Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child

Apply the Rod or Spoil the Child It is the natural scheme of life. Human beings produce children and thus are classified as parents. It is and has always been the parent 's job to raise and nurture the child, to teach it right from wrong, and to protect it from the harshness of the surrounding environment. However, when the child strays or behaves in a destructive manner, what steps should a parent take to correct such behavior? Some psychologists suggest that a good old-fashioned spanking is just the ticket. Others say that such action will emotionally damage the child later in life. With the parent ultimately responsible for the child, it 's hard to know what is right or wrong when your 3 year-old is beating his head against the floor in a full-blown temper tantrum. 25 years ago, parents would have picked the child up, spanked it, and taken care of the tantrum effectively. Today, parents are more apt to try anything other that a swat on the behind. Reason, however, doesn 't impress a 3 year-old so the behavior is often ignored because passive parents don 't want to risk mentally scaring their child. The experts have basically made a huge issue out of something very simple. If spanking is as harmful as they say it is, then every human being over the age of 30 is a mental case. Spanking is not the answer for everything, but in some cases it is the only answer. The growing trends for passive discipline in the United States stem largely from the revelation that there were people out there that severely abused their children. As more and more abuse cases were brought to light, laws were changed to protect the child.1 Psychological issues soon began to crop up and spanking soon came under fire, being called a form of child abuse and in some cases punishable under the law. Researchers have studied the effects of spanking and the effects are not to be taken lightly. First of all, the experts claim that spanking doesn 't teach a child self-direction. The child learns to

Bibliography: 1) Child Victims and the Law, National Victim Center. http://www.nvc.org/infolink/info56.htm 2) Barbara F. Meltz, the Great Emotional Spanking Debate, Star Tribune, 5/29/95, pp. 1E. 3) Law Enforcement and Child Abuse by Patricia A. Graves, and Suzanne M. Sgroi, http://wchat.on.ca/web/asarc/law.html. 4) Brigid Schulte/Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Spanking kids may make them worse: Study is first to document corporal punishment doesn 't aid in discipline, The Dallas Morning News, 8/15/97, pp. 1A. 5) Phillip Greven, Spare the Child: the religious roots of punishment and the psychological impact of physical abuse, 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. 6) Sandlin Supports Local Solutions To Fight Juvenile Crime, http://www.house.gov/sandlin/coljuvj.htm. Word Count: 2846