This Is Why You Should Never Spank Your Child
What is bodily autonomy?
Bodily autonomy simply means my body is for me; my body is my own. It’s not something most of us were ever educated about as kids.
Did you feel that you had control over what happened to you physically growing up? I think the truth for many, many kids, is that they have felt incredibly unsafe in their own bodies.
Today I want to share with you a story from a listener of the podcast. His name is Tom and he knows his story may be triggering to you because of your own story or because of your own parenting choices. But he also knows that by speaking up, he has the opportunity to possibly change the way you think.
Tom grew up in an evangelical christian family who believed, as many within the church, but also outside of the church do, that parenting includes to spank a child.
To spank a child has been accepted as the only kind of discipline that will produce godliness and well “trained children”.
He speaks of spaces within the church community where entire systems have been built on spanking as a method of foolproof corrective results.
These systems are often very detailed in the way a parent should spank, the instrument used to spank, how to make it hurt enough, how often to hit and how often to repeat the process.
Tom knows, because Tom was raised in those spaces. He is part of that christian community.
Tom says, Trauma loosely defined is anything that overwhelms our nervous system, we are unable to process that trauma and it gets stuck in our body.
He believes that is exactly what happened to him when he was spanked – when you spank a child.
This is Tom’s story, his deeply painful story, and his secret journey with how he experienced spanking as a young child. He says…
Spanking can happen in a loving family home and that’s confusing
I think now is the time to make something as clear as I can. I had a pretty happy childhood, I felt safe most of the time and had lots of close friends and wonderful experiences. I was a rule follower. I didn’t get into trouble that much and I genuinely loved my parents and family.
If you asked me for happy memories, I could spend a lot of time telling you about those long summer days growing up beside the corn and cows, swimming holes, campfires and straw forts and I would feel the joy that came with those days.
Yet my parents were firm believers in spanking. They had been spanked themselves. Everyone in our church community believed that spanking was how you were taught obedience. Children were disobedient and spanking was how authority was established. And so if I acted in a way that deemed me worthy of a spanking I was spanked.
Spanking can turn into beating and both are abuse
Spanking can mean different things to different people. In our community and as I’ve discovered in many conservative spaces (not just Christians) spanking gets closer to beating. It is not a single smack on a clothed bottom, at least in the vast majority of those I knew. It was a methodical hitting with an instrument on a child’s bottom. Often these instruments included wooden spoons, belts, even garden hoses or wooden boards. It was also sometimes done on a child’s bare bottom.
It was a series of hard hits that was very painful and at times left marks. This was normal and this was godly and right discipline.
This was what happened to me.
I believe spanking is Russian roulette. Many kids I grew up with were spanked this way and seemed to be “fine.” They joked about it, felt they deserved it and would declare they would spank their kids in the same way so they didn’t become brats.
Spanking changes your nervous system
But for me, there was no blank in the gun. There was a bullet. Spanking completely overwhelmed my nervous system and along with the fear and pain, there came arousal. Especially the times I was spanked on a bare bottom, it was the most horrible mixture of shame, pain, fear and sexual arousal. I had no idea as a young child that was happening for me. I was just very confused by my response to it. And this was my first encounter with sexual arousal and violence.
Spanking can cause sexual arousal
You can imagine this would shape my sexuality in some unpleasant ways, creating confusion and setting up neurological pathways wired into my developing and malleable brain. Something created for beauty and closeness becomes shaped by fear and pain.
If you spank a child it can be considered as sexual violence. It is the act of striking a child on an erogenous part of their body to purposely cause pain. The buttocks is a sexual part of our body. The spankings that I, and thousands of other children experienced, were acts of sexual violence. Many kids don’t experience them that way. I did and other kids did and still do.
Spanking “for love” is deeply confusing to a child
People argue that what makes spanking different from abuse is that spanking is done in love. I would argue from personal experience that “loving spanking” is the most dangerous kind. I knew my parents loved me, but when that love was mixed with fear and violence, it invaded my bodily autonomy in ways my young child’s mind could not understand…. it led to my body responding in the way it did.
