Macaroni Kid Reader Asks:
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but there are times I’ve spanked my son when I’ve been at my wits end with his behavior. It sometimes makes him shape up for a day or two, but I end up feeling pretty bad about it. My parents spanked me when I broke rules and I don’t seem to be damaged for life! Is it okay to spank occasionally?
Noël Janis-Norton
Spanking is a pretty controversial discipline strategy. Recent research reveals that three out of four parents admit to having spanked their children at some point, so you’re certainly not alone. Most of these parents feel guilty, as you do, because they spanked in a moment of stress, impulsivity and desperation.
Sometimes parents don’t know a better way to handle the misbehavior. And sometimes you may know in theory what to do differently, but you don’t know how to stay calm enough in the face of persistent misbehavior to do it consistently.
In the moment, spanking may or may not help our kids to behave, but it doesn’t help them want to cooperate in the future, which is really the purpose of any consequence. Our focus needs to be on developing sensible habits, not just on getting them to stop right now.
Without getting into a moral argument, here are a few reasons why spanking is an ineffective strategy. It can generate a distrust or even fear of us, and we don’t want our children to behave out of fear. We want our children to behave because they’ve internalized the right thing to do.
We also know that kids imitate their parents, so spanking sets the example that it’s OK to hit as a solution to problems and to get what you want. And if the spanking is occasional, which is usually the case, then by definition it’s an ineffective method of discipline because it’s not a consistent consequence. Our kids need to be able to predict how we’ll react – it helps them feel secure when they know the limits.
Most parents would rather not spank their kids. The good news is that spanking is completely unnecessary when you know more effective strategies.
A mom who attended one of my seminars told us this story:
“When my son was 4, he threw a block at his sister, and it hit her in the face. I didn’t react well. We were in a rush, trying to get out the door for his sister’s recital, so I wasn’t in a calm place. I was stressed, our daughter was screaming in pain, and I just reacted without thinking and ended up spanking my son - something I’d never done before.
I remember Noël saying that if you’ve got kids who are more sensitive, they may remember being spanked for years, and that was certainly the case for us. My son is very sensitive, and he’s never forgotten it – even eight years later. I still feel guilty about it. Clearly responding to his impulsive aggressive behavior with my own aggressive behavior wasn’t teaching him anything good.
Since then we do ‘action replays’ whenever one of our kids behaves inappropriately. Once he’s calm, we’ll have him do the action replay where we re-enact the scenario and he has to respond in a more positive way. What we really like about action replays is how they end discipline positively and actually teach our kids the right thing to do.”
An ‘action replay’ is the most useful consequence I know of to improve future behavior. It’s a far more effective strategy than an angry scolding, a lecture or a spanking. It always ends all discipline on a positive note, and it wipes the slate clean because the incident ends with your child behaving appropriately. At that point you can Descriptively Praise your child for doing it right, “You were really angry at your sister, but this time you didn’t throw anything at her; you just yelled, and that’s much better than throwing or hitting.”
Just having a tool that you know is more effective will help you to stay calmer in the face of misbehavior. It’s when we don’t know what else to do that we tend to react in ways that aren’t helpful. If you start using the other core skills I teach such as Descriptive Praise, Preparing for Success and Reflective Listening, you will also greatly reduce the amount of misbehavior you’ll have to deal with so that consequences rarely become necessary!
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