We shouldn’t be spanking babies.
Well, spanking at all is problematic–but we especially shouldn’t be spanking babies!
This month I’m reposting some of the important posts I ran 4-5 years ago, and this is one I find that I point back to all the time. Rebecca wrote it when Alex was just a baby (he just had his fifth birthday a few weeks ago now!). And it’s an important one.
Tomorrow the amazing Wendy Snyder from Fresh Start Families is on the podcast, and next Tuesday I’ll be doing a FREE parenting webinar with her about how to avoid power struggles with your kids–and what kind but firm discipline looks like when spanking is no longer part of your parenting toolbox. We’ve done this seminar for a few years running now, and people have always really appreciated it. So sign up now–it’s so worth it!
And today, let’s remember why it’s not okay to spank little ones.
Here’s Rebecca:
My 9-month-old baby boy is a handful.
It’s Rebecca here on the blog today! And let me tell you–my baby is a bubbly, jiggly, giggly little handful, but he is a handful. He learned how to climb stairs 4 months before he “should,” he figured out how to climb onto the couch before he could even put himself into a sitting position, and he takes two grown adults to change his more challenging diapers because he flails and rolls around so much.
I absolutely adore him. And he is a lot to manage.
Most of my pictures of him look like this because I can’t get him to stop moving for more than 5 seconds:
My baby boy is a handful. And I am loving it.
But something that I realized the other day is that my baby boy–that innocent, happy, giggly boy–is of “spanking” age in many Christian resources. In fact, according to books like To Train Up a Child, I should have been spanking him for 2.5 months already.
Just listen to some of these excerpts from Christian parenting books (that were used among many in my own social circle growing up). The first, To Train Up a Child, was written by the same family that wrote Created to Be His Helpmeet, that we talked about recently. The second, by Ted Tripp, has sold millions of copies and is quite well-respected:
- A seven-month-old boy had, upon failing to get his way, stiffened clenched his fists, bared his toothless gums and called down damnation on the whole place. At a time like that, the angry expression on a baby’s face can resemble that of one instigating a riot. The young mother, wanting to do the right thing, stood there in helpless consternation, apologetically shrugged her shoulders and said, “What can I do?” My incredulous nine-year-old whipped back, “Switch him.” The mother responded, “I can’t, he’s too little.” With the wisdom of a veteran who had been on the little end of the switch, my daughter answered, “If he is old enough to pitch a fit, he is old enough to be spanked.” (p. 79)
- Any spanking, to effectively reinforce instruction, must cause pain, but the most pain is on the surface of bare skin where the nerves are located. A surface sting will cause sufficient pain, with no injury or bruising. Select your instrument according to the child’s size. For the under one year old, a little, ten- to twelve-inch long, willowy branch (striped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sought. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a sufficient alternative. For the larger child, a belt or larger tree branch is effective. (p. 47, 1st edition)
- On the bare legs or bottom, switch him eight or ten licks; then, while waiting for the pain to subside, speak calm words of rebuke. If the crying turns to a true, wounded, submissive whimper, you have conquered; he has submitted his will. If the crying is still defiant, protesting and other than a response to pain, spank him again. (p. 80)
- She then administers about ten slow, patient licks on his bare legs. He cries in pain. If he continues to show defiance by jerking around and defending himself, or by expressing anger, then she will wait a moment and again lecture him and again spank him. When it is obvious he is totally broken, she will hand him the rag and very calmly say, “Johnny, clean up your mess.” He should very contritely wipe up the water. (p. 62, 17th edition)
(find more damaging quotes at the website Why Not Train Up a Child.)
I hope we would all agree that’s beyond the pale, and that To Train Up a Child is a child abuse manual. But even more mainstream Christian books say very similar things–that you must defeat your child, break them, that your child is evil, etc.
