Is Spanking An Effective Or Beneficial Form Of Discipline?

Episode Transcription

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, I am answering a question from a listener. I get so many questions each week, and this is a great way to provide answers that many of you might hopefully find helpful. If you have a question you’d like me to consider answering on a future episode, email it to support@drbeurkens.com and you just might hear it on an upcoming show. 

Now, onto today’s question. This comes from Katy, who writes: “I’m wondering about your opinion on spanking a child who seems to be intentionally misbehaving and doesn’t seem phased by anything else we do to stop inappropriate behavior.

Spanking or a threat of spanking seems to at least get his attention and stop the behavior for a bit. I don’t like doing it but I feel like for really big things, maybe it’s the only way to go. Wondering about your thoughts and if there is some kind of bigger damage I am doing if I use spanking on a very limited basis. Is spanking an effective form of discipline?”

Katy, this is a great question, it’s an important question and one that I think many parents ask and struggle with at some point on their parenting journey. I first want to say that I have complete empathy for any parent who is struggling with how to manage challenging behaviors on the part of a child. I totally understand your concern and frustration.

I have felt super frustrated and challenged by my own children over the years with their behavior, and I recognize that no matter what types of punishments or disciplinary techniques that parents use, the vast majority of the time, they have the best of intentions in mind.

Parents love their kids, they want to do what’s best and they have the best intentions, even if some of the tools that they’re using may not be very effective. So I want to talk about this somewhat sensitive subject by starting out with that, that I understand that you absolutely want what’s best for your son and you want him to learn how to manage himself better.

So I get that, and a lot of times as parents we also are raising our children or using strategies with our children that were used with us when we were kids.

Things that our parents did. And spanking was something that was a part of many households for people growing up for generations. So I certainly understand that, and I think that also, spanking can be sort of a last resort approach, sort of as Katy alludes to here. The “Feeling like nothing else is working, I feel like for big, important things, maybe this is effective.” So certainly, there are a lot of things that can lead to parents using an approach like spanking. So let’s delve into why it is that spanking is not an effective or beneficial approach, and that my stance is that spanking is not a disciplinary strategy or behavior management technique that we ought to be using with kids. 

So here are some of the problems with spanking: First of all, it doesn’t address the root of the issue. And the root of the issue when a child is struggling and is engaging in what we would call misbehavior or bad behavior or problematic behavior, they are lacking in some kind of skill to handle that situation. Either they don’t have the coping strategies needed or the communication skills needed or the problem-solving abilities needed. There is some sort of skill development issue going on there that’s leading to that because remember, one of the big premises of my work is that children don’t intentionally act out and behave badly. It’s really important for us to keep that in mind. No kid wakes up in the morning saying, “Wow, how can I really be a problem for everyone today?” So I think keeping that in mind, that kids are not intentionally trying to do these things is really important. And that when they are struggling, when we’re having problems with chronic misbehavior or emotional or behavioral regulation issues there is something at the root of that that needs to be addressed, and spanking doesn’t address it.

Spanking is purely a punishment or a consequence that is rooted in fear and rooted in shame, and that’s really what that’s about when we get down to it. I want to create a level of fear in you, and that fear will drive you to stop doing this behavior that I don’t like or that is inappropriate, or the shame of that will stop you from doing it. So spanking in its root is really about fear and shame, which is not the foundation that we want to base our parent-child relationship on, and ultimately, not what we want our kids to be using in order to regulate their emotions and behavior, to have that driven by fear and shame. That’s not helpful on a number of levels.

So spanking doesn’t get to the root of the issue, it doesn’t teach the missing skills, it creates this relationship or this dynamic of fear and shame. 

Another problem with it is that it teaches kids or models for them that physical violence is acceptable and appropriate, even if just under certain circumstances, right? And what’s ironic is sometimes adults are using spanking, which is physical punishment, physical violence towards a child as a way to stop them from being physically aggressive or violent with another child.

So for example, a child hits another kid on the playground or throws something at their sibling, and as a punishment for that, or as a way to stop them from engaging in those kinds of physical acts, we act out physically towards them, which is not helpful. It’s not the message that we want to send. So it’s important that we don’t use physical violence towards them if we don’t want them being physically aggressive and violent towards others. 

