Discipline or Abuse?

I was asked the question today whether it’s okay for a parent to "beat" their kid. I had to somewhat filter the question into a more reasonably worded one, but I am still stumped for the answer to the question. Is it okay for a parent to use physical methods to discipline their child? At what point does "disciplining" become physical abuse? I believe the very simple answer to this question is: When the parent can no longer maintain control over their own temper it crosses over from disciplining to being abuse. At this point the action of either spanking or hitting the child as a means of punishment stops being discipline, but merely a way to lose ones temper at the child. This will ruin the point of disciplining a child. The point of punishment should be to show that you are concerned with an unhealthy or sinful behavior that the child must change. Most importantly the child needs to know that you care about them. The fact that you care about them is lost if you are simply losing your temper at them. It is foolishness to say you are “disciplining” a child if you are simply acting out of rage. For example if a parent loses their temper and begins to hit, push, or punch their child, and then says “You need to be disciplined!” this parent has crossed over from being a parent to being viewed as a fool by the child. It shows the child that the parent has no control over themselves let alone the situation involving the child. It works against the parent. The more the parent loses their temper, the less the child cares about what the parent has to say and at this point the parent has lost all control of the situation.

If the parent cannot control their temper why should the child? After all who is the leader and who is the follower in the house? If the parent is continually losing their temper should they really expect anything less than the child? If a parent is having trouble with an especially angry child they should first realistically examine their own temper and the way that they have been handling their own anger. An important key in this step is to surround ourselves with truthful friends. What I mean by "truthful friends" are friends that are not afraid to lovingly challenge unhealthy or sinful behavior in order that our relationship with God might mature. If you find yourself surrounded by friends who never challenge you, chances are they aren’t your friends. They are more like colleagues who enjoy flattering you or boosting your own self esteem. Having honest friends around you will also involve having the ability to openly talk about your own problems with other people. Yes this is uncomfortable. Growth is usually uncomfortable. Sorry. The presence or absence of real friends can be extremely detrimental or beneficial to keeping parents accountable.

If parents are accountable only to themselves this can lead to a world of problems. When has it ever been healthy for people to be left accountable only to themselves? Children are accountable to their parents, employees to employers, countries to leaders, the church to God. We see accountability everywhere. If left alone people will naturally allow themselves to sin more often than they would if they had to answer to someone. The bottom line is this: Parents must be kept accountable to someone outside of their marriage. If they are only accountable to each other this could lead to problems. It leads to a bubble effect. You have no outside, objective perspective on your home. It’s always beneficial to see things from a new perspective; it brings things to light that you may have never seen or noticed. Yes it’s fun to live in a world where you are always right, but where is that realistic? Pandora? Narnia? I don’t know…..some kind of dream world most likely.




Sometimes parents don’t realize their means of disciplining isn’t normal
because they only live in the bubble of their daily life. They need to be able to step outside of this environment and view it from another's seat. It's like that TV show that shows alcoholics how they act when they are drunk. When the alcoholics see how they act when they are drunk it is a huge shock and they are embarrassed at their actions. I wish I could do this with some families to wake them up, but I realize I cannot. Being outside of a family allows you to take step back now and make the statement "No those aren't healthy or normal interactions" , but how do you burst their bubble of normality? Do you rain on their parade? Break the news that what they are doing is not right or normal? I think it’s the duty of true friends to make the statement sometimes that what other parents doing is wrong.



I realize this post has jumped around a lot in the ideas I’ve presented. Welcome to my mind. It’s a jumbled world of thoughts that are only organized when I write them down in an orderly fashion so that others may read, comment, disagree or agree with, or simply enjoy reading for the purpose of personal entertainment. Going back to the main question of this post, I think it is okay for a parent to use physical methods of punishment- to a limit. The purpose of the punishment must not be to inflict pain or be an outlet of a parent’s lost temper. The purpose of it should be to cause the child to see that the parent is concerned with the child’s behavior because they love them and care if they are behaving in an unhealthy manner. If physical punishment doesn’t cause the child to see their wrong behavior it should be stopped immediately. I also think it should be used only when the child is really young. If it is continued for many years the child will begin to grow bitter or used to a spanking as a means of punishment. The mindset will become “Well if I’m only going to get spanked……” and they will do whatever they know is wrong knowing that all they are getting as a consequence for their actions is a spanking. Physical punishment should also only be used as a last resort. If no other form of punishment works it can be used to discipline the child. I realize I’m not a parent so I don’t pretend to state that all I’ve said is correct, or the only way to parent a child it’s just my personal views on the issue. I’m sure others disagree with me and vice versa, disagreement is healthy though. It’s what makes every human unique from another human. There are a few ideas that are not debatable though, such as the idea that physical punishment should never be used when the parent is losing their temper. That’s simply a given. Also the idea that parents should be kept accountable to people outside of their family. There’s no way around the idea that people need to be kept accountable to each other. As always, I hope this post has caused you to think, formulate your own ideas about things, and maybe just cause you to be entertained for about fifteen minutes of your daily life.