Is Spanking Harmfull

Spanking is a very controversial topic in today's society. Some people believe that it is absolutely wrong to hit your child while the others think that it is the best form of discipline. I agree with the people who are against spanking. First off, spanking does not teach the correct behavior at all; it just punishes the bad behavior. Also, it teaches behavior which may not be what you want the kid to learn. What you're teaching the child is that causing someone physical pain is okay. Not only will the kid think that it's okay, but they will most likely do it themselves (what do people who spank their children say? "I was spanked as a kid...")

Spanking also creates a lot of anxiety and fear. Do you really want your kid to be afraid of you? And fear makes a child feel helpless, which leads to depression. So while spanking might work in the short term, you might be giving them emotional problems for the rest of their life. When you spank a child you do not really fix the behavior anyway. It works for the short term when the children are young, but when they get older everything changes. They get sneakier, and extra careful not to get caught. You may think that your punishments have worked, but in the end, they are still doing the same thing, they just got smarter about it.

Spanking can reinforce negative behavior too, especially if the kid learns that this will get him attention. If the only time a parent pays any attention to the child is when they do something wrong, the child might just do the wrong behavior just to get noticed. Also, it reinforces the parent's behavior, since the punishment stops the unwanted behavior. This could lead easily to abuse. Most of the time spanking is used, is when the parent is angry and that is the worst time to use punishment. The parent is just taking their anger out on the child and that is inappropriate and wrong.

Finally, it is just not effective. Has smacking anyone ever really changed the way they act? No. All it really does is get your anger settled. Since it's illegal to hit an adult, there is absolutely no reason why it should be legal to hit someone so much smaller and younger than you.

There are plenty of other ways to discipline a child or show them how to act besides spanking. One of those ways that is the most effective is positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is that when a desired behavior occurs, something good