- The child’s problem is not an information deficit. His problem is that he is a sinner. There are things within the heart of the sweetest little baby that, allowed to blossom and grow to fruition, will bring about eventual destruction……
- When your child is old enough to resist your directives, he is old enough to be disciplined. When he is resisting you, he is disobeying…. Rebellion can be something as simple as an infant struggling against a diaper change or stiffening out his body when you want him to sit in your lap. (p. 154)
- “A young child does not give proper weight to words alone. His attention is secured when those words are punctuated by a sound spanking.”
Again, Christian books say that this little baby:
…needs to have his spirit broken. If I take the advice of these books, I am to see this beautiful baby boy as a sinful being, with every time he throws a fit, rolls when I’m changing his diaper, or tries to stand when I want him to sit on my lap as further proof that he is damned and controlled by an innately evil spirit.
Take a second again and look at that baby boy. That smiling baby boy with banana on the side of his face. He, apparently, needs to be broken.
I believe that much of this horrific, evil parenting advice is, at its heart, the result of utter ignorance, pride, and a lust for power.
And it has caused so many parents to go astray.
When Alex bites me while breastfeeding, he is not trying to cause pain. He’s just trying to soothe his aching gums and he doesn’t understand that his actions affect me. If I beat him with a switch, I may get him to stop biting me. But I would also destroy a part of him by punishing him for something that is developmentally appropriate. What I am telling him is “Who you are is bad/wrong–you can never know when pain is coming (because babies don’t have the ability to understand actions and consequence in a future-thinking capacity yet), but sometimes you will simply get hit because you, at the core of who you are, are bad.”
When Alex pulls my hair too hard he’s not trying to be disobedient, even if I say “no.” He simply doesn’t have the executive functioning capacity to control his impulses yet, and frankly, if I didn’t want my hair pulled I should have been the adult and not let him play with it (it’s just so cute to see how much he likes to pet it!). By hitting him for doing so, I would add so much confusion and betrayal because his mommy, the person who gives him food and love and comfort and on whom he is fully dependent, hurt him and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t have a choice but to love me; and the person he must love for survival hurts him.
A baby not doing what you want him or her to do is not disobeying, is not sinning, is not disrespecting your authority.
He is being a baby. And being a baby is not wrong.
But I think that many of these parenting false-teachers have substituted a desire for power and control for education in cognitive development. Instead of taking time and humbly asking, “Am I wrong here? Is this normal?” they instead work towards complete domination of their children because of their lust for power. The goal is not actually to have good kids–the goal is to have children who obey.
(As a side note, do you know who are often the most compliant children, so much so that it’s a major red flag teachers look out for? Sexually abused children. Compliance does not mean you have succeeded as a parent.)
But the problem is that they take this lust for domination and dress it up in Christianese so that parents who want to please God get seduced by their holy-sounding teaching and tricked into following them. This is why being a teacher holds so much weight and why we are constantly warned against false teachers in the New Testament; you can permanently alter the course of someone’s life by what you teach. I believe there are many parents who were overly harsh or strict or punitive with their children simply because the advice they were given was wrong, but they didn’t know there was an alternative. If they had read developmentally-appropriate materials, things may have been very different. But the false teachers got to them first, and they sounded the “holiest.”
And if that is you, I am so sorry. I am so incredibly sorry.
I am sorry you didn’t get to gaze in wonder at your child and simply revel in their innocence and praise God that this is a child that will grow up knowing Jesus at the core of his being.
I am sorry you didn’t get to laugh at all the baby blunders and toddler-isms that are labeled as evil but are simply signs that they are learning.
I am sorry you felt you had to break your child’s spirit, this beautiful soul that you created and nurtured and loved, because fear of failing them was instilled in you to such a degree that you saw your own child’s spirit as a threat to their salvation, not a gift from God to celebrate (even the difficult ones).
I am sorry if you look back now at how you parented and you are filled with regret, or you wish you knew what you know now.
I am sorry that it is not only your child’s innocence that was taken, but also yours.
You may also enjoy:
- Does Spanking Actually Work?
- What Does Spanking Teach Kids about How Love Should Hurt?
