Spanking Hurts My

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Article 39
Claire Safran
“SPANKING HURTS MY
“Spanking Hurts My Feelings”
What Children Say About Parents and Discipline
A few years ago a radio program in New York City
each week invited intelligent youngsters from local
schools to discuss different topics. One Sunday the
subject was discipline, and at least one mother was
startled by what she heard her son saying on the air.
When he returned home she confronted him.
“Did I ever cut off your allowance as a punishment?”
she demanded.
“No,” said the eight-year-old boy.
“Did I ever send you to your room for an entire
weekend?”
“No.”
“Did I ever say you couldn’t go to the movies
because you’d been bad?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say those things on the radio?”
“I had to, Mom,” he explained. “I mean, do you
want the whole world to know that I have a mother
who yells?”
In the mouths of children, imagination is as
revealing as hard reality. In the minds of children
fantasy dances with fact. I’ve been talking to young
children about discipline in recent weeks, about
family rules that are kept or broken and about the
rewards and punishments that follow. We talked
anonymously so the “whole world” wouldn’t know
what each child said. Privately or publicly, like that
boy on the radio show, children tend to protect their
parents from the outside world and--more
important—justify them to their inner selves. A sixyear-old
girl, plump and apple-cheeked, tells me,
“My mothers a doctor. She’s tired when she comes
home. That’s why she gets angry sometimes.”
Children defend themselves too. Sometimes they
deny their feelings. “Naw, it doesn’t hurt,” says a
seven-year-old boy whose father hits him with a
leather strap. Sometimes they duck behind bravado.
“I don’t care if my mother sends me to my room.
“says another young boy. “it’s a nice room. I like
being there.” For a moment the mask slips. “I like it
better when my mother doesn’t shut the door.”
As in so many other things, children compete over
punishments and rewards. “My mother gives me six
dollars,” pipes up a classmate. When asked what
parents ought to do, young girls and boys are quick
with answers. “If a child breaks a toy, a mother
shouldn’t be angry or punish her,” pronounces a
three-year-old girl. “It’s the child’s toy.”
Last month the editors of Redbook published a
questionnaire on the subject of discipline, asking
parents how they teach their children right from
wrong, what they do to punish the bad and reward the
good behavior and how they feel about whatever it is
they do. In a future issue we’ll be reporting the
results of that parental survey. This month, a child’seye
view of the same issues comes from city children
at the Bank Street School in new York City and
suburban children at the Bethany Community School
in Bethany, Connecticut. I talked with children from
nursery-school classes up to some from the sixth
grade. Each child responded for herself or himself,
but some feelings that were expressed again and
again may represent a pattern for a larger group of
children of similar ages and middleclass
backgrounds.
At both schools almost all the children I talked to
say they have felt the sting of that controversial form
of discipline, spanking. A nursery-school child twists
a lock of blond hair around her finger and confides,
“If I break a rule, you know what? My mommy
spanks me. And you know what? She’s only done it
one time. My daddy’s done it more than one time.”
Universally, children don’t like spanking, though the
reasons change with a child’s age. Three-year-olds
tell me, “It hurts.” Or, “It’s scary.” Or, “It leaves you
with a red bottom.” According to Dr. Reginald
Lourie, senior research psychiatrist at the National
Institute of Mental health and senior consultant at the
Psychiatric Institute of Washington, D.C., children
go through developmental stages. At three they are
in the middle of the fear of bodily damage or bodily
loss.
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At the age of five a child may be more fearful of a
wounded ego. “Spanking hurts my feelings,” says a
Connecticut youngster. By eight or nine, the strong
concern is self-image and peer identity. “When
you’re in fifth grade, you shouldn’t get spanked any
more,” says a boy in blue jeans and baseball jacket.
“You shouldn’t be treated like a baby.”
Parents may wonder about raising their hands or
their voices. They may feel unsure about sending a
child to her room, about how long the exile ought to
last, about taking away a privilege such as watching
television or a friend’s visit. Young children have no
such doubts. They tend to look at whatever forms of
discipline their parents use as totally normal. “My
mother feels sad when she punishes me, but she had
to do it.” Says a three-year-old girl. “It’s how she
teaches me not to be bad,” says a five year-year-old
boy. These children feel a need for limits and an
acceptance of how their parents enforce them. A
sixth grader in Connecticut says, “My mother is a
good mother because she stops me when I’m getting
into trouble. A bad mother wouldn’t stop you.”
Social workers and psychiatrists have noted that
time and again, even battered children will think that
what their parents do is “right,” will defend the
parents who beat, burn or assault them and will want
to return home to them. “In whatever kind of home,”
says Dr. John Showalter, of the Child Study Center at
Yale University, “When you’re very little you have
to look to your parents to take care of you, to give
you food and shelter and protection. You’re
completely dependent on them and so you build them
up as godlike creatures who know all the right things
and do all the right things. Children convince
themselves of that because it feels safer and more
comfortable to be in the hands of someone who is
doing what’s ‘right.’ ”
If the parent is “right,” does that make the child
“wrong”? A five-year-old in New York says, “My
little brother gets punished more than me. It’s
because he’s badder.” A seven-year-old in Bethany
says, “I couldn’t have any friends over for two
weeks. It was a punishment but I deserved it.” Dr.
