Spanking your kids yes or no?

Spanking your kids is creepy. Spanking is something you should do to your wife in bed.

Nooooooo way! All research points towards spanking leading to aggressive behaviour, lowered self confidence and even depression and anxiety problems later in life. No way would I ever hit my child.

Spanking did't work to deter me from being bad because I usually thought about it ahead of time and determined a few minutes of pain was worth the bad thing I wanted to do :laugh:

Nooooooo way! All research points towards spanking leading to aggressive behaviour, lowered self confidence and even depression and anxiety problems later in life. No way would I ever hit my child.

Yes. Social science research.

Anyone else have trouble saying those three words together without laughing?

We elected NOT to spank. I spent my childhood walking around with welts. My parents did not know moderation. No spanking at my house. (I received my last spanking at age 22 years old. That's a bit too old for a spanking, don't you think!?)

But, go on hitting your kids. You show them who is bigger and stronger. The bully at the school beating up all the smaller kids, that's your kid.

Look at a bully kid, then look at their parents. Typically, there's a very strong correlation there.

Do you have a study to support this line of bull? My siblings and I were all spanked, as was my wife. Not a bully in the bunch.

This is what makes these threads so fun to watch. So many people pulling stuff out of their rear

What makes them funny is people that ignore the research.

Please share this research connecting spanked kids to becoming bullies. I suspect that there are thousands on this site alone that were spanked that never bullied anyone

Spanked and not a bully! Do you seriously believe that?

No.

How are we supposed to instill in our children that violence is not how to deal with our problems if we ourselves use violence to deal with problems?

No.

Where I live, corporal punishment is prohibited in schools and the home. (Established 1987) Based on how the country is running, you don't need to spank your children to raise them well.

good discipline is not about whether you hit your kids or not.

it is about whether you lay down clear boundaries and consistently give out negative consequences for overstepping them.

hitting a kid does not automatically make them behave. some of the worst behaved kids I've known, three of whom I actually banned from my house because they were so naughty, were regularly hit by their parents. But there was no consistency. They'd play up and play up and play up until their parent(s) snapped and hit them. They learned to misbehave as much as they could get away with, and just avoid getting caught, or get out of the way if their mother was in a bad mood. Hitting kids does not magically make them behave. Clear boundaries and consistently applied consequences does.

I don't hit my kids because I don't see any point to it. They have other consequences, what i make sure is if they break a rule, they get a consequence. I very rarely have to give out actual consequences, because my kids know that if they don't comply, then the consequence will happen. I just warn them once, and they comply. Giving out empty threats, or giving too many chances (e.g. several warnings before a consequence) results in kids trying to get away with as much misbehaviour as they can. Hitting can be a consequence, but other consequences work just as well. My kids have other consequences like the naughty corner, having toys taken away for a period of time, loss of privileges, that kind of thing. I don't see the need to hit them at all.

And some punishments I use I think are quite a lot harsher than hitting them, and they tend to last longer, e.g. taking away their tablet computer for a day lasts much longer than getting hit... haven't actually had to do that, just the threat of it = compliance because they know that I *will* carry this out.... (note: for little kids, stick to immediate consequences because they have to have sufficient maturity to associate the punishment with what they did, little kids don't have that so immediate punishments like going to the naughty corner or having a toy removed immediately for a short time are much better, but once they can understand "I don't have _____ today because I did ____ yesterday" then more long term punishments are very effective, as long as they're done consistently and the boundaries are clear.)

It's not the punishment itself that disciplines the child, it's the process of laying down clear boundaries and consistently enforcing them.

And additionally, all this has to be within the context of a stable parent-child relationship where kids' emotional needs are being met, i.e. parents are giving them time, attention, having fun with them, giving them a chance to talk through problems, helping them with homework etc... misbehaviour can sometimes be through a lack of those things, rather than a lack of discipline.

note: I know that some neurological issues, e.g autistic spectrum disorder, can completely change the game when it comes to discipline, so some of the above may not apply... but the point about there being other effective ways to manage kids behaviour without hitting them still applies.

I was 'spanked' as a child, my younger brothers were not. I watched them grown up to be disrespectful little s**ts with no respect for my parents or any authority figure (teachers, police offers etc).

Of course the punishment had to fit the crime...sometimes we were grounded, or had a toy confiscated for a set period of time for small things like a little back chat or sibling fighting.

I was never spanked in anger and it was only ever a small swat that stung for a little bit, but the 'crime' was serious and there had to be a correlation between the act and the punishment. Just as there is in the law systems. For example the punishment for talking back to an adult/being rude to them couldn't be the same as stealing something. My brothers, however, never learnt this correlation properly and don't see that actions have different consequences and believe that as adults their actions will not have serious consequences.

This isn't to say though that if I had children I would use this method of discipline.