I Changed My Mind On Spanking Kids. You Can Too.

I’ve written for various national publications about some of the most controversial topics in America (race, transgender ideology, poverty) and even dedicated a whole book to challenging mainstream narratives about Black America.

But nothing gets more carnal pushback than when I state that it’s wrong for parents to hit their children or another person’s children. And I can always predict why they’re so defensive—it’s because they were spanked as children by parents they love or admire, their parents were spanked as children, and their grandparents before them were spanked as children.

This behavioral lineage provides the software (as it were) that informs how they think about training a child. Challenging their method of discipline amounts to insulting their entire family.

Saying it’s wrong to spank (hit) a child is like saying their mother or father was a delinquent, and that feeling of judgment rarely goes over well.

Children often see their parents as infallible figures, and even in the worst circumstances, where the child carries bruises from frequent beatdowns, the abused child will find a way to take responsibility for those welts and scars. It’s a sad story many of you have seen play out in one form or another.

Inevitably, when you advocate that you shouldn’t lay a hand on your children, the meaning gets twisted as if you’re saying, “Don’t discipline your children.”

A belt to a child’s body is not the only method of discipline possible.

They say you’re supposed to hit hard enough that it hurts the child but stop short of crossing an arbitrary line that every parent decides for themselves about what’s too far. So, why does spanking give the impression that it works?

Because it hurts the child. You can see that it does.

I don’t care how old you are, it hurts to get physically hit. In what other circumstance would we accept love being expressed through hurting someone? After all, it's said that spanking is a “tough love” mechanism.

Make It Make Sense

Too many parents rationalize their level of physical punishment and minimize the harm to the child, fixating on whether there are bruises left behind as the delineation between it being an act of love or not.

Where you hit them, how hard you hit them, and what you hit them with doesn’t change the fact that you’re hitting them. Any objective to inflict any level of pain against a child should not be acceptable.

If you heard a man say he hits his girlfriend because he loves her, you’d say that’s absurd, but if it’s his daughter he’s striking, we debate whether that’s the mark of a good father.

This will come as no surprise to you reading this, especially if I’ve offended you. I was spanked as a child, and I absolutely hated it. I hated it not just because it hurt, but also because I already felt terrible before the physical harm began.

I can simultaneously love my mother but hate that she felt it necessary to beat me when I did something wrong.

When I first became a parent, I felt that spanking should be “on the table” because it was familiar to me, and I didn’t know any other approach for direct discipline.

That was until one day, looking at my two-year-old son, I realized how much I hated popping him on his butt. I hated the reasoning I’d used to justify it.

The chain of events is pretty much what you’d expect…

My son did something wrong → I was frustrated with his disobedience → I took my frustration out on his tiny body → My emotions settled → I felt terrible about what I’d done.

Building a New Foundation for Discipline

I was convicted by my conscience to stop repeating the cycle of spanking and engage in a different form of discipline that doesn’t invite violence into our relationship.

I didn’t tell my son this. Instead, I made a promise to myself that I’d never hit my son again and I kept that promise for the rest of his childhood. Instead of striking him in the form of a spanking, I talked to him even more.

Importantly, I didn’t just talk to him when he messed up. I made time for conversation when everything was great too.

We built a new relationship on honesty and open communication. I told my son throughout his life that if he messed up, he needed to tell me so we could work through it together.

A time or two I scolded him and that was enough to make him cry. He cried because he disappointed his father instead of fearing that I’d become a violent creature. Those mistakes became teachable moments, not physical beatdowns rooted in anger.

There Is Another Way

The unruly children you see in the world who don’t get hit aren’t that way because they’re not being hit–they’re that way because they’re not being disciplined. There are no consequences for their behavior and their parents are enablers or neglectful.

Children running amok have something going on inside of them that you can’t beat into proper form. Some parents hate when I say this, and I know “them’s fightin’ words,” but bad children are the byproduct of bad parenting. We are responsible for teaching them to become respectable and healthy people.

Before you spank your kids again, ask yourself this: Did I do everything else I possibly could before I laid my hands on my child?

If you’re honest with yourself, I believe you’ll find the answer is no.

Adam B. Coleman is an author and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. He writes on Substack at Speaking Wrong At The Right Time.