“Spare the rod, spoil the child” ran the old-school disciplinarian mantra and schools and parents a-plenty practiced this ‘beat some sense into them’ philosophy for generations. And many still do, for as this article from the American Psychological Association reveals¹: ‘two-thirds of Americans still approve of parents spanking their kids.’

So is corporal punishment such as spanking advisable?

In short, absolutely not. The evidence is conclusive, not only does corporal punishment fail to correct a child’s misbehaviour, but it actually damages his or her development.

“Many studies have shown that physical punishment — including spanking, hitting and other means of causing pain — can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury and mental health problems for children.”

As one leading researcher on physical punishment said ‘Physical punishment doesn’t work to get kids to comply, so parents think they have to keep escalating it. That is why it is so dangerous.’

There is also a very logical and simple explanation as to why corporal punishment is dangerous: kids tend to copy the behaviour they have experienced themselves, particularly at the hands of their parents. All research shows (and we’re sure you’ve experienced this yourselves) that kids learn more from our actions than from what we say to them. The irony is that when we use corporal punishment to ‘show’ our children how to behave, they are likely to take our lesson literally, believing that it is ok for them to use violence on others, just as we have done towards them, in order to ‘enforce’ a message. This is confirmed by research that shows that children who have received corporal punishment are more likely to be aggressive and to be bullies², both towards people less powerful than them and also towards people they love.

What if I have already been using punitive techniques on my kids, is it too late to change both my behaviour and theirs?

Not at all, the beauty of using more positive ways of disciplining our children is that it creates a better connection with them. While the focus on punishment can turn into a downward spiral where our children’s behaviour worsens because of the experience of punitive parenting, all the positive tools we recommend are designed to change this into a virtuous circle where the relationship with our children and their behaviour improves both in the short and the longer term.

So if the evidence says ‘hands off’ kids, what about using non-physical forms of punishment on kids?

Again the evidence points to the negative as Psychology Today highlights³. This article refers to the multiple studies which reveal that punishment as a means of changing children’s behavior is counterproductive. For although punishment may appear to solve the problem in the short term, it fails to correct children (or adult’s) desire to misbehave in the all-important long term. The logic is simple: punishing children for a particular misbehaviour or mistake does not effect their desire to repeat the same behaviour, it simply makes them want to avoid being caught and punished for it again. So whilst their fear of being on the receiving end of a smack may stop children from doing something ‘naughty’ in the short term (ie within sight of us),  in the long term their bad behaviour (be it hitting a sibling or smoking cigarettes) may well be likely to reoccur, but out of sight of the ‘punisher’.

There are many other multitude of reasons why punishment doesn’t work because as Jane Nelsen, founder of Positive Discipline⁴ puts it:  “Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, we must first make them feel worse?”

Dr. Laura Markham, Clinical Psychologist, best selling author and mother explains why making children feel worse is not usually a good idea⁵:

• ‘Punishment creates an external locus of control — the authority figure. The child actually comes to see the parent as responsible for making her behave, rather than taking responsibility for her behavior as her own choice.

• Punishment focuses a child on the “consequences” he is suffering, rather than on the consequences of his behavior to someone else, so it makes him more self-centered.
• Punishment makes a child feel like he’s a bad person, which is always a self-fulfilling prophecy, so he’s more likely to repeat the bad behavior.
• The most salient lesson of punishment is to avoid it in the future by sneaking and lying to escape detection, so punishment fosters dishonesty.
• Punishment erodes our relationship with our child, so that he isn’t as invested in pleasing us.  And the more disconnected he feels from us, the worse his behavior.
• Because punishment doesn’t help a child with the emotions that drove her to act out to begin with, those emotions just get stuffed down, only to pop up again later and cause a repeat of the misbehavior.
• Punishment makes kids look out only for themselves and blame others, rather than caring about how their behavior affects others.’

So what are the alternatives? Do we let our children’s bad behaviour run unchecked?

Certainly not! The latest research shows that children need and feel safer with boundaries, but it is all about how we “enforce” these boundaries.

In an ideal world, rather than resorting to punitive techniques, we should be focusing on “problem solving” with our children, thereby empowering them to make better decisions in the future.

However, in some cases, it is important for our children to experience the ‘logical’ or ‘immediate’ consequence of their poor choice of behaviour in order to learn from it (as they would in real life!). The key to implementing successful consequences is to make sure that our children do not feel shamed by the experience. This is achieved by using empathy in place of ‘I told you so’s’ , anger or sarcasm, followed by a logical consequence that is Related, Reasonable and Respectful. For example, a logical consequence for a child who constantly stands up from the table could be “It’s really sad, as you have left the table, we assumed that you had finished eating so dinner is over now”.

In order to handle misbehaviour without resorting to punishment, download our app or read the explanation of the tool “Logical Consequences”.

Related articles

1. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx
2. http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/06/why-spanking-doesnt-work/
3. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201401/punishment-doesnt-work
4. http://www.positivediscipline.com/articles/PositiveTimeOut.html
5. http://www.ahaparenting.com/_blog/Parenting_Blog/post/Why_Punishment_Doesnt_Teach_Your_Child_Accountability/