Nothing infuriates me more about the topic of spanking children than hearing people say, “if you spank your children – you’re abusing them!” Also when they say, “children who are spanked become more angry, aggressive, and violent.” And the clincher: “According to leading sociologists, spankings may lower a child’s IQ.”  Really now?  According to a new study by University of New Hampshire sociologist, Murray Straus, spanking will not only make a child more aggressive and less trusting of the parent, but will lower the IQ by five points! A finding that I tried very hard not to laugh at.

Well, there’s a country that is putting this recent study and all other statistics and grumblings to shame: Singapore! Why Singapore? I just found it interesting that in a country that’s known for it’s low crime rate (7.15 per 1000 compared to 80 per 1000 for the US) and math scores higher that our country’s scores , that it practices corporal punishment.  It’s citizens can experience this form of discipline called caning from early childhood through college, and most notably in its prisons as well!

What is caning? In terms of Singapore’s use of caning, it is described in Wikipedia as:

“a form of corporal punishment in primary and, especially, secondary schools, and also in one or two post-secondary colleges, to maintain strict discipline in school. This is only applicable to male students. The punishment is administered formally in the British schoolboy caning style.”  (And that style is usually a cane sometimes soaked in water and administered to the buttocks.) see Wikipedia

Only to males students? Just imagine if the boys in our country would be caned for discipline problems. Would we even have gangs today? Would teachers be spending so much time in classrooms trying to restore order instead of actual teaching? It’s so interesting that in our country where corporal punishment is nonexistent in most schools, that we have just as many discipline problems – aggression from boys and even girls!

If modern sociologists were correct in spankings lowering IQ’s then Singapore should be the dumbest nation in the world! But it isn’t and that fact alone should immediately prove our US sociologists are the dumb ones for even coming up with such fallacious reports.

Singapore seems to be a country closest to the model of biblical discipline, in spite of it being mostly Buddhist nation.  What does the word of God say we should do in disciplining our children?

Proverbs 13:24
He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

Proverbs 22:15
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.

Proverbs 23:13
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.

The rod is an instrument to inflict pain, a message that Singapore gets.  America doesn’t and we are spending hours and hours of wasted time trying to “reason” with a child who’s mind isn’t even fully developed to even comprehend why they are acting up to begin with!  Case in point: a woman shared in one of the forums of the spanking discussions that she had told her toddler not to run into the streets and reasoned with them that they could get hit by a car.  The child acknowledged her and as soon as the mother turned around the child darted into the street ANYWAYS! The mother caught the child in time and gave her a spanking. Her child did get THAT message and didn’t run into the streets again!  This mother shared that if her child didn’t get spanked for disobeying her, she could be dead!

The instructions to discipline a child still come with much responsibility as a parent needs the wisdom to determine WHEN a child needs to be spanked.  As a mother of five children who were all spanked to some degree, the rule of thumb was to discipline when a child disobeyed or acted in defiance.  Some of my children a mere ‘no’ was sufficient and at times just a tap would do before the child was sobbing in deep remorse.  Some of my more strong-willed children needed more stringent discipline which required a “beating” with a belt or paddle.  Not beat to injury, but beat to inflict pain.

My methods of spanking varied from the pulling of the pants down, underwear left on so not to humiliate the naked child but also to prevent bruising, to a tap on the hand for my less temperamental children.  Usually a red bottom would result from the spanking, redness that’s gone from the next day.  Of course, if a child went to school and the teachers would ever see redness on the behind, that would more than likely result in a child abuse charge but I always told my children they would have to arrest me to keep me from spanking them!  Not one of my five children ever called 911 on me either!

Those five children are either graduated from college, or in college right now.  One of my five is working on her Master’s degree.  I am a college graduate and so is my Ph.D dad who did most of the spanking in the family and as a man who was also spanked as a child.  None of us have ever been to jail for being overly aggressive.  In fact if you talked to most people who’ve ever received a spanking or gave spankings, in most of those cases they also came out quite normal with their intelligence in tact!

Somehow those sociological reports just don’t add up.  We Americans spank less (because of the fear of child abuse charges and the ridiculous brainwashing that somehow reasoning with a temper tantrum throwing child is more beneficial), yet we have more crime.  We don’t use corporal punishment, yet our students have some of the lowest academic scores for us to be such an industrialized nation.

Now I would never advocate the same type of caning that the Singapore prison system uses, but discipline that makes use of an object to inflict pain and not injury and done consistently would make quite an effective mode of discipline.  And discipline only for the child that needs it as not all children even need to be spanked.

If we need an example of what happens when the rod is taken away, we needn’t look further than our own nation which is leaving biblical principles further and further behind.

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UPDATE 1/04/10

Study: Spanked Children May Grow Up to Be Happier, More Successful – Fox News

© 2009 – 2010, Carlotta Morrow. All rights reserved.

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