Welcome to THEJNSREPORT’S: Discipline & Children: To Spank Or Not To Spank?  That Is The Question

Where to begin? I think we’ll start with the school hours and kids today.  I watch every morning the youth walking, sagging, carousing and slinking their way both to and from school at my absolute least favorite hours to be out and about during the day.  That is to say early morning when they (the youth) are on their way to school either walking or via the bus and/or train and early afternoon right at the beginning of rush hour.

I can’t even begin to describe how unpleasant it is to ride the bus or subway with the youth of today whom I believe are worse than when I and my peers were growing up at their age.  I’m sure every generation says this but today it feels more true today than ever.  It’s as if the words from the bible are literally if not figuratively jumping off the pages and pointing directly at our modern society and the children growing up during this time period.  Children disrespectful to parents etc.

From obscene jokes and expletive laden ignorant comments from unlearned/uneducated mouths spewing filth and noise in the early morning to the evening hours, to the inconsiderate selfish, self absorbed kids who turn a blind eye on a crowded bus sitting in seats reserved for the elderly or disabled.  Youths of today are out of control lacking respect and courtesy for anybody including themselves.

One can’t help but think that this rampant disrespectful, disobedient, nonsensical reign of children on society is the byproduct of what is or isn’t being taught at home.  The kids are the products of their parents and environment.  My siblings and I grew up in a home where spanking did occur.

While I don’t feel that we always deserved it, spankings definitely helped shape us to know and do right from wrong with a healthy respect and fear of our parents who disciplined us not out of malice or vindictiveness but out of love, concern, and a deep desire for correction of wrongful behavior we as children exhibited from time to time.

Let me be clear spankings in my view are not synonymous with excessive beatings or abusing children to where their flesh is ripped or torn or great bodily harm is inflicted.  Spankings are a few to several good licks that get the point across that wrongful behavior will not be tolerated and an explanation of why the child is spanked is provided to them.

For example “little Bobby steals money from mommy’s purse.  Mommy finds out and puts Bobby over her knee and spanks his bare ass several times with hard slaps of a belt or her hand telling Bobby he’s being punished for doing wrong which was stealing.  Little Bobby has just learned that what he did was wrong and if he doesn’t want to get a spanking again he won’t steal.  Lesson hopefully learned.

My late grandmother (my grandfather’s wife who lived to be 106 years old before she passed) felt differently with regards to spankings.  She told me on one occasion that she didn’t believe that spanking children was the best way to discipline them because she remembered her childhood where what hurt her more than a spanking when she did wrong was having her privileges taken away.  Not being able to go outside and play with her friends was worse than physical punishment in her view.  I don’t agree with her viewpoint on that but I respect it.

All that said. I turn the question to you the reader