- 10 Reasons Christian Parents Have a Hard Time Giving up Spanking
- The Sexual Element in Spanking Children: Let’s Ask the Uncomfortable Questions
- On Spanking: When You Think You’re Following the Bible, but You’re Really Following Your Own Interpretation
- Spanking Fixed It For You: It’s Okay to Change Your Mind about Spanking
- What Does the Research Say about Spanking?
Our children are not spirits to be broken, but hearts to nurture and encourage and love.
Of course kids will misbehave. And of course, discipline is important so that they learn what the boundaries are. But spanking a baby is never OK, spanking a baby is never necessary, and spanking a baby is never beneficial. (In fact, there are many theological perspectives that argue against spanking and modern research is fully against spanking as punishment. Many of my professors in university who work with severe behavioural disorders treated them without ever implementing spanking once. I would argue that if it’s not mandatory in the Bible, if research says it harms more than it helps, and if the worst of the worst behaviours can be curbed without spanking, there is literally no reason to do so.)
I suggest that we, as the body of Christ, denounce the teaching that children’s spirits need to be broken and instead turn to Jesus’s words: “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Jesus didn’t think that children were at risk of eternal damnation simply because they were evil to their core and needed to be broken–he says that the kingdom of heaven already belongs to them. Children do not need to be wrangled to follow Christ, they are running towards them and it’s our job to not HINDER them. That is so incredibly different than how books like the ones above see children.
Jesus doesn’t want to break your child’s spirit. Jesus celebrates your child, Jesus is standing there with arms wide open and your job, as a parent, is to foster that joyful running towards Jesus. Not hit your child for standing when you want him to sit. Not spank your child for rolling away during a diaper change. Not switch your child for crawling off a blanket you’d rather he stay on. No, your job is to not hinder your little one as he or she runs towards Christ.
My baby boy is not a spirit to be broken. My baby boy is a gift to be treasured.
Yes, we are working on “no” when he tries to roll off the change table because he’s seriously a risk to himself. And yes, we’re hoping he gains his fear of heights soon so he stops trying to swan dive off the couch. But our son is not a dirty rotten sinner at 9 months old. Instead, here is what I pray over my son every night before he goes to sleep:
May he grow up to be one who defends and protects others as he walks in the light of Christ. May he always know you, love you, and know he is loved and known by you. Thank you, God, for the blessing Alex is to us and for the privilege of being his mommy.
Because it truly is a privilege, even if he pulls my hair.
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
What do you think? Why is it that so much Christian parenting literature ignores child development? What can we do? Let’s talk in the comments!
UPDATE: After the furor here and especially on Facebook, we’ve got a follow-up post on what the research says about spanking.
“I am sorry you didn’t get to laugh at all the baby blunders and toddler-isms that are labeled as evil but are simply signs that they are learning.”
Imagine spanking your child every time they get an answer wrong on a test or make a mistake in their homework.
I had the same teachers for both fifth and sixth grade, so I can’t remember which year this happened (I would have just turned ten or eleven, for reference). In the fourth (of six) six-week marking period, I had an A++ in social studies because I scored 100 on all the homework and tests, along with straight A’s on the rest of my report card. In the fifth six weeks, I only got an A+ because I had missed a question on a test.
This was back in the spring of either 76 or 77, when teachers filled out report cards by hand. When my dad saw the drop from the A++ to a mere A+, he got mad and berated me. He demanded an explanation for how I had dropped the ball.
Did it matter that all the rest of the grades were A’s? Of course it didn’t. All that mattered was that I had slipped up on a single question on a single test.
Fast-forward to fall of 83. All freshman engineering students had to take a series of “intro to engineering” classes. When some older students found out I had “Professor L” for the first class in the sequence, they all put on dour faces and warned me, “He’s so hard! Good luck getting through with HIM!”
Yeah, compared to my dad, Professor L was a cinch.
Fast-forward to 87 when I trusted Christ. The “church” I got involved with used spiritual disciplines not as tools to help me grow in my relationship with God, but as cudgels to remind me just how bad a person I was. I was going to have to work reeeeaaaalllly hard to measure up.
