The spanking issue. Ok, in my humble opinion spanking is not about teaching the child a lesson. It is usually about we adults losing our tempers. I have spanked my older daughter 3 times in her life. Once for lying to me , once for talking back rudely and once for kicking a boy . All three times I've apologized to her for hitting her. With all the violence in our society I don't want her to learn that the way to communicate anger is to hit. I was wrong to spank her. I was too angry and instead of walking away from her, calming down and then dealing with the situation in a rational manner, I reacted. And reacted badly. We all make mistakes and I have spent the last several years reading in the hopes of teaching myself how to be a better and more attached parent to my now pre-teen daughter. It is my belief that with these new tools at my disposal and my own willingness to learn that my new baby will not be spanked in her lifetime.

There are so many better ways to deal with your anger at a childs behavior. The first thing that I mentioned earlier is walking away. Giving yourself a time out. Now when Chelsey pushes me to the limit (which only happens about once a year) I tell her that I'm so angry that I need to take a few minutes to calm myself down. She stays in her room considering how angry I must be to need a time out (not a bad thing for her to do) and i hit the shower. A long hot shower does the trick for me. I'm sure you have your own methods...a bath, a walk, for some it might be a cigarette (not advocating smoking here, just whatever will get you to the point where you don't need to hit).

Then its time to talk. Not scream, talk. I always have to remember at this point that my child will most likely answer questions with what she thinks I want to hear, not what she really feels. So one thing I've done recently is asked her to please take a piece of paper and write down why she thinks I'm angry. Sometimes she doesn't even know why i'm upset with her. If what she thinks isn't correct, I let her know exactly why I'm upset/angry/disappointed. Once we are on the same page as to why she's in trouble with me, we discuss what she could have done differently. Asking her why she chose to do something doesn't work - she usually doesn't know why, or doesnn't have the words to express it. We talk about the ramifications of her actions. For instance a friends 9 year old boy was over here one day. He picked up a book of matches from our back room (my husband smokes) and lit it. His mom caught him in the act and read him the riot act about how
1. he could've hurt himself
2. he could've burned my house down
She then had him write a letter of apology to me. She then didn't allow him to visit Santa at the mall the next day but is having him wait a full week so that he can really consider what he did and the lesson he learned and get himself into a better position to be asking for gifts from St. Nick.

We need to discuss with our kids that there are consequences for our actions. Since my child is a little older she has quite a few "perks" in her life. Those "perks"  can be bestowed upon her when she does well in school, shows kindness to a friend, makes a great decision -  or taken away if she chooses a bad path. Losing the privelege of talking to her girlfriends on the phone, not being able to ride her scooter after school, additional chores, earlier bed time are all examples of the consequences for doing a bad thing. Just like in the real world if you do good, good comes to you. There is no real "punishment" in our house, but lessons to be learned and the way we help her learn them is to take away distractions so she can concentrate on the lesson for a full week. We keep it short term (so she has hope that life will go on).

Most importantly to us is that our child know that just because she did a bad thing, it does not make her a bad person. She is still loved, and our talk ends with a hug and a kiss and the promise that it will be okay once the behavior is changed.  My daughter goes to bed knowing she did something unacceptable and that she has learned that it was unacceptable and things she can do next time instead. She also knows she is loved and understands the lesson involved.

I know there are lots of other things we can do and say when dealing with behavioral problems. I personally just don't believe that spanking teaches the lesson as well as a real discussion and the loss of things  the child enjoys until the behavior is changed. How can hitting your child teach them to resolve issues, change behaviors and keep a trusting relationship between you and your child? Usually when a parent spanks they still need to go in and talk to the child after both have calmed down, why not just avoid this step completely.

I know, we're all human and spanking your child once because you "lose it" isn't going to ruin your kids life. But repeated spanking does affect a childs psyche ...again...only my opinion.
In my mind its worth trying to control ourselves to create kids that don't hit but use their words to deal with problems.
 

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