In my 100 Things post (2 below this one) I stated that I loathe the spanking of children. In response a conversation has begun (in the comments) as to the validity of spanking or not spanking from a biblical perspective. It is a good conversation and I would welcome any and all input.
I am an anti-spanking mama. From my research, I do not believe the Bible advocates spanking in any way. I believe Jesus was a gentle soul, a pacifist, who showed special care and attention to children. I find nothing in the words of Christ that would lead me to embrace a parental strategy that includes spanking. Frankly I do not think I could embrace a theology that advocated spanking - it seems counter-intuitive to me.
Many equate non spanking parents with permissive parents. I know this is not the case for me and for many other Christian non spanking parents. I desire for my children to grow up in the knowledge and love of Christ, and to show love and care for the people around them. I seek to teach my children that there are consequences to their actions (some natural and some imposed), I just choose for those consequences not to involve physical punishment. My children have boundaries and rules - in fact we all try to live by a set of rules in our family. We all mess up and we all fall short - and we, as parents, are trying to model for our children what God has modeled for us...extending grace and mercy and forgiveness. Most often I find God's correction to be gentle rather than harsh. I have wandered off and not responded to God's love and authority in my life...and yet He waited, He loved, and He gently called me back to Him.
I respect the rights of others to make parenting choices for their families. This may sound like a cop out but it is not. I will tell anyone who wants to listen my philosophy on discipline and my reasoning behind it. But I am not going to try to shove my way of doing things down another's throat. I will live my life and parent my children and seek to be the mother God has equipped me to be.
Continuing the Conversation
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Posted by Beth at 11:26 AM
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5 comments:
Wow! I totally missed the conversation over at 100 Things (since in general I find memes boring). I'm happy to be the first to continue it here.
Firstly, I see no mandate in the Bible either for spanking or for not spanking, so I believe we have to make our own decisions based on general Biblical principles, sound reasoning and experience. I come down firmly on both sides. :)
The trouble with the term spanking is that it is so broad as to be almost meaningless. Think about words like Christian and you'll know what I mean that it's nearly impossible to make general statements. Still, I will try.
On a very basic level, one must ask the question, Do parents have the right to punish their children? If the answer is no, the debate ends there. So I begin with the premise that parents have not only the right, but the duty; that the setting and enforcing of rules is a necessary part of rearing children.
In a well-regulated, healthy home, punishment is a very small element of the total picture. Discipline, socialization, and the "nurture and admonition of the Lord" are much, much more than rules and punishments, just as our relationship with God far transcends the Law. Another basic premise of my argument is that the punishment in question takes place in the context of a loving, supportive family where children are honored and respected.
Love is not permissive, but will arrange as much as possible for the child to succeed. Leaving many breakable knick-knacks within his reach is not the best way to teach a child respect for other people's property. If we let our yeses be many, our noes will have more meaning, and more power.
When rules are broken, most often it is through ignorance, inexperience, carelessness, or accident on the part of the child, who is still learning his way in the world. Such events, I believe, require patience, explanation, and education rather than punishment. Sometimes, however, the disobedience is willful, deliberate, and with full knowledge of what he is doing. This, too, is part of the child's learning; he must test the limits to see if they are true. In this case, I believe punishment is necessary, and we fail as parents if we do not give our children the security of firm boundaries.
But what form should that punishment take? I would argue that there is no one, right answer for all families, nor for all children in the same family, nor for any one child at all times or in all situations. Those who wish a clear, precise formula for bringing up children hope for something that does not and cannot exist. The job of a parent requires wisdom, not a set script.
I don't need to go any further than our own extended family to see evidence that healthy, happy, secure, and disciplined children can be brought up both with and without spanking, so arguments that either philosophy is harmful in itself bear little weight with me. And I have seen marvelous examples of better ways of handling certain situations that I, myself, might have dealt with by spanking.
That said, I believe spanking has a place in a parent's disciplinary toolbox, and am appalled at legislative attempts to have it banned. First, let me explain what spanking meant at our house, not that we were always successful in carrying out this ideal. Spanking was almost exclusively reserved for deliberate disobedience, ended when the children were quite young (I don't remember when; probably before age five, having become more and more infrequent as the years passed), and was an "event," not a casual swat. Whenever possible, I would take the child into a private space, explain both the infraction and the reason for punishment, administer just as many barehanded swats as was necessary to produce sorrowful tears (generally two or three), and follow it up with lots of hugs, comfort, and reassurances of restoration to grace. Then it was over. Period. No recriminations, no nagging reminders of past failures. Over and done with. Our children undoubtedly will have something to say about how successful we were in our implementation, but that was the theory, and I think it worked quite well. (In reference to Jon's comment that spanking seems to work better for dads than for moms, I did not find that to be the case. It worked very well for me. What I never did master was "the look" that dads seem to be able to give that compels instant obedience.)
