As my private practice continues to grow, I find it has become more difficult to keep up with blogging. My new goal is to try to complete a new entry at least once per month. Here we go:

Parents often ask me about spanking: Is it o.k. to spank? Should I try another type of discipline? My child doesn’t respond to timeout—what should I do? And on and on…. It is a controversial topic and one on which many parents disagree.

After 30 years in public education and 1 ½ in private practice, I have never waivered in regards to my feelings about spanking. I don’t believe any type of physical hitting or violence is ever justified. Although my own children will tell you that I have raised my voice on more than one occasion when feeling an urgent amount of stress, I never resorted to hitting, spanking or any physical violence as they grew up. I think it’s fair to say that all parents want to raise kind, motivated, responsible, non-violent and confident children. It is my personal and professional belief that hitting and/or spanking actually undermines these goals.

Just this week, an article in the journal Pediatrics outlined the results of a study titled Spanking and Child Development Across the First Decade of Life, in which researchers examined the relationship between spanking and children’s behavior and vocabulary through age 9. Parental reports of spanking were assessed at ages 3 and 5, along with instances of aggressive behavior.

Overall, 57% of mothers and 40% of fathers engaged in spanking when children were age 3, and 52% of mothers and 33% of fathers engaged in spanking with children at age 5. Maternal spanking at age 5, even at low levels, was associated with levels of child aggressive behavior at age 9. Fathers’ high-frequency spanking of children at age 5 was associated with lower child receptive vocabulary scores at age 9.

The authors concluded that not only is spanking still used as a typical form of discipline by many American parents, but also that spanking has proven to have negative effects on both the behavior and cognitive development of young children.

I found this study to be interesting for several reasons: 1) The actual percentage of “spankers” was a bit higher than I realized; 2) Throughout my career, I have consistently counseled/educated/voiced my opinion to parents about the importance of NOT spanking, hitting or perpetrating any form of violence on their children, thus this study validated my beliefs; and 3) the study is current, had a large sample, and used a control population, deeming is scientifically sound.

Like many things, it’s easy to tell parents NOT to spank, but that’s just not enough—we must provide them education about other more healthy techniques for managing their children’s behavior (see my earlier posts about time-out, for example).

More emphasis needs to be placed on providing children the tools necessary to resolve conflicts without hitting, to manage stress in their lives, to learn empathy for others and to communicate and interact with others respectfully. Spanking is a short-term response that ultimately fails to teach children what we want them to learn over a long period of time.

So, if To Spank or Not to Spank is the question, the outcome of this study suggests that Not to Spank is most definitely the answer.

Please tell me how you feel about this topic by leaving a response above.  If you feel that you need to speak to a helping professional, contact me, your child’s teacher/school, or seek counseling from a reliable therapist. As always, thank you kindly for reading.