[Clay Perrine]

There is a big difference between spanking a butt with an open hand and beating a child.

A few million years of evolution has hardwired into us a functional negative feedback setup. If you touch a hot stove, the pain caused will make you remember never to do that again. If you swat a little one on the butt with your open hand when he/she tries to run in the street, they will remember the pain and not do it when you are not around to yank them from in front of the oncoming bus.

A "Timeout" doesn't work. The kid just sits there bored until the time expired, and they forget it within 30 seconds of getting up. Or worse, the positive feedback loop that everyone thinks is so wonderful results in more and more extreme behavior on the part of the kid, and more and more frustration on the part of the parents. I watched two little boys running through the isles of the local grocery store in a contest to see who could grab the coupon from the automatic dispenser first. When I complained to the store manager, he said that he couldn't do anything, because the parents would not. And their mother was ignoring them completely! My parents would have spanked me right then and there. Now a parent that spanks their child risks getting thrown in jail for abuse!!


I am not a big religious person, but the bible has a lot of good old fashioned common sense in it. One of which is... "spare the rod, spoil the child". We are raising a nation of spoiled brats.