My bodily autonomy was being invaded, and my mind and body became overwhelmed and attempted to process the pain and fear every time I got spanked. I learned to follow rules, I learned how to please people, but I suffered in silence wondering why I was a freak. Nobody else that I knew of was aroused by being spanked.
I begged God to take it away, to make me forget it. However, once trauma has rewritten pathways in your brain, the trauma teaches you how to shut down and learn new ways of not feeling.
I appeal to you, don’t spank a child. It is Russian roulette. Little humans are attempting to process their world and are super trusting and loving. Don’t snuff that out by following a kind of parenting that is cold, calculated and demands you turn off a part of your natural nurturing heart put there by God. There is enough trauma in this world…please don’t give them more.
Spanking doesn’t teach bodily autonomy
It is violent and invasive to spank a child. It teaches children that they are not in control of their bodies. It teaches them that adults have the right to cause them pain and that adults don’t need consent to violate their bodily autonomy.
Spanking teaches kids if you make a mistake you are not loved
If you spank a child, it gives children mixed messages … it says you matter less, your feelings, your body matters less. The pain I am causing you is love, different, painful, fear inducing, but love. And when the body responds to the trauma of those messages the way mine did, it sets the stage for the kind of disconnect that became my reality.
It was a reality that to escape the pain and seeming betrayal of a spanking, my body found ways to cope that I will wrestle with for the rest of my life. I learned how to shut off my feelings. Anything to avoid pain. In doing so I became disembodied, my body and spirit, the seat of my emotions… separated.
So …please… do not stop spank a child. All people are worthy of love.
Thankyou Tom for these important words.
If you spank a child, it teaches them that their body is not their own. They have no control over what happens to their body. It is dangerous for this reason alone. If your child believes that others can do what they like to their body, you are opening them up to other scenarios where they will also believe they have no control over their body.
When kids, who are in an otherwise loving family, are hit to bring them into line, it’s the ultimate betrayal. We love you, but if you do something we don’t like, we will hit you and we will harm your body. But if you do everything right, you can be fully loved. And for kids who are already in abusive homes, this is another layer of trauma, betrayal and abuse.
Teaching a child should not involve abuse
Kids are just learning. They are learning to be humans and they can never do everything right. The confusion for a child who is also sexually aroused by spanking is reason in and of itself to pack this archaic practice away and understand that no child needs to be “well trained”. Every child simply needs to be guided, with love, heard with both ears and given connection, acceptance and grace.
You might enjoy listening to Episode 93: Is It Okay To Smack My Child?
Don’t forget to check out the HEAL SHOP for some wonderful healing books, gifts and products.
2 thoughts on “This is why you should never spank Your child”
I have a fraternal twin brother. We were good kids, but got severe spankings when we misbehaved. It affected both of us in a weird way, and now I know (from reading this article) it was sexual arousal. Looking back on the spankings we got, there was a strong sexual component. For one, our parents used a real whip. They punished us together (a boy and a girl) often. And they whipped us naked. I’m not talking about pulling pants down; they always made us get completely naked for whippings. My brother’s penis was always erect when he got whipped, from the first time I remember. I used to get a tingly feeling in my vulva during spankings. The worst thing they did was threaten to whip our bare genitals. Thank God that never happened, but the fact that it crossed my dad’s mind was enough to make me terrified of any spanking. And yes, this does still affect my sex life as an adult. I like what you said about Russian Roulette – you don’t know which child will have a sexual reaction to a spanking. It’s just better not to spank at all.
Julia, thankyou so much for sharing this story. The psychological effects of spankings are so damaging and being stripped naked is a huge added layer of trauma. I am so sorry you were subjected to this abuse and I am glad this post has helped you gain more understanding of that trauma. D