Spanking is Unacceptable and Traumatic for a Child

“There can be no love without justice.”– bell hooks. With love, there should be equality and understanding. In Justice: Childhood Love Lesson, bell hooks argues how physical discipline hurts a child’s mind on love and will emotionally scar them. Spanking is not appropriate and can damage a child’s life and conception of the meaning of life. A child may form wrong ideas about smacking and later on in life believe it is okay to physically abuse people. Spanking doesn’t teach the right lesson.

It shows a child that hitting is a way to solve. Many of today’s adults were raised in homes where spanking was allowed and practiced.

Today’s children are different – they are less naïve and less accepting of totalitarian authority. Today’s children demand the same rights as the adults in their families and would not accept a spanking. Time out, grounding, or the loss of a privilege are today’s acceptable forms of punishment. Sometimes, kids need to sit down and talk about what they did wrong instead of getting yelled at or spanked. Parents need to understand that we don’t give kids the recognition they need and deserve. Parents think it’s okay to degrade them and view them as less because they’re the parent. Spanking can result in fear, not respect. A child who fears a parent may learn to hide behavior and lie rather than trust that parent to guide and teach. Spanking may get a quick reaction, but next time you may end up hitting harder. And when you’re angry and stressed, it’s easy to injure your child. They listen because they are afraid of being hit again.

Most often, parents hit their children in an angered state. This could result in abuse. The fine line between punishment and abuse is often blurred when anger is involved. Verbally and physically abused children are left with more mental problems and misunderstandings of love. Spanking doesn’t teach the right lesson. It shows a child that hitting is a way to solve. On the other hand, others believe that children should be physically punished. Many will refer to the bible that says that children should be spanked. Proverbs 23:13-14 states, “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from hell.” They believe that physical discipline saves them from the devil. However, they fail to recognize that spanking will not physically scar them but mentally scar them. If they choose to spank in order to stop a child’s behavior, just remember it also has the proven potential to worsen the behavior and/or cause psychological issues.

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