One of the other interesting things about spanking is that almost without exception, it feels really terrible to the parent who is using it as a strategy. I’ve even had parents over the years who, because of religious convictions and teachings or whatever it might be, really believed that spanking was the right thing to do, and yet would admit to me that it feels really terrible to them. It feels bad to them, it feels like they’re out of control or it feels like they are doing something that’s not really benefiting the kid.

I think any time as a parent we are utilizing a strategy that at our core, in our heart does not feel aligned or doesn’t feel appropriate or good to us, that’s a warning sign that we really need to be reevaluating that strategy and looking at that. And really, the big picture, and I think this is helpful for parents to understand is that spanking doesn’t change behavior long term. Often, it doesn’t even change the behavior short term, but sometimes parents will say, “Well, it gets them to stop for a little bit”, and in fact, Katy who asked the questions said it kind of stops the behavior for at least a period of time. But for some kids, it doesn’t even stop it short term, especially if they have major issues with regulating their impulsivity and those kinds of things. But we know that in the big picture, over the long term, strategies like spanking do not change behavior. In fact, multiple research studies have shown that behavior in kids actually tends to get worse over time when punishments like spanking are used. And I think that’s really helpful for parents to understand, that not only is this a strategy that doesn’t feel good to kids, it doesn’t feel good to us, but it’s not effective.

There are much more effective things that we can be doing. So those are really some of the problems with spanking and why I do not recommend it as a disciplinary or behavior management approach. Scaring kids or physically causing pain in the moment might stop the behavior temporarily, but in the big picture, it doesn’t help.

I think it’s interesting, if we take this into the realm of our adult lives and relationships, we don’t treat other people like this, only kids, do we consider it appropriate to use physical aggression towards them in order to stop behavior, right? Inherently, we recognize with other adults that physical harm, threats of physical harm, shaming them, that these are not appropriate or effective ways to manage relationships or to change behavior. They’re not effective or appropriate with our spouse or partner, they’re not effective or appropriate in the workplace, we inherently recognize all of that, and yet, somehow there has been this idea over the generations that this is something that’s appropriate to do with kids. So that’s an interesting perspective to think about, and I want to talk to those of you who were raised by parents who used spanking, because this is something that comes up quite often when I’m having this discussion with parents. They say, “Well, I was raised this way, my parents spanked me, I turned out fine”, and certainly there are a lot of avenues that we could go down in terms of discussing that and what it means to turn out fine and all of that, but my point with this is that when we know better, we can do better. 

So I don’t want to get in arguments with people about whether spanking was okay for their parents to do to them or whether it harmed them or whether they turned out okay. To me, that’s not a helpful discussion to get into.

What’s much more helpful is to say, “Why would we use a strategy that the research shows isn’t very effective when we know that there are things that can not only work better in terms of supporting the development of emotional and behavioral regulation for children, while also supporting and strengthening the relationship between us and our children. Wouldn’t we choose that option?” Choosing between spanking and other things, wouldn’t we choose the things that now we recognize are more effective and work better? Of course, because you’re not making a choice as a parent between spanking and doing nothing to address your child’s behavior, right? Those are not the options here. There is spanking and then there are lots of other options and approaches that we know are much more effective. So of course we should choose the things that are more effective, that don’t have the potential to cause harm, even if you say, “Well, my child isn’t outright being harmed by this.” Okay. But there are things that are much more effective if your goal is to help your child develop better emotional and behavioral regulation. So that’s the key here. I’ll just address briefly, I mentioned it a moment ago, but sort of religiously-oriented arguments, because I’ve had that come up with families too about “Well, my church/my religious leader” or whoever it might be, “This is how we’re taught to raise children” and what I’ll say about that is that these are very outdated approaches. This whole idea of spare the rod, spoil the child and all kinds of those things that people have said to me over the years, these have been disproven by the research, they don’t reflect a current understanding of child development, of human brain development or of emotional and behavioral regulation.

