On Spanking II

Aside from the fact that spanking is abuse, it’s also unintelligent, lazy and selfish, and unnecessary. Spanking is unintelligent because it doesn’t require any rational thinking about the needs of the child. Rather than using the uniquely intelligent mass of neurons, dendrites, and axons between your ears to figure out what need of the child is not being met, you opt to use stupid brute force. Spanking is lazy and selfish because its seemingly a quick fix or simple life hack to make your child comply with your preferences. Obviously, their preferences are less important, and may be forcefully discarded. Spanking is unnecessary because no matter what the issue is that your child is experiencing, there are other tools to help them with it. I outline several in my book, No Hitting. Of course, those tools require a parent to value intelligence, patience and compassion. Fundamentally, what makes these tools difficult to wield is the fact that a parent were themselves an abused and traumatized child who became a broken adult. Perhaps that should be fixed before one decides to raise children. And that’s today’s two cents.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.