Showalter says, “It’s natural for young children to
think they deserve what they get. Some people carry
that into adulthood, believing that they get punished
for being ‘bad.” Then when they become ill or have
an accident in which they are not at fault, they will
wonder what they did to cause it to happen, to
deserve the calamity.”
When they go to school, children begin to make
comparisons. In a group of four and five-year-olds at
Bank Street, one young girl reports that she gets sent
to her room for five or ten minutes, “until I say I’m
sorry.” Another girl says, “My mother is stricter than
yours. I have to stay there for half an hour, even if
I’m sorry before then.” At five she simply finds it
interesting that mothers do different things. The
great questions of justice and fairness don’t come till
later. As the peer group becomes more and more
important children compare and complain about
being punished more severely or rewarded less
liberally than their friends. Still, they tend to resolve
the issue in favor of their parents. “I get yelled at for
things my friends are allowed to do,” says a suburban
sixth grader. “I think it’s unfair, but I also think that
each family has to have its own rules.”
Children complain less about disciplinary
differences between families than differences within
a family. They nurse grievances that have to do with
sisters and brothers. When they think their parents
might have made a mistake in dispensing discipline,
there’s generally a sibling in the story.
A fifth grader in Connecticut says, “My sister threw a
book at me and I threw it back at her. Then I was the
one who got yelled at. I told my mother how it
happened but she didn’t yell at my sister. She just
said “Well, two wrongs don’t make a right.’ ”
No child that I talked to thought her parents enjoyed
having to correct her. They thought the parents felt
“sad” or “mad” the same emotions the children
themselves have. A little mouth droops in sorrow as
a four-year-old says, “When my mommy won’t let
me have dessert, I think she doesn’t like me so much
any more.” Many children will approach a parent
after a punishment, finding a way to indicate that
they still love the parent and looking for a signal that
they are still loved.
Punishment arrives with drum rolls and drama.
Some children talk of being given money when they
are good, or gifts, or being taken out for anything
from an ice cream cone to a gourmet dinner. Mostly,
though, young girls and boys beam, their bodies
squirming with pleasure, their eyes dancing, as they
tell of the very simple results of being good—a
parent’s smiles, hugs, kisses, approval that may teach
lessons more effectively than the reverse side of
discipline: punishment and disapproval. “If I do
something nice, my mommy gets very happy at me.
She kisses me.” Says a four-year-old at Bank Street.
“When I go out to play, I look back at the house. If
I’ve cleaned my room, my mom is standing in the
window watching me. She’s smiling.” Says a sixyear-old
boy at Bethany Community School. From
such small responses children take nourishment.
They feel warm, cozy, loved. One five-year-old
fishes for that feeling in the kitchen sink. “When I
wash the dishes, my mother says I am her little
helper. Then she gives me more silverware to wash.
I like that. But not if she gives me too much

silverware. “Most children want to please their
parents. They want to bask in the feeling of being
loved, close, safe. “That’s the basis,” says Dr.
Reginald Lourie, “for learning to be good and for
building an inner conscience.”
But if it feels so good to be “good,” how is it that
young angels ever let the halo slip? A four-year-old
boy says, “I can’t help it,” summing up the contents
of a shelf of books on the developmental stages of
young children as they explore, test, learn to handle
behavior and feelings and find the connection
between action and consequence. In more grown-up
words, a fifth grader says, “I have a problem with
self-control.”
Some children blame a part of themselves. “My
mouth gets me into trouble,” says an eight-year-old.
And like adults, children look for loopholes. “My
mother said I could wear my new pants,” says a fouryear-old
girl. “When I went out to play, I got them
dirty. I don’t think she should have been mad at me.
She didn’t say I couldn’t get them dirty.”
A dark-haired six-year-old tells of coming indoors
late one afternoon and sniffing the scent of newly
baked cookies. “May I have one, please?” he asked
his mother. “We’ll be having supper soon. You can
have some cookies for dessert,” she told him. “Aw,
please, can’t I have one now,” he cajoled her. “No,”
said his mother. As the boy remembers, “By
accident, I wasn’t listening. I ate a cookie and I got
punished.”
“By accident” is a magic phrase invoked to ward off
evil consequences. “I didn’t mean it” and I’m sorry”
may serve the same purposes. When the magic
works, it’s a way of managing the situation, of
“getting around” the parent.
“As a young child,” explains Dr. Alyne Yates, head
of the Department of Child Psychiatry at the Arizona
School of Medicine, in Tucson, “You feel you’re not
so helpless if you can be one up on your parents or
find a way to get around them. If you can do that too
often though, it’s scary. Children do like limits, and
it can be frightening when the edges of those limits
become blurred.”
