Chapter 6: Applying the Rod

"A spanking is made effective, not by its severity, but by its certainty.  Your CALM dignity will set the stage to make it more effective."  Spanking should never be used to vent your anger, but I think that's exactly what most parents do, which is why there are so many spanking abolitionists out there.  Parents "go through a warm-up of exercise of threats and increasing irritation until their anger generates a will to retaliate against the child.  What follows is an altercation, not Biblical chastisement."  Never use your hands for spanking.  As Pearle says, "hands are for loving, not martial arts."  Once a child is old enough to understand, the rod should be followed by reproof-an explanation of why the behavior was unacceptable and what he should do in the future.  "The rod and reproof give wisdom."  Proverbs 29:15. 

I have only been a parent for a year and a half, but there have already been a couple of "road blocks" on the road of child training.  The first one being my fear that spanking my son would make him not like me.  This couldn't be further from the truth I am happy to say.  Our son is happy, smart, obedient, and loves his mommy and daddy!  The second is other people's opinions.  Due to generations of people being belted or spanked in rages from their parents, spanking has got a bad rap.  I remember when we were first training our son to be obedient when we told him "no."  He really liked messing with plug-ins and electrical cords, which is dangerous of course.  We would tell him no and slap his hand with a small ruler.  Soon he learned to obey well and when people would ask us why he listens so well we would tell them because we've trained him by swatting his hand and people would say things like, "oh, you don't spank that poor baby, do you??"  So then I would feel really guilty.  But if we didn't bother training him and let him touch whatever he wanted and become a nuisance by having to tell him "no" over and over again, people would judge us on that too.  So for lack of a better term, I felt "damned if I do, and damned if I don't"!!  Thankfully, I think I'm about to the point where I don't care what people think anymore about the spanking issue because proof is in the pudding!  : )