Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. There was only me being afraid of her because I was getting hit. I was a kid, I didn’t see the bigger picture. Now that I’ve grown up and I look back, I am glad she did that. I was always quiet, and I always behaved right after.

I go to restaurants and see these snotty little kids screaming at the top of their lungs. What do their moms do? “Use your inside voice, honey. Or else I’m going to put you in time out!” No surprise, the kid doesn’t stop screaming and the mom just let’s him cry. All while I’m on the other side of the room, tearing my hair out of my head in frustration because the little pricks won’t stop crying and the mom won’t parent right. You know these kids are going to turn out a lot like the Dracula kids everywhere, and the kids that look like their faces were hit with shrapnel.

Are you kidding me? Time out? Come on, mom! Smack that kid! He’s not going to listen to her when she says that, because she’s all talk. She can’t back up her words with actions! “Time out” does not mean taking them into the other room and sitting down with them while they cry (which is what will happen if something does), it means you sit them down and make them think about what they did.

If you have a toddler, they won’t think about anything they’ve done. All they’ll do is just sit there and be bored. Until they get older and are able to think of things like that for themselves, they will need a little bit of physical encouragement via a smack on the butt.

I remember getting a time out when I was a kid. I usually got spanked, but for some reason, my mom put me in time out. For 11 whole minutes, I had to sit in absolute silence. I was SOOOO bored. After a few minutes, I was thinking to myself “I’m not getting spanked, but my gosh this is taking really long. ”

I was spanked when I was bad. I was definitely NOT abused in any way. She would instruct me on what was right and wrong. When I did something wrong, I was spanked, told what I did wrong, then the punishment was over. Easy fix!

Because I was spanked, I have respect for my elders, I’m very smart, very intuitive, and I know how to get stuff done. I am not a horny teenager that’s always looking for sex, I am not doing any drugs or partaking of any harmful substances. I have a solid plan for myself and my future. I am also always working to accomplish my goals I have in life.  I am not damaged in the head, I am not a robot that only looks to please others and kiss everyone’s ass, and I don’t hate my mom for what she did. I have a wonderful relationship with her. She’s my mom and I love her very much.

In case you’re wondering, my dad was a wimp. He’s out of the picture as of 2009. My mom got remarried when I was 17. My stepdad is awesome. He’s in the military.

She raised me right, and I plan on raising my kids the same way, when I get them. I turned out better than most, if not all, kids my age today and I believe that her spanking me when I was bad played a part in that.

I’m going to make this clear: I do NOT think beating a child is okay on any level. Making them bleed, giving them bruises, and hitting them out of rage is very bad parenting. Spanking a kid on the but for being loud after being told to stop is not abuse, it’s good parenting. I should know. 

But I think some parents take that a bit too far by believing that if they don’t hit their children, the child will love them more. I got spanked, and I gotta say I’m doing fine: Honor Roll my whole life (not because I was pressured into getting good grades, my parents just consistently told me to always work my hardest so, I figured as any child would they were right. So I worked my hardest) going to a good college, got a plan for my life, I can speak my opinion(s) without fear… Yeah, I’ve got my self-esteem issues but it’s more related to the media’s portrayal of feminine beauty, not because I got spanked. And what girl/typical kid doesn’t have self-esteem issues anyway, regardless if they got spanked or not?

Anyway, I think some people already made a valid point: spanking is a form of discipline but it doesn’t work on EVERY child. Some kids need a different form of punishment. It’s also just good for the parents to be a part of their kids’ lives and show that, even though they spanked them, they love them dearly and only want for the kids to understand that they’re trying to do what’s best for them. Parents are humans and aren’t perfect, but I think so long as they inform their kids as to why they do what they do (for instance, explaining why they spanked them after they got spanked, or w/e) then as the kids grow up they’ll get it. Then, they’ll respect their parents and even other adults who’re genuinely trying to guide them in an honest/moral life.

But hey, if you wanna “spare the rod” for your kids then go ahead and spare it. Personally I don’t feel like spanking’s bad – like someone else said, it depends on how you do it and whether you do it out of anger (through with you don’t have control of your emotions so you might just be hitting the kid ’cause you’re seriously frustrated) or you do it calmly (where you can rationalize “Okay, why do I have to discipline this child? What am I trying to teach him/her?”) Doing it the first way, when you’re angry, makes the spanking seen as nothing more than “assault” or “abuse” or whatever you wanna call it. I think that’s where these…liberals get confused. But I think if you do it the second way you’re doing your job as a parent: trying to raise your kid to understand what it means to disrespect authority (which is typically what spanking’s used for, at least in my family. I dunno about the rest of you).

That being said, when I was a child I was never spanked but rather screamed at. Usually being called all kinds of horrible things. It made me feel unloved and somehow defective. I think that I would have preferred the spanking. I would have understood that reaction better. Maybe I wouldn’t have such a hatred today of the parent that was doing the screaming.

Maguire‐Jack, Kathryn Gromoske, Andrea N. Berger, Lawrence M. (2012). Spanking and child development during the first 5 years of life. Child Development, 83, 1960-1977.

Gershoff, Elizabeth T. Lansford, Jennifer E. Sexton, Holly R. Davis‐Kean, Pamela Sameroff, Arnold J. (2012). Longitudinal links between spanking and children’s externalizing behaviors in a national sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American families. Child Development, 83, 838-843.

Simons, Dominique A. Wurtele, Sandy K. (2010). Relationships between parents’ use of corporal punishment and their children’s endorsement of spanking and hitting other children. Child Abuse & Neglect, 34, 639-646.

among many others I could cite. They are all right there in the literature.

What children tend to learn from spanking is that one way to solve problems or get a desired behavior outcome from others is to try physical violence. “If my parents can hit me because I did something wrong, I can hit others when they do something wrong to me.”

I don’t think it’s the message most parents intend to send to their children, yet it’s one of the predominant themes we see in the research.

Just because it “worked” for you (e.g., you were spanked and you turned out okay) doesn’t mean it was ever a good form of parenting. There’s no doubt spanking achieves immediate short-term compliance with intended behaviors. The long-term effects, however, are lost upon most parents, as they just don’t seem to understand that children are sponges when it comes to learning — and everything they experience becomes a part of that learning.