Several other churches we attended after moves to other states all functioned the same way. Cudgels, not encouragement. Berating, not coming alongside. Telling me how far I was from perfection instead of building me up, or even just letting me enjoy peace with the Father. Constant condemnation. Heavy yokes. Terrible burdens. No grace. No mercy. All shame. All blame.
I’m barely holding on to my faith.
We just had a death in the extended family, and going to the visitation and funeral was the first time I’d been in a church building in … four years? I have to say, it gave me the heebie jeebies. But then the longer the funeral went, the madder I got. Not at the family, of course. Not even at God. But at the men—yes, MEN—who have stolen God Himself from me, via their crap teachings.
I honestly have no idea if I’ll ever recover. I don’t know how to undo all the “lessons” I’ve been taught, literally my entire life, about how big a failure I am. So I read lot, do a lot of jigsaw puzzles, get my chores done, then take time to just do what I want to do. A lot of self-soothing. And a whole bunch of “I don’t give a 🤬 about what other people may think about me.”
But let me say thanks to all of YOU here, who have let me vent, and wail, and mourn, and have come alongside me with kind words and big hearts, because so many of y’all have gone through the same things.
Hugs to all of us.
I’ve gone through different things than you, though with quite a bit of crossover. And it bites.
I truly hate that you struggle so much to feel God’s love towards you, but I get it. I waffle back and forth between feeling a smidgeon loved some days while others I feel hopeless, wondering what I did as a child that was so bad that God wishes to continue to punish me with various aspects of my life. I am in a church that has been healing for a couple years now but it is slow going, like I’m having to climb a muddy mountain. Occasionally I find a solid rock to rest on, but when I continue my journey up that mountain, I sometimes find myself sliding back past it or even previous ones.
I too am glad we have this space which is so often healing in various ways.
Oh, wow, JoR, thanks for letting me in on more of your history. I’m so sorry about the men who stole God from you too. I get angry at them for stealing so much from me as well. It is hard.
“Any spanking,… must cause pain, but the most pain is on the surface of bare skin where the nerves are located. …sufficient pain, with no injury or bruising. Select your instrument … For the under one year old, …long, willowy branch (striped of any knots that might break the skin) …”
This.Makes.Me.Sick! This is so calculated, so disgustingly and thoroughly evil… it is what many abusers do- make sure there is no bruising/evidence for which they can have their hateful actions documented and reported. It is beyond evil. To me, it is almost worse than a person who flies off the handle and beats someone, due to the evilness in the calculation, all designed to self-protect while inflicting the most possible damage. (Please don’t think I am minimizing abuse from/of others that is done less calculatingly- it is still heinous. I’m just emphasizing the intent behind this.)
“A seven-month-old boy had… called down damnation.”
Wow, what a great way to view a precious child that God Himself had just knit into creation not that long ago! Has this author ever looked into HIS own face to see the anger there when HE has not gotten what HE wants?? I doubt it. I have a feeling his kids and possibly wife have felt the very same about him- that he just called down damnation upon them. And I wonder if Tripp’s daughter’s incredulosity was because she felt it unfair that baby wasn’t beaten as she had been and she wanted the baby to suffer as she had?
So very vile.
I spanked my children for a very brief season when they were so young they don’t even remember it anymore. If I were to be super spiritual about it, I’d say that God used a series of incidents to show me that this wasn’t his heart for children. (Honestly, I just used some critical thinking skills to put two and two together and realized it was most definitely not working.)
Something I realized is that the so-called Biblical spanking experts forget that parents can be wrong, and never address how to teach children to respectfully correct/advise an authority figure. Like the time my non-verbal 18-month-old was “rebelling” against having her teeth brushed. My three-year-old walked by and said, “Mom, that’s MY toothbrush!” Whoops.
