Spanking: Where Does Discipline End and Abuse Begin?

August 29th, 2011  |  

By Jen Wilson, "Up, Down, and All Around...with Jen :-)" Blogger

I am guilty of spanking my children. My oldest has been spanked once, maybe twice, in his entire 17 years. My seven year old has received a few prime swats, and other forms of discipline, in her short lifetime. My middle child, a fourteen year old boy, is much more intimately familiar with spankings. As an extremely hyperactive and unruly child, my son was constantly exploring things that were off limits, and often dangerous. Undeterred by the threats of toy removal, time-outs, and other non-physical forms of punishment, he pushed me to my limits and I resorted to the only other method I knew, spanking. At the tender age of five, he was quite adept at “assuming the position.” He no longer covered his back end with his tiny hands, and as much as it drove me crazy, he developed a stoic resistance and would receive his spanking without so much as a tear.

Was this child abuse? Or was it merely discipline? The Florida Statute reads: “Abuse means any willful act or threatened act that results in any physical, mental, or sexual injury or harm that causes or is likely to cause a child’s physical, mental, or emotional health to be significantly impaired. Abuse of a child includes acts or omissions. ‘Harm’ to a child’s health or welfare can occur when a person:

Inflicts or allows to be inflicted upon the child physical, mental or emotional injury (Physical Abuse Citation: Ann. Stat. § 39.01)

So, according to my state’s statutes, I have not committed child abuse because I did not significantly impair my children’s physical, mental or emotional health. But if I look at the exception in the same statue, it is not so clear. It reads: “Corporal discipline of a child by a parent does not in itself constitute abuse when it does not result in harm to the child.” So even though I subjected my child, actually, all three of my children, to corporal punishment at one time or another, it is only considered abuse if I harmed them. But doesn’t a spanking cause emotional injury? Doesn’t bending over and getting smacked, pretty firmly, on the bottom cause physical pain? And as a child, a young toddler who has never been struck by the parent that loves them; doesn’t this type of action result in a seriously traumatic event for them? Did I cause harm?

I don’t know where discipline ends and abuse begins. I know that I got spanked as a child. I know that sometimes I learned the lesson, and sometimes I didn’t. But I know that when I was young, the thought of calling the police and reporting my parents as abusers never even entered my mind, no matter how sore my butt was.

But times changed as I grew up. Cable news outlets expanded, divorces were on the rise, and the stories of children being abused, and others claiming abuse to malign a parent, exploded. As an adult, I became keenly aware of how lucky I was, never having been subjected to horrific physical or mental traumas. My eyes were opened to the fact that what I saw as a form of discipline my parents had used could be interpreted by some as abuse. I was also very cognizant of the fact that had my parents delivered the punishment out of anger, they could have easily crossed that fine line.

I heard members of the media discussing this very topic. They agreed that spanking is an acceptable form of discipline, if done appropriately. They stated that if the punishment is delivered out of anger, as an outlet for frustration and rage, then it is abuse. It is only when the punishment is administered out of love and with the intention of teaching a child what is right, that it still constitutes as discipline and not abuse. But doesn’t the mother who brushes her child’s teeth with steel wool say she does it only to teach her child the importance of dental hygiene? Doesn’t the father forces his toddler to wear a dirty diaper for two days only do so to help the child become potty trained?

Children have been spanked for generations. And yes, they have been given alcohol, medicine and even hot sauce in the past. A relative of mine got hot sauce on her thumb to help her quit sucking it. She ended up crying so hard after she tasted the hot sauce that she rubbed her eyes with the same thumb. The result? She had very irritated eyes. But she didn’t lose her eyesight, didn’t call the police, and didn’t suck her thumb again.

I am an extremely fortunate person. I was not abused as a child. I was punished, had pickle juice put on my favorite thumb, sent to bed with no supper, and spanked. But I was never beaten. I was never psychologically tortured. I was never burned, locked in a closet or left hungry for days. And I never, never had any potentially harmful liquid forced down my throat or got thrown into an ice cold shower. I could not imagine doing this to any of my own children, not matter what the circumstances. But a mother in Alaska did. And mothers, fathers, step-parents, foster-parents and other so called “guardians” do it countless times a day to hundreds of thousands of children. And I bet if you ask any one of them why, they will all say the same thing: they did it to teach a lesson, they did it to discipline, they did it out of love. I’m just really glad my parents didn’t love me that much.

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