When should a child be smacked?
Recently a set of questions was posed by “sunny” regarding the smacking of children. I have no idea who “sunny is or where “sunny” is coming from regarding the smacking debate. I have answered his or her questions below, directly and in light of our (husband + wife) personal experiences and our worldview. So here goes:
How young should a child be when he/she receives their first smack?
This would depend upon the child – obviously all children are different. It also depends upon what you mean by smack. We advocate, and have practiced flicking our infants on the hand or wrist, accompanied by a firm “No” when they have dug dirt from an indoor pot plant of pulled books out of a bookshelf. While we often found these incidents to be quite amusing, they were also useful as a starting point for training and instructing the child how to behave.
From experience, we would recommend “the flick” or a hand smack with “No” for pot digging and the like. As they get older, this will not work anymore and the use of a wooden spoon on the backside is extremely effective at getting the behaviour message across. We have never needed to go beyond this because our children were trained from an early age, thus learning where the boundaries lay. Your mileage of course may vary.
How old should a child be before it is considered inappropriate to ’smack’?
As above, it depends upon the child. Obviously you won’t be smacking them when they are 21 so there must be a cut-off somewhere below that age. In addition, smacking is not suitable for every occasion so parents generally want to have a toolkit up their sleeves that includes reasoning, loss of privileges, and smacking.
From experience, our daughters have rarely been smacked beyond 8 or 9 years of age. We have worked hard on training them up to this age and they rarely need that form of discipline any more.
Must a smack hurt to ‘work’? What do you do if the child scoffs at you “That didn’t hurt”?
No, a smack does not necessarily need to hurt, for example “the flick” on the wrist. However, sometimes without inflicting “hurt” in the form of physical pain it will be impossible to get the message across. Actually, it may be worse than that because, as you mention, if the smack does not hurt, the child may laugh at you and say “nah nah, sux to you”. We have experienced this to our great amusement and we all still laugh about it sometimes. What was the remedy? We smacked again so that it was felt. Did it work? Yes!
What do you do if the ’smack’ doesn’t work? (stop the problem behaviour) Smack harder? Longer?
Give them a few years and the prison system will take them off your hands?
But seriously, we don’t have personal experience of this because the boundaries we have instilled in our children are working so well. If you have failed to discipline them from an early age, you have perhaps made a rod for your own back. I suggest that you imagine your child’s life as a large ship and you are the tiny rudder. Turning the child around could take a long time and a lot of hard work, especially with the little leverage you may have.
And why exactly do Christians point to the Bible to justify smacking little children?
Because Christians base their entire lives upon the teachings of the Bible. That includes smacking, stealing, sex outside marriage, avoiding taxes, loving our neighbours, and every other part of life. We do not obey the law of the land because we are scared of the police, but because we are commanded to do so by the God.
Stupid Liberals
Let’s now put the boot on the other foot for a minute and ask some questions of the “intelligent” “liberals” out there like Bradford and her fellow loonies. Generally they refuse to actually engage in dialog because they don’t know how to, or are to gutless to, or perhaps some other reason.
I met Bradford recently and tried engaging her on the smacking issue. Quite honestly, we get better arguments out of our 10-year-old daughter. Our even younger daughter understands simple logic better than Bradford. How many times has Bradford been asked by the media to explain her equivocation regarding the words “beat” and “smack”? Actually, I think this also says a lot about the legacy media and their poor journalistic standards, because they continually fail to “drag her over the coals” for such sophomoric thinking. But that aside, her logical thinking ability is pathetic and embarrassing, and various National radio interviewers continually seem not to see this.
In addition, why are these nutjob “liberals” so happy to use psychological manipulation techniques such as “time-out” on our children? Is it because their parents used these manipulation techniques on them and when they grew up they became politicians? This would seem to make sense – Bradford et al. could be just projecting their own infant-trained manipulative personalities on the population.
And did the “time-outers” ever consider that they may be damaging little children by psychologically screwing with their minds by their manipulations? A smack by comparison is quick and simple and does not play mind games with the child.
But back to “liberals”.
Why are liberals so often the people who advocate ripping the limbs off and sucking the brains out of unborn children, yet oppose smacking? I think it is because their thinking is — once examined — shallow and stupid. They believe things that “seem” sensible but are totally inconsistent with their “whole of life” worldview. So many of them believe that we are highly evolved monkeys, the result of complex chemical reactions, and then tell us that smacking is morally wrong. But they fail to tell us how complex chemicals could derive objective moral values in the first place. How can it be morally right to de-limb an unborn child but morally wrong to smack a child?
