Like many of my generation, I remember being spanked as a child. What was particularly unfair was that the home of my childhood was an upside down house, in that the living space was on the second floor and my bedroom was on the first floor. So when my naughtiness factor overtaxed my mother’s patience, she would yell, tell me to go to my room, and then swat my behind as I started going down the stairs. There was no way to obey the go-to-the-room command without getting spanked.

Sometime between my childhood and the time I became a mom, the attitude about spanking changed. Time-outs were in, and hitting was way out. I can guess that most of us have slipped a time or two (I can actually only remember spanking one of my kids once and I still feel awful about it.  I apologize to her every time the topic comes up but she thinks I am being ridiculous since she was three at the time and has no memory of the event. But I remember it all too well and feel really guilty). But new research supports the notion that spanking is just not an option when it comes to disciplining your child(ren). 

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against spanking, and notes that children who were spanked are more likely to “become adults who are depressed, use alcohol, have more anger, hit their own children, hit their spouses, and engage in crime and violence”. And new research from the University of New Hampshire showed that children who were spanked during the four years of the study had lower IQ points than children who were not spanked.

To be honest, one has to be careful when interpreting data from observational studies like these. The gold standard of research is to do a randomized controlled trial. But in this case, that would mean taking a group of children, telling half the parents to use spanking and the other half never to spank, and then follow the children to see how they do. This would obviously not be ethical or desirable in any way. So we have to rely on observational studies, and there could be some limitations on how you interpret the data. It could be that women with lower IQ’s, who are more likely to have children with lower IQ’s, tend to spank more. It could be that children with lower IQ’s act out more, thus aggravating their parents more and increasing the likelihood of spanking. Any of these possibilities exist, which made me cringe when the lead author of the UNH study was quoted as saying, “All parents want smart children. This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen.”   None of the research has shown that in fact, avoiding spanking makes smarter kids. The research simply shows that the children of parents who avoid spanking have slightly higher IQ points than the children of parents who spank.

But there is no advantage whatsoever of spanking. And as someone who was trained as a child psychologist, I can tell you that if you want to change a child’s behavior, punishing them for bad behavior is not nearly as effective as is rewarding them for good behavior. So if you see your five-year-old sneaking up on the cookie jar a half hour before dinner, you have two choices. You can either smack them after they take the cookie and hope that this will keep them from doing it the next time (it won’t), or you can tell them that if they carefully climb off the counter without taking the cookie, you will give them two cookies after dinner.

Adults tend to spank children when they are on overload. So the next time you are feeling emotionally depleted and one of your kids truly pushes your button, take a deep breathe and walk away. Punch a pillow, go for a run, or sing at the top of your lungs. Do anything but spank. Your child’s body and mind will benefit.