Spanking Children

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I read two sentences last week that really impacted me. The first ,“The more you whip your children the better they will turn out.” And “Love is not only an emotion. It is also a skill.” The first one just made me cringe. There is overwhelming evidence that that statement is not true. Yet it seems that many people do believe it and they argue (and even quote Bible verses to justify it) that spanking is a good option for parents. I regret to say that I did spank a couple of our children and even spanked a first grader in my first year of teaching.

When I did it and when many parents do it today they will say that it is an act if love and I do not argue against that. But I do want to point out that even though it may be motivated by love that does not justify it. Love is not enough. Love is also a skill. My experience is that most parents who spank do that because they have not learned other more suitable options. They believe that the only alternative to spanking is permissiveness. They are wrong.

In my many years of doing parent training around the world one important lesson I learned is that almost all parents do indeed love their children. I also learned that they have had no formal training in how to raise them. Thus they rely on what they recall about their own childhood, either copying or else rejecting how they were raised. In that process parents tend to move into one of two opposite directions: They become quite authoritarian relying on rewards and punishment, including spanking, or they go the other way and become entirely too permissive. Both approaches are ineffective. Incidentally, I noticed that this was most obvious in recent child raising practices in China. Under the former one-child policy each couple was permitted only one child. In some cases the parents said, “This is the only child we will ever have. We will give the child anything and everything he wants. We will never spank the child or deny them their way”. Other parents said, “This is the only child we will ever have. He will be the bearer of our family name. He must be an upright good citizen and we will ensure that by being very strict and super-controlling. Any misstep will be physically punished.”

There is, of course, a third way. It is the process I taught and still believe in called Parent Effectiveness Training. It teaches child-raising techniques based on mutual respect. It teaches parents how to listen when a child is experiencing a personal problem. It teaches effective non-punitive confrontation of unacceptable behavior. It provides skills for win-win solving of conflicts. It gives lessons in sharing values. With the incredible partnership with Jane that is how we raised our 5 children and how I hope they raised or are raising our 8 grandchildren and our great-grandson.