We could go on, but liberals will not bother engaging us with these real issues – they would rather just push their demonic agenda upon the population by stealth or force or by whatever other means they can devise.
Of course, if by some chance a “liberal” actually did make it this far, and did want to do a case study and experience some real actual empirical data, I am sure we could organize a meal with my kids and you could actually observe that smacking has been a useful part of our toolkit. We don’t expect any takers – this offer has been made before. And the Bradfordites of this world would not want evidence to mess up our prejudices would they?
My final advice to parents for what it is worth is to get rid of the TV and get back to talking to the kids over dinner. Mothers, be mothers, and realise that few people on their deathbeds wish they had spent more time at the office.
Are you seriously advocating beating an eight or nine year old prepubescent girl on the backside with a piece of wood????? Did Jesus advocate this? Did Paul? Do you really believe our Lord suggested flicking infants (!) and then when they become inured to this, building up the degree punishment more and more so as to make an ‘impression’??? No my friends, we are NOT to spur our children to anger. The New Testament does NOT advocate hitting children – or indeed anyone. According to the rabbis of old the Old Testament weighs the weight of the rod of discipline at a feather.
There is a huge difference between not disciplining a child – obviously disastrous, and humiliating a child, which can only bring a continuing cycle of violence.
How can you (rightly in my view) be appalled at the moral disaster that is abortion, and at the same time advocate physically attacking a child ???? To do so in the name of parental duty is perverse? One lot of hypocrisy (that of the liberals whom you rightly berate for inconsistency) is not balanced by a call to righteousness but the advocation of violence to bring it about!
Rosalene, if you cannot even distinguish between “beating” and “smacking”, then we have no common ground to discuss this further.
Btw, is “hell” also ruled out of your interpretation of the Bible and Jesus’ teaching? I mean, hell is not described as a nice place, and a loving God could not do something that is not nice, right?
Thanks for being gracious enough to put in a view that you do not agree with. Truly I didn’t think you would, I apologise. Not sure what Btw means. Of COURSE hell is not a nice place, nor was it designed to be, nor was it designed for people. It is of course our disobedience that gets us there – and I would be the first person to confess that that is where I would have been going, were it not for the work of the cross. But doesn’t the work of Christ show the enormous lengths the triune God goes to so as NOT to punish us – and shouldn’t we go to the SAME lengths before inflicting physical pain on our children???? When a parent takes the child’s punishment on themselves, I might sit up and take notice – or are we not to emulate the Father.
Cheers etc.
Thanks for the kind comment Rosalene. Your comments are welcome. Btw = by the way.
“…the triune God goes to so as NOT to punish us – and shouldn’t we go to the SAME lengths before inflicting physical pain on our children????”
To use your logic, we should not then punish our children for ANY offense. We should just take is on ourselves as Jesus did our sins upon Himself.
Please tell me Rosalene what is so offensive about a simple smack? My daughter is diabetic — she has to jab herself several times a day with a needle. She gets bruises at school from the playground and falls over and stub her toes. What is so right about “time out” (which I argue is psychological manipulation) and so wrong about a quick smack in the context of training/prayer/repentance/teaching?
Unless you can answer these questions, I really think you have no serious case.
Heh heh, Well – I am at fault, I did not mean to imply that there should be no logical consequences for going outside the law. Of course one does not allow a child to wander over the road with the idea that the child will learn not to get into the path of cars the hard way! But in my view the wise parent substitutes a substitute consequences. Time out is an excellent one, certainly for a young child five minutes is plenty. A reward for DESIRED behavior is an even better way to go. (Five stars earn an agreed ahead of time reward works well for primary age kids.) What I oppose is teaching the idea that God approves physical force over the weak and powerless as the way to succeed, that crushing people is godly, etc Physical punishment does that by example. It seems to me that Christ taught that children should not have psychological millstones tied to their feet – and the presentation of might is right is one of them I suspect.
As for a serious case (!) – I have been a CYPS social worker, and am a probation Officer (Whangarei) and I deal with serious cases all the time. Need I give examples?
Very interesting Rosalene. Yet for every example of a “serious case” you offer, I’m know I could offer a counter example. I know many kids who have been badly disciplined and the results are not good. I also know lots of kids who have been well disciplined IN THE CONTEXT OF A LOVING FAMILY where the results are amazing. I know people who have taken in several outcast kids into their family and have turned them around. One kid in fact said that the first time he understood love was the first time he was physically disciplined by his foster parents. He finally understood the Bible verse that “God disciplines those He loves”. Like many Biblical paradoxes, smacking (IN CONTEXT) is actually a sign of love toward the child (of course, beating is not).
