"You want your kid to run all over you? Don't spank them."
"You've got to show them who's boss sometimes."
"If it's a matter of safety, you're damned right they'll get spanked! How else will they learn not to run into a busy street?!"
Really, people? You honestly think that you have to hit your kids to assert authority or teach them right from wrong? This couldn't be more off base. Trust me. I know this. I used to spank. I am telling you from personal experience that it does not work. All it does is make a kid fearful of getting caught, and in the end, it makes them sneakier. (Ask me about my 8-year-old sometime. She's the only one of my kids who ever got spanked, and she's extremely sneaky. The only thing she learned is that getting caught is bad.) That's probably not what most people are going for.
To give another example of that, think of training for the Army (any branch of the military, really, but I was in the Army, so I'm going with what I know here). Even if you have never served, you probably know that the Drill Sergeant is always yelling, and that he has the shortest fuse in the history of the world. You're afraid to screw up because he's going to make your life hell if you do. Sure, on the surface, it makes you do the right thing. You learn to shine your boots, to press your uniform, to carry your rifle just so, to call cadence correctly, to march, to shoot, to run, to eat... You learn what he wants, because if you don't do what he wants, you're going to pay for it, and it won't be pretty. Then right below the surface, there's what really goes on. My buddies and I used to joke that we broke every rule but the unimportant ones, and that was just about true. Drinking, smoking, fraternization, tattoos, trips way outside pass distance, you name it, we did it, but you bet our boots were shiny and our uniforms were pressed, and despite being ridiculously hung over, we marched correctly in formation every morning. We were sneaky as hell, and after a few short months, we got really good at getting one over on old Drill Sergeant. Kids and young soldiers aren't so different. If you tear into them and punish them harshly at every turn, they just figure out how to not to get caught. They don't do the right thing. They just expend that much more effort figuring out how to do the wrong thing more effectively.
I think of Orren. He's at work with daddy right now. He really loves going to the hangar, and everyone there really likes him. He's like a part of the crew. Not every 3-year-old could be trusted around sensitive, multimillion dollar equipment, but Orren can. When you tell him what he can and cannot do, and explain to him why, in terms he can understand, he will generally do the right thing. When he doesn't do the right thing, if you redirect him, it works well about 99% of the time. For that other 1% of the time, he might need a time out. The way we do time out is not as a punishment, but as a tool for helping him to regroup and calm down. We sit with him, and help him to sort it all out. This works remarkably well.
Orren has never been spanked, or really even yelled at. He is not a brat, and he does not run all over us. He is not an intolerable kid who pitches fits every time he doesn't get his way. He is definitely not a bully. He's a curious little boy who can explain the physics of flight to a high ranking officer one minute, and then play hide and seek with his sister the next. He can also tell you exactly how he's feeling at any given time, using the right words for his emotions, and when he is upset about not getting his way, he's to the point where he's pretty likely to talk to us about it. I'm not exaggerating a bit when I say that a lot of people who meet Orren are pretty impressed with him. We didn't have to spank him to make him able to function in society, and even be well liked by others.
Somebody's thinking right now, "Yes, but every kid is different." Trust me, I know. I've got three of them. No two are very much alike. I still maintain that spanking is inherently unnecessary and does more harm than good. I also believe that there are always other ways to accomplish the end goal, which is to get the kid to do the right thing, and that other ways are generally more effective than spanking, because the kid is doing the right thing for logical reason that they understand, rather than simply out of fear. Spanking is a hard cycle to break, but it's definitely worth doing. Don't worry. Your kid won't be a scourge upon society because they weren't hit regularly.
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