So I understand that these may have been the prevailing thoughts based on what was known or believed at the time, generations ago, but now that we have much more information and understanding of child development, human brain development, all of these things, we realize that those kinds of advisement, those things that we’re taught in terms of what you needed to do in order to raise a child who could regulate themselves and their behavior, those are just really outdated and inaccurate, so I think that’s important to recognize. 

So the question then becomes, well, if we’re not going to use spanking, if that’s not effective, and we recognize now that it can really create a lot of problems and harm and actually can cause behavior to get worse over time, what should we do instead? Because that’s the big question right? It’s like what Katy is asking, she’s like “I don’t feel good about spanking, I don’t want to do it, but it seems to kind of be helpful. Maybe I need to use it for the big stuff, what do I do instead?” Okay, I’m going to give you a basic framework for this while also recognizing that there is a wide variance in frequency and intensity of behavior, what drives and underlies the behavior challenges, even ages and developmental level for kids. So there are a lot of things that we customize depending on the child, their developmental level, their needs, safety issues, all of those kinds of things, but I’m going to give you a framework and some things to think about. So first is going back to that basic premise that I mentioned a few minutes ago, which is for us as the adults to recognize that no child chooses to engage in bad behavior. So first, we need to approach a child’s challenging behaviors from the premise that this is not something they are intentionally trying to do. They are not trying to make my life miserable, they are not trying to get in trouble, this isn’t something that they want to have happening. That’s a really important foundational premise for us to operate from.

And to understand that when kids are having emotional and behavioral dysregulation, when they are engaging in challenging behaviors, particularly if it’s chronic, if you feel like it’s happening over and over again, the same kinds of things, they’re not learning, it’s not improving, there are deficits of skills going on there: Coping skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills. Now those may be developmentally appropriate, meaning we expect these kinds of things from toddlers and preschoolers because their brain is still developing these things. As kids get older, if they’re still having these challenges, it’s maybe no longer developmentally appropriate, but they have a skill gap there. This is particularly the case diagnosed with neurodevelopmental challenges, ADHD, autism, things like anxiety disorders, mood dysregulation disorders, learning disabilities, all of these types of things, these kids tend to have these skill gaps where chronologically they are older, but developmentally, especially when it comes to emotional and behavioral regulation, they may be more like a younger child and they need specific support and practice with developing the skills for how to handle situations that come up in life that lead to uncomfortable feelings for them, disappointment, frustration, anger, hurt — all of those things. So they’re not choosing to do this, and there is a skill deficit here that needs to be addressed. That’s the first thing. The second thing is we have to keep ourselves calm before we can do anything with a child who is exhibiting challenging behavior, dysregulated behavior, we need to focus on ourselves, keep ourselves calm and focus on our regulation because when we are really dysregulated and worked up and escalating in our own thoughts, feelings and behaviors while the child is struggling, we are much more likely to lash out and utilize something like spanking even impulsively in the moment because we are so distressed and not thinking logically and clearly, or yelling or threatening or those kinds of things. So if we want to help kids identify within themselves what’s going on and develop the skills to work through these things differently, we need to focus on ourselves first, keep ourselves calm and regulated.

Sometimes that means we need to separate from the child, we need to hit the pause button, step away from the situation, let things cool down for them and for us and then address it later on when we can manage ourselves better. That’s not allowing the child to get away with something, that’s recognizing that “Whew, I need a minute here. I need to keep myself together if I’m going to manage this well.” 

