if they find a way to avoid getting caught, nothing will stop them from hitting their sibling again.

Children who are regularly spanked also tend to experience shame and low self-esteem. They may see themselves as bad, unworthy of love, and undeserving of kindness or respect. This can lead them to believe that they are helpless cases who can’t do any better, leaving them unmotivated to correct or improve their behavior.

And considering that shame is one of the root causes of violence (if you didn’t already know, research shows that behavioral violence is often a desperate attempt to cope with or counteract feelings of shame), it becomes crystal clear how toxic spanking can be—not just to the individual, but for society as a whole.

Spanking children to “discipline” them, therefore, is not only ineffective but also counterproductive. Perhaps needless to say, it can also damage the relationship between parents and children, as children stop trusting those who purposefully and repeatedly abuse them.

If you are a parent, please don’t spank your children. Instead, educate yourself about nonviolent methods to teach your children healthy behaviors, and try your best to implement them. Many such methods exist and are quite effective.

Above all, lead by example, for that’s what teaches children more than anything else. To children, parents are their role models, and if they embody hatred, meanness, and violence, then those are the traits children will most likely adopt. On the contrary, if their role models embody love, kindness and compassion, then children will most likely become loving, kind and compassionate themselves.