Is It Okay to Spank?

Dear Editor of Parenting Magazine,
I recently read your article “Is it Okay to Spank?” by Kitty O’Callaghan. In this article, she talks about the reasons that it is okay, or not okay to spank a child. She states reasoning with long-term psychological damage, or border-line abuse; or how some people said that it didn’t hurt them in the long run, and that their children don’t listen to them unless they do spank their kids. The letter to the editor regarding this article from Genice Waite talked all about how spanking is the best type of punishment for children. She wrote that spanking children should be allowed in childcare and also in the school system. Waite talked about in 1994 when an eighteen year old American boy was in Singapore and was caught with theft and vandalism. His punishment was being caned. Waite said “That if that was my son that I would go to Singapore and got that cane and hung it above his door. Every time he started acting out, I would remind him of that beating and use it on him if I needed to.” Waite stated that she believe that if we implemented spanking in the school system, that bullying and acting out would decrease immensely.
I cannot believe a magazine such as “Parenting Magazine” would publish such a letter. It seems as though Waite condones child abuse. Children in the 1960’s were terrified of their teachers. My father was once accused of cheating and his teacher took a wooden ruler, slapped him multiple times on the top of the hands, and then shut him in a closet for the rest of the day. He begged his parents to take him out of school. Now I know Waite isn’t condoning closing children in closets, but I would imagine that the abuse that his teacher showed to him stuck with him for a life time. My father was never an aggressive dad, but his wife was. My step mom would beat my younger brother on the buttock with a wooden spoon when he was a child. I could go on and on with different forms of abuse that happened to children, with their parents claiming it was just a spanking. So where do parents and teachers draw the line between abuse and discipline? We all know that some parents would take it way out of control. Many children have been spanked with a belt, spoon, brushes, tree limbs - you name it, I am sure someone has tried it. There are so many children that go through childcare, how could one discriminate between children when you make that decision to spank?
Take school and childcare into mind. Disciplining a child with contact seems more detrimental to a child’s psyche than having it happen at school. Some children act out at school for attention, but I doubt they would do that with the humiliation of being spanked. Waite stated that she thought that if a spanking was allowed in school that the bullying would decrease. In some ways, I might agree with that statement, but the humiliation of that child who got spanked would be worse than being bullied. One teacher might think that a certain thing that a child did deserves a spanking, while another teacher might think that the action the child did is not severe enough for the spanking. Parents might also feel the same, that the action of the child was to light for such a severe punishment. I think that implementing this in our school systems would put a lot of distaste between teachers, thus lowering the quality of the school.
I do believe that in some cases, a spanking from a parent to their child could be reasonable. But taking it into our school and daycare systems is way too far. I think that there would be a lot of parents in this great country that would be very disgruntled with the decision to allow physical discipline in schools; especially the parents that were abused in school as a child. As for the bullying in school systems, I think that parents of both the bully and the abused should be informed of all problems. As long as parents are always given a heads up about the situations, children usually start to behave better.
I was once a daycare employee, and believe me, there were a few kids that I really wanted to spank, but I held my hand. And yes, I do spank my own children; on extreme cases, where they know they have really done something wrong. I just know that if my kids went to a school or a daycare that implemented such discipline, I would remove my kids from that school and start them in home school or private school. I think that printing an article such as this in your highly popular magazine was a mistake, and I think that it should be removed.
Thank you,
Mom of Three
Idaho