Cheers.
Smacking a child as a form of correction is emphatically not the same as hitting, crushing people, physical punishment, beating, etc. Christians will use this because the Old Testament commends its use: “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.” (Proverbs 22:15). Jesus, being God incarnate, the second Person of the Trinity, authored that and the other passages which talk about corporal correction.
One uses a smack to drive the foolishness (Biblical context shows this to be the same as rebellion, lawlessness, etc.) out of the heart when it manifests itself. This foolishness is not the same as childishness or immaturity which contributes to a child to spilingl the milk or dropping the plate. If, however, the child spills the milk while carrying the glass across the carpet after you had told the child not to carry it across the carpet, the smack would be administered for the disobedience of carrying it across the carpet, not for spilling it.
Bradford and co constantly accuse parents of giving backhands across the mouth and lashing out in anger. This is not discipline. This is not smacking. This is abuse. The old Section 59 only ever justified force used by way of correction. If the force was used by way of anger, to save face, to get one’s own back, by way of vengeance, it was not justified by Section 59.
Correction is what parents are meant to do. We do that before the Department of Corrections has to. The Dept of Corrections is in business because parents have not done the job, or have been undisciplined themselves in lashing out in anger, drunken fits of rage or whatever. That kind of violence does indeed breed violence. Children raised with consistently applied, judicially administered smacks for expressions of rebellion and lawlessness, and when the children have been instructed in what these expressions are, such children are secure, well-behaved, self-disciplined, self-governing and very thankful to their parents. This is true because such smacks are not violence…they are expressions of judicial correction so that the child does not go that way again and stays on the trail. They are short and sharp, over and done with in a few moments. Not like time out which allows a child to simmer in the juice of anger, and not like the sentence of 2 years in jail from the Dept of Corrections, which does incredible violence to the person, the family, the employment, the future employment prospects, the national economy, etc., etc.
“rod of correction”
But, smacking kids with wood is wrong, amirite?
And, it’s even better when quoted in context:
“Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.”
Yes, kids are born wrong, you must beat them to fix them. This makes sense.
Do you really expect anyone to take this level or argumentation seriously?
It is hard to take such argumentation as “kids are born wrong, you must beat them to fix them” seriously. When one side can put to rest such two-dimensional, siimplistic and emotive language and discuss the issues logically and systematically, we might get somewhere.
The wooden spoon has been used by the best parents in NZ for a long time. We’ve raised our 4 natural children into adulthood using “the rod of correction” when required, and I’m sorry if the fact that they are all responsible citizens who do not smoke or do drugs, rarely drink at all, have outstanding work ethics, hold their virginity sacred and love their parents is offensive to some, but I’m not going to apologise for it.
Abusive parents can also use it, or rather misuse it when the force used is unreasonable in the circumstances and not used by way of correction…they can also misuse their fists, feet, vacuum cleaner hose, spin dryer, clothes line, etc.
The wooden spoon fulfills the “rod of correction” recommendation in the Bible. The old Section 59 only allowed one motivation for using reasonable force with children, and that one motivation was “for the purpose of correction.” This new section 59 lists 4 motivations one may employ for using reasonable force with children, but the motivation of correction is specifically denied. Thus, if the old Section 59 was ever used to justify the use of UNreasonable force for the purpose of correction, the new Section 59 can be used the same way with a much wider selection of motivations to choose from.
Language such as used by ConstantNeophyte is irresponsibly emotive. “Beat” as used by Neophyte is not what the old Section 59 or the Bible justifies. It is “force for the purpose of correction when the force used is reasonable in the circumstances.” Bradford and Kiro and Woods constantly equate the mildest of taps on the back of the hand with savage beatings that result in broken bones and death. Such posturing makes any kind of intelligent discussion impossible.
The Bible makes it clear that all humans have Fallen natures, meaning we are born with this tendency to rebel and do our own thing in opposition to all proper authority. If Neophyte is suggesting that children are not fallen but either neutral or basically good, you must explain where the bad behaviour comes from. Neutral or Good children would never throw temper tantrums or disobey their parents…Neutral children would remain neutral and do nothing, being unmoved by the stimuli around them…Good children would always act like angels, do what is good and obey their parents. Perhaps ConstantNeophyte can explain his/her world view to us and on what authority s/he bases this world view. That is: you know where I’m coming from: the Bible. So where are you coming from?
Shouldn’t alternatives to smacking be encouraged as much as possible? There are effective alternative methods of discipline. A well raised child will usually respond even to raised eyebrows.
Of course Peter
Smacking is just one tool in the toolbox.
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