Spanking Your Kids

To spank or not to spank? Thus saith the Lord, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Thus saith the Christian parent, “Good idea, I’ll beat the crap out of them anytime I want and say it’s in the name of love!” Maybe that’s a little extreme, but a lot of parents spank their children for everything, especially African-American parents. I cannot count how many I’ve been shopping and have seen a parent dragging a child by one arm and smacking them on the butt because they picked up a pair of socks and almost walked out the door with it. This is very embarrassing, not only to the child, but to other people who are forced to watch.

I thinking hitting anyone is a form of cowardice. Why hit a child? It takes a strong person to talk it out, and a weak person to resort to violence. It takes more leadership to explain to a child the difference between right and wrong than it does to smack them and say don’t do that because I said so. Well, my parents spanked me and it never encouraged me to think wisely when they weren’t around, or to do what they said. It only taught me, don’t get caught next time. Now I’m not a bad person, and I know right from wrong, but bringing home a bad grade and getting smacked around for it taught me that if this happens again, I need to keep them from seeing my report card. I wasn't going to risk telling them I wasn't doing well. If they knew I wasn’t doing well, then that meant I wasn’t getting an A or a B and anything less meant I was going to get a spanking like last time, so I’d better keep that to myself until I fix it on my own, which I could never do.

So what about the Bible? I gotta do what the Lord says, right? Sure. A three year old that’s about to burn his little fingers off needs a smack on the booty. Why? Because his brain is too young to understand a speech about that time when you were thirteen and your dad asked you why you shot that bird that he told you not to shoot and how it taught you blah, blah, blah. A three year old needs something on his level that relates to his little half developed mind that will keep his hands off the stove until he is old enough to learn what the difference between hot and cold is. He’ll remember that every time he goes near the stove his mama is going to smack his butt, but he won’t understand that a big machine will burn his finger to the nub.

I’m referring to an eight year old that is afraid to talk to her parents because everything evokes anger and a violent reaction. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an abusive situation, but some people don’t respond well to violence. I would sit in my bedroom for hours fuming on how to get back at my parents, instead of thinking of what I had done. Furthermore, if I wasn’t thinking of revenge, I was thinking of how I shouldn’t have got caught in the first place. It also shut of the communication I had between them. I wouldn’t dare volunteer any information if I didn’t know what their reaction would be. If I had done something wrong, I’d just let them find out. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my booty voluntarily.

Now that I’m an adult, I dragged a lot of that baggage around with me. Communication with my parents began being cut off when I was younger and just worsened as I got older. It turned into lying and sneaking. Now I’m not blaming them for the way I turned out, because any bad decision I made was my own, but I wish that parents thought of the psychological effects that their actions had on their children. It’s very important that your children feel like they can come to you and talk to you about anything without you blowing a fuse. Most kids who throw away their babies do it because they don’t have the support to come and talk to their parents. It’s a sad thing, sad thing.