What makes a child stay within the limits a parent
has set? I asked the children I met to imagine a bowl
of candy sitting on a table. If they had been told not
to take any of the candy, what would they do when
the parent left the room? If there were more pieces of
candy than the parent could count, would the child
take a piece when the parent wasn’t there?
In a chorus of innocence, child after child says, “No.
Oh, no.” If there were other children there, would
they take the candy? “Maybe some kids would take
some predicts a seven-year-old, “but my very best
friends wouldn’t.” What would make the children be
good when nobody was looking? Solemnly a fiveyear-old
girl says, “It would be wrong to take the
candy.” For most of the children, though, it was not
a question of abstract morality. “You wouldn’t take
the candy,” many of the explain, “because you
wouldn’t want to get into trouble.” Some children
worry that the parent might walk back into the room
and catch them in the act. Others are convinced that
somehow the parent would find out, and only a few
are willing to risk that. According to child
development experts, children begin to develop an
inner conscience as early as a year and a half. An
internal police officer tells them no, but in a voice
that sounds very like the parent’s.
If they got “into trouble,” what’s the worst thing
that could happen? “My mother told me she would
take my skateboard away for a whole year,” worries a
six-year-old boy at the Bank Street School. But a
majority of the children I talked to say that spanking
is the worst punishment. “When my father spanks
me, he always says it hurts him more than it hurts
me,” says a five-year-old. “I’m not so sure. I think it
hurts me more.”
If they had their choice between a spanking or any
of the other disciplines their parents use, most
children say they would take the alternative to the
spanking. That goes for the younger children, who
say they are still being spanked, and for the older
ones, the fifth and sixth graders who say they are
seldom or never spanked any more.
Yet when children talk about being spanked, they do
so matter-of-factly. They express more anxiety, more
sorrow, more upset when they talk about another
form of discipline—being yelled at. A Connecticut
boy says, “My mother yells so loud that I can’t hear
anything.” His own voice is deep and booming,
especially of an eight-year-old. “My voice is louder
than hers,” he says. “But I don’t yell back, I cry
back.” Loudness is in the ear of the listener, and
children have individual tolerances for a parent’s
volume. There are individual perceptions of when a
parent’s attempt at reasoning turns into a scolding
and when that turns into yelling. It is not only the
sound that bothers them, say the children. It is also
the content, the words that are being yelled. “Like
when she says I’m dumb,” complains one young girl.
According to some psychiatrists, there are children
who may secretly prefer a spanking, feeling that it
pays the debt for their misdeed. Yelling lasts longer,
and because it may be an explosion of parental
frustration and anger, yelling can be disturbing to
young children, who are so dependent on their
parents. “Children get frightened when they see an
adult who is out of control,” says William B. Hooks,

Chairman of the Publications-Communications
Division of the Bank Street College of Education.
Beyond the sound and the fury, what upsets
children is the sense that if a parent is yelling, she
isn’t listening to them. Like people of all ages,
children want a chance to tell their side. They
themselves may not always be hearing the lesson the
parent is trying to teach, but they are listening for the
messages that say, “I love you” or, “I’m angry with
you.”
If children tell us that whatever discipline their
parents use seems right, proper, normal and natural to
them, that’s a security blanket for parents to wrap up
in. Children can tell us what hurts, what’s scary,
what’s unfair. More important, by how they behave
children can tell us what works.
At Children’s Hospital, National Medical Center, in
Washington, D.C., Dr. Lourie was called in to work
with doctors who were studying different ways to
help young children stop wetting their beds. One
major method was to have parents restrict the amount
of fluids their children took after six o’clock in the
evening. After the parents had been doing that for a
while, Dr. Lourie talked with the children. He found
that though the method was physiological, its success
depended upon the psychology that various parents
used.
“My mother is so mean.” One group of five-yearolds
told him, each in her or his own words. “She is
“ ‘Spanking Hurts my Feelings’ What Children Say About Parents and Discipline.” Claire Safran, Redbook, August 1980.
an old witch. Why she won’t even let me have a
glass of water!” This was the group of children who
continued to wet their beds. Another group managed
to stop, and the children in this second, successful
group reported, “You know, my mother loves me so
much that she doesn’t want me to wet the bed. She
wants to help me, so she doesn’t give me any water
after six o’clock.”
The key to successful discipline is the parent’s
attitude. “There is a big difference,” points out Dr.
Lourie, “between saying, ‘I’ll make you stop’ and,
“I’ll help you stop.” Using force, trying to make a
child stop wetting the bed, or crossing a dangerous
street or biting into a forbidden cookie may inspire
resistance. Even when it works, it does so by
dressing the parent in the authority of a police officer.
Helping a child stop, on the other hand, is a way of
teaching a child that the responsibility for her
behavior is hers, not the parent’s, not the teacher’s,
not the police officer’s. It’s a way of giving the child
the tools, the knowledge and the encouragement to
deal with her own emotions and control her own
actions. The result may be a child who feels good
about herself, and, not so incidentally, about her
parent.