Then what we want to do is communicate what we think might be going on. Modeling this communication of what the child might be thinking and feeling, what might be happening for them in this moment, so saying something like, “Wow, you are feeling really frustrated with that math assignment” or “I think it felt really unfair to you that your sister got to go to your friend’s house and you didn’t.” or “Boy, you really didn’t like it when I told you it was time to clean up. You felt really angry about that. That was really hard for you to stop what you were doing.” These are just examples of how we would model communicating what might be going on underneath the behavior. What feelings and what thoughts might be happening there that led to that, and that’s important to model because we want kids to be able to be attentive to those feelings within themselves and be able to communicate about that and then give them an opportunity to say what they were feeling. “Boy, I think you felt really frustrated with that math assignment. Do you think that’s true?” And depending on the child and their age and developmental level or willingness in that moment, they may respond, they may not, that’s okay, give them an opportunity if they have something to communicate about how they are feeling, but otherwise, we can model that, “You felt so frustrated with that, and you just were so frustrated and overwhelmed you tore your paper up.” So communicate what we think might be going on, get what the emotions were, what was going on in the situation. Then remind them that all feelings are okay. “However you’re feeling is fine, it is perfectly okay to feel angry, to feel frustrated, to feel disappointed, whatever it might be. However, all behaviors are not okay.” So we’re constantly coming back to this mantra of “All of your feelings are okay, all behavior is not.” So we’re acknowledging and empathizing with the feeling and we’re saying we need to look at the behavior piece. And this is where we have the opportunity to teach and practice the words, the actions, the coping strategies, those types of things that they can use in those situations. “Boy, if you’re feeling really frustrated with the math assignment, what could you do? Let’s talk about some options”, and this is where the teaching comes in. And the teaching part of this needs to happen at lots of times when they’re not experiencing the intense emotion for it to really sink in and get them good at being able to utilize these things, but here is really where the change in behavior happens, it’s when we are modeling and teaching and giving them an opportunity to practice what else they can do to handle these big feelings when they come up. So it’s that teaching and that practicing and that walking through it and giving them opportunities outside of intense situations to work on those things. 

And then sometimes, there might be some restitution that’s needed, right? So we say, “Boy, you were feeling this way, and here is what happening and ugh, I can really understand why you were feeling that way, here is the thing, you threw all the books out of the bookcase in the living room. We’re going to need to put those back.” And then just not making a big deal out of it, but working with them to pick them up, put them away, helping them gracefully exit the situation by making restitution for what happened. So those are the steps there. Now I understand again, there’s a lot of variation in those steps depending on the age, depending on what tools are going to be appropriate to practice and what skills we need to teach, but that gives you the basic process of that, of what to do instead of spanking when a child is having these challenges. 

Now the other piece I want to touch on here because this is important is that if your child is engaging in dysregulated behavior a lot of the time and doesn’t seem to be learning from their experience, doesn’t seem able to implement the tools and the skills that you’re practicing and teaching, it’s sort of like groundhog’s day, things are not improving even with using these very positive and learning-oriented sort of discipline strategies and approaches, then it’s time to look at what else might be going on there because all of the wonderful, perfectly implemented disciplinary strategies, skill-teaching strategies, parenting strategies in the world aren’t going to make a big dent in the problem if there is something going on that’s preventing the child from moving forward with their emotional and behavioral regulation, what might some of those things be? Well, it could be things like them chronically getting poor sleep. Maybe they have sleep apnea, maybe they are having issues with getting a good night’s sleep for whatever reason. Maybe they’re having restless sleep, that is absolutely going to impact a child’s behavior on a daily basis where you’re going to feel like none of your other strategies are really coming together because they’re irritable, they’re moody, they’re dysregulated. So something like sleep issues, looking at things like food sensitivities, nutrient deficiencies like an iron deficiency or things like that — these can absolutely keep kids in a chronic state of being dysregulated, of being irritable, their brain not being able to really take in and benefit from and utilize and move forward with these approaches and strategies. Blood sugar imbalances are another one. So it can be infectious kinds of issues, kids with chronic infections, kids with gut issues, when kids are not benefiting from these kinds of positive regulatory techniques, these skill-based kinds of approaches, it’s because there’s something else going on there that needs to be addressed. So we want to use these positive parenting and positive disciplinary strategies in conjunction with addressing underlying issues that are preventing the child from staying in a more regulated state like we would expect them to do at whatever age they’re at. So hopefully that makes sense that both of those pieces need to be in place.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that spanking is not an effective approach to use and can actually lead to more problems and have given you a framework for thinking about what else might be helpful. We’ve got lots of podcast episodes, lots of blog posts, lots of resources on the website for addressing these kinds of things in different ways, so I hope that this is helpful for Katy and for any of you who are wondering about spanking and looking for better ways to approach behavior challenges with your kids. Remember, if you have a question you would like to hear answered on a future show, email it to support@drbeurkens.com. Put “Podcast Question” in the subject line, that will help us out to sort through those, and thank you as always for listening. I will catch you back here next time.