All Natural Mommies

Many parents have known that spanking is not a positive form of discipline. Also, many parents believe spanking is not affective. But, now a new study shows a link between spanking and lower IQs.

Here’s the link to Yahoo’s story on the study.

This quote from study researcher Murray Straus speaks volumes:
“Contrary to what everyone believes, being hit by parents is a traumatic experience,” Straus said. “We know from lots of research that traumatic stresses affect the brain adversely.” Also, the trauma could cause kids to have more stressful responses in difficult situations, and so may not perform as well cognitively.

Finally! Someone dares to call spanking traumatic in the mainstream media! Yes, many adults were spanked as children and are mostly healthy, functioning adults. However, I haven’t spoken with one adult he admitted that spanking taught them anything except how to avoid being spanked! Spanking only makes the child do “the right thing” to avoid spanking, not because it’s appropriate behavior.

As parents, our job is to teach our children the rewards and consequences of their own behavior. If you draw on the walls, your crayons get taken away. Instead of coloring in your coloring book, you must spend time cleaning the wall. That’s a much more powerful life lesson than hitting.

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