For some parents, it’s a genuine (but misguided) desire to teach and train their children. For others, it’s all about power and control. And for some spiritual leaders, it’s all about instilling fear into vulnerable parents: https://www.whyhavewefasted.org/john-pipers-advice-for-exhausted-new-moms/
Oh, groan. When I saw the name John Piper I knew there would be something wrong with it. I was almost afraid to read it. He is good at being cruel while acting like he thinks he is being kind and excels at being foolish while acting like he thinks he’s being a wise sage. Since he likes wolves, he probably is one. They like to gather in packs. His sheep costume is just better than some of the others.
Do these authors want to create a situation where their children grow up waiting for an opportunity to get revenge on their parents? Because this sounds like how one would convince your child to wait until your gaurd is down and then spite you. It just seems to perpetuate abuse.
Actually, something else stood out to me. How inappropriate that the author’s children thought it was acceptable for them to judge someone else’s children- and offer their mature opinions. Granted, we all are guilty of mentally commenting on others’ differences, but I really hope my children never try to shame someone like that. The 6 year old next door lies, the family on the corner fights(physically). I try to discuss with my daughter that no, lying and fighting are not good behaviors- but we need to still be polite and gracious, and see the people, not the behaviors. (I do also tell my kids to come home if the family on the corner starts fighting, for their own safety.) It’s weird to me that someone would boast of his kids being rude and judgemental.
I should clarify, the author quoted, not the author of this piece!
If my parents had heard my 9-year-old self lecturing an adult like that, I’d have been ordered to apologise for my outrageous rudeness, not praised for my ‘wisdom’! I don’t think that kid’s arrogance is the best advertisement for her father’s disciplinary ideas.
From experience I can tell you that the older children will take it out on their younger siblings. Eventually the younger siblings will ruthlessly push their exhausted and aging mother to confront and restrain her growing bully. 🙁
It really does!
Thank you for raising your voice against baby spanking repeatedly. It is horrifying.
I have a well-behaved teen-age boy. I followed Dr. Sears’ baby advice and did the attachment parenting thing. I haven’t regretted it.
My ex husband made a comment about someone else’s baby needed to be spanked for crying in a restaurant. That baby wasn’t more than six months old. I looked at him in horror as I told him that baby can’t be spanked for crying. He said a little porch on the butt wouldn’t hurt. Needless to say, we didn’t have kids, and I don’t regret it with that guy. I know he went on to have kids with wife number 2 so not sure how that worked out with spanking. Of course him and wife number 3 went on a years long custody battle against the second wife for 50/50 custody and no child support. Glad I dodged a bullet with that guy.
Oh that’s horrifying!
> > your child is evil, etc.
This has come up on this site before. The idea is that all children, it not outright possessed, are born with a little bit of Satan in them, and it’s the job of the parent to “beat the devil out of them”. I have no idea where this came from, and as I remarked before, if Satan is in your child, beating him/her is hardly likely to convince him to leave.
Like so many other errors, they’ve taken a tiny piece of truth and added to it and twisted it and turned it upside down so that it is barely recognisable.
The Bible makes it very clear that we are all sinners – including cute little kids. Every single person on this planet needs Jesus – not one person is, or ever has been, good enough on their own. But the way in which they have twisted that into justification for ‘breaking’ a child’s spirit and beating the devil out of them is not only abusive, it’s heresy. If it were possible to beat sin out of a child, why would that child need Jesus? If physical punishment can make us right with God, why did Jesus need to go to the cross? They are turning God’s gift of salvation into a particularly sick and abusive form of salvation by works.
My mom used To Train Up A Child as a parenting manual and blanket trained us and spanked me as a baby and I’m fine!!
I only have had years of therapy for my complex-PTSD, anxiety, depression, and a heart condition caused by stress that started in my teens.
Note: my mom is not a bad person. She was taught that this was the only way to make sure her children followed God and didn’t end up in hell. She has changed a lot since then.
Oh, wow! I’m so sorry for those long-term effects, but not surprised. And I know your mom was probably just trying to do right by you. It’s just so tragic.