Spanking Doesn’t Teach Discipline; It Teaches Fear.
This is a hard reset for parents who want functional, free kids; not controlled, insecure ones who grow into incompetent adults.
Think back to how you were corrected as a kid.
The raised voice, the threat, the corner, the humiliation of pulling down your pants so your bare ass could be beaten...
Then there was the hand that “had to do it,” because they loved you, and were doing it for your own good...
A lot of what we call discipline is, in reality, control, and control works the same way fear does: it makes the behavior stop in front of you.
Corporal Punishment does not raise a child who can govern themselves when you’re not in the room. More often, it builds a child who gets better at hiding their failings out of fear of pain.
This topic makes people furious because spanking isn’t just a method for many parents; it’s an identity.
It’s tied to “I turned out fine,” “kids need consequences,” “they have to learn respect,” and “the world is harsh.” I agree with one point: kids absolutely need standards and consequences, but pain from a parent and humiliation aren’t the right way to teach those lessons...
They’re shortcuts creating weak foundations.
The real question isn’t “does corporal punishment work?”
The real question is: What does corporal punishment produce?
Because yes, corporal punishment can produce obedience; so can yelling, threats, intimidation, and shame.
But obedience isn’t the goal.
If your goal is a quiet child, punishment will get you there. If your goal is to raise a fully-functional, emotionally developed, confident adult, then corporal punishment is a risky tool to use, as it is not harmless.
Even when you swear you’re doing it “calmly,” punishment teaches the same underlying lesson:
Power decides what’s true; big people are allowed to hurt small people; behave when someone stronger is watching; and feelings are a problem that should not be voiced...
That’s not discipline, that’s programming.
If you want a child who is functional and free, they need three skills that punishment doesn’t reliably teach...
They need to be able to feel emotions without becoming overwhelmed or consumed by them. This means they have to process what’s going on and be heard, not told how they should feel or behave in a moment.
They need the ability to repair damage when they mess up. If they’re corrected before they can self-correct, they’ll never develop the muscle to come back from a mistake.
The ability to tell the truth even when it costs them. When children admit to a mistake, it should not be met with violence, anger, and shame... It should be met with understanding and education.
Before anyone says, “So, your children do not suffer any consequences?”
Let’s kill that retarded bullshit right now.
There’s a difference between absent parenting and peaceful parenting.
Absent parents offer no structure.
Peaceful parents take the hardest (yet most honest and efficient) path, building a structure within the child’s world.
Peaceful parenting isn’t soft; it’s strong leadership from parents who don’t need to use fear or the threat of pain to get their children to operate within the home’s framework...
Peaceful parenting is about leadership, and leadership is about inspiring your people so they want to do what you hoped they would do.
If you’re reading this and nodding along, understand that you can’t fix your whole household in one day, but you can reset your trajectory immediately by choosing to stop using force and fear...
What is your default threat when you’re overwhelmed?
Yelling?
Is it spanking?
Taking everything away?
Shaming them into compliance?
Recognize that humans under stress revert to what they learned.
You say you want to “instill discipline,“ so does that mean getting immediate compliance from your child or long-term character development?
If you choose a character, your methods have to match the mission.
That means replacing punishment with consequences that teach rather than those that humiliate.
Consequences should educate, not degrade.
Start using three questions that build internal control before you lecture or explode.
Ask what happened.
Ask what they were feeling right before it happened.
Ask what they’ll do next time instead.
That’s how you raise kids who can think while emotional, not kids who shut down until they blow up later or learn to lie so they don’t get hurt.
If you think that there needs to be “payment” for mistakes, then make repair the currency of your home.
When your kid messes up, the goal isn’t suffering; it’s repair.
Repair teaches something punishment never can, “I can be accountable without being worthless.”
That single lesson prevents an insane amount of future dysfunction, and it’s how you raise kids who don’t crumble under guilt and don’t live addicted to rebellion.
You show them your features and flaws, allow them to share their own, and show they everyone makes mistakes, but those who repair the mistake, be it breaking a thing, disrespecting someone, or damaging a relationship, you can overcome it by owning it.
Choices come with consequences, and kids need to know that they will make mistakes. Instead of turning against themselves, they can have their backs, pick themselves up, and work on repairing the damage and learning from the event.
A lot of us were punished, and some of us did “turn out fine” (after therapy, overcoming addiction, handling anger issues, going through depression, etc.) But fine is a low bar, and life is too short to give years away suffering from preventable childhood trauma.
Fine isn’t regulated, fine doesn’t mean secure, and fine isn’t honest under pressure...
Fine is often just functional enough to survive.
“I’m fine“ - People who are 100% not fine...
If you want your kids to be functional and free, you don’t raise them through fear and force; you raise them through standards, structure, repair, connection, and leadership.
If punishment is the main tool in your house, your child isn’t learning discipline; they’re learning how to avoid you, and one day, sooner than you think, you won’t be able to control them anymore.
Build with them now, not for your convenience, but for their future.
If you were raised with spanking and you say shit like, “I turned out fine,” did the spanking and yelling make you free, or did it make you compliant?
-Zac Small