I respect spanking as a tool because I believe it is often the kindest of punishments. We obscure the issues when we use inflammatory terms like "hitting a child," and "violence" to describe spanking. One could just as easily refer to a timeout as imprisonment, or taking a way a toy as theft. All three of these actions involve the forcible imposition of the adult's will on the child. I have used each of them in my time, depending on what is appropriate to the circumstances. Abuse of a toy is logically followed by its removal until the child can behave more responsibly; antisocial behavior begets banishment until the child is ready to act reasonably. But consequences unrelated to the infraction, such as the taking away of a favorite toy when the offense is deliberate disobedience, do violence to the child whether or not there is physical contact. Spanking has the advantage of being over quickly, so that the issue is dealt with, the lesson learned, and the offense forgiven and forgotten within a short duration, much more appropriate to a young child's sense of time.
Natural consequences teach best—if you live long enough. The natural consequence of a child's not instantly obeying a parent's command to stop might be that he is run over by a car. In much the same way as a vaccine is a small assault intended to prevent a deadly illness, our job as parents often involves inflicting small amounts of pain on our children in order to spare them greater suffering. Pain, as C. S. Lewis said, is God's megaphone. We do not spare our children pain by not spanking them; all punishment causes pain. It is only a question of form, duration, and degree.
Spanking, I believe, is not necessary. Human beings are designed to learn in a great variety of situations and by a great variety of means. But neither do I think it cruel. Appropriately administered it can be one of the kindest techniques in a parent's repertoire. As with all of our parenting decisions, we must always look at the results. As John Holt said, "We ought all to keep asking ourselves, Where are you trying to get, and are you getting there?" Sadly, the jury is out on our parenting techniques until we're grandparents, or even longer. But we can usually get a good picture of the direction in which we are moving, especially if we have friends willing to be honest with us.
I appreciate your comments...I find them to be wise and useful. I respectfully disagree with some of your sentiments and ideas.
Whie I believe the people you know practice spanking in ways that may benefit a child - I do not believe that the vast majority of people (even Christians) do this. I have heard of and seen far too many parents hitting their children in anger with the intent to shame. I cannot tolerate that kind of discipline and I think it breaks the heart of God. I think if we are all honest with ourselves we can admit that the majority of spankings are not done in the way you and Jon have described - and though I don't agree even with grace based spanking...it is certainly more loving than the other kind.
We really try hard not to punish in our home. We try to discipline - and before you think I am getting caught up in semantics let me explain! Punishment carries with it so much negativity - it creates walls that are hard to overcome. Discipline, for us, is all about the learning process we are all in. Obviously my husband and I are further down the learning path and so we are required by God to lead the children He has entrusted to us down the path. We believe that we can best do that through gentle love and grace.
I'm interested to know if that CS Lewis quote is relating to spakning and parenting. Do you know? Becaseu I agree that pain in our lives can be God's megaphone to alert us that something is awry. But without knowing if he is speaking to parenting I can't say that I agree that is correlates to parents inflicting physical pain on their children. I wouldn't agree with that sentiment.
This has been quite a helpful debate and a loving one at that. How refreshing! This is my first time at your blog but I think I'll be coming back. Beth, you defend and explain your position well but I didn't see an answer to Kelly's question about willful disobedience. Sometimes disobedience has no natural consequence. What do you do when you say, for example, "Don't touch that" and the child touches it. Whatever "it" was, it doesn't break, the child doesn't want it, so you can't take it away. Life is the same only the child has directly disobeyed. I think consistently enforcing natural consequences is best, but I find some situations don't have any. You're probably just more creative than I am. One other question. What happens when you end a conversation and the children don't apologize right away? It gives me a horrible vision of the "silent treatment" that, to me, is much more horrible than a little slap. I'm sure that's not what it looks like in your family, but for how long do you ignore your children waiting for the apology and what does it look like?
"time-outs" or removing the child from the situation and having the same conversation that you have with grace-spankings only without the spankings, have been really effective in direct disobedience situations in our family.
and since i/we try to model asking forgiveness from my/our kids (i ask them for their forgiveness when i mess up, or make a mistake) they do it when they know they've done wrong. so in our case, showing our kids how to act by example, is extremely effective. therefore spankings, although done in very grace-filled manners in the past (just like what jon described) have not been effective in our family.
I should have explained that ending of the conversation better! We end the conversation on that topic. This happened yesterday. My daughter wanted me to help her find a particular stuffed animal she had misplaced. We had a lot to do yesterday and I told her when we finished all of our jobs we could look for it. Well she kept on and on adn eventually was half whinig half yelling. I said "Lucy, I will not talk to about this any further until you ccan talk without whining and yelling. We don't talk like that in our family and I won't tolerate that behavior." I still spoke to her but I would not engage her in talking about looking for the toy until she apologized and changed her attitude. She did that in short order and I reminded her that we would look after we finished our jobs. Luckily in the midst of her doing one of her jobs she found the toy!!!
I have been trying to think of times of willful disobedience that have had no natural consequence. I'm a little at a loss - some of it may be the break in relationship that they experience with us when they do something defiant. They know when they have hurt us as their parents and we try and explain about trust and how trust is impacted when they disobey. That is all I can think of right now.
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