Spanking?

CNN has a new article out that says spanking is detrimental to children and their development.

In short, I think the discussion requires much more nuance than the article provides. Can spanking be done in a way that is detrimental to the child? Certainly! The greater question is not IF, but HOW?

In our home, spanking is a means of grace for our kids. I believe this to be the case because almost every time we spank, our kids learn about the Gospel. We talk about sin, punishment, the Substitute and salvation.

Our kids also learn that Mommy and Daddy love them way too much to allow them to continue in patterns of dysfunction. Are there other ways to do this without spanking? Sure, and we use some of them, but in our experience of parenting four small children, spanking seems to get to the root of the matter the quickest and seems to produce joy in our home the quickest. I don't claim that his will be the universal experience for all families, but I do believe that when spanking is covered in an environment of the Gospel, it will often times produce much evidence of grace in children.

My hunch is that in the studies that show that spanking is detrimental to children, I would be willing to bet that there is much deeper dysfunction in the lives of the parents (I think the article testifies to this indirectly) that manifests itself in a type of spanking that is abusive. But this doesn't mean that spanking is unilaterally wrong, but rather we need to very careful that the way in which we spank is full of love, tenderness, and the Gospel.

There is much more that could be written on this topic, but I'll leave it at that for now...