Why Parents Don’t Spank
00:00:00.000 | Happy Friday everyone. We're back once more to close out the week with parenting expert
00:00:09.280 | Ted Tripp. He's been with us all week. And Dr. Tripp, yesterday you explained the importance
00:00:13.480 | of physical discipline in training young children and your early reluctance to embrace the practice
00:00:18.960 | as a young parent. Scripture's not silent here, of course, but many Christian parents
00:00:23.560 | simply say, "You know what? I'm not going to do it. For whatever reason, we're not going
00:00:27.560 | to spank our kids." And you said last time you felt like this has been a losing battle
00:00:31.800 | for you over the last 40 years in America as fewer and fewer Christian families are
00:00:35.840 | willing to embrace this. So from your perspective, among faithful, church-going parents who love
00:00:41.520 | Jesus, love their Bibles, love their kids, what are the most common hurdles that prevent
00:00:46.600 | parents from using physical discipline in child training?
00:00:50.480 | You know, I think there are, I guess I have two answers to that question. One answer is
00:00:57.480 | that a lot of people are very influenced by the thought forms of the culture. I mean,
00:01:02.920 | the world of ideas is like the world of fashion. Things are going out of style. The idea of
00:01:08.080 | physical discipline is not in style in our culture. So it's hard for people because in
00:01:16.240 | our culture, a parent who does physical discipline is regarded as kind of a simple-minded person
00:01:23.000 | who's not too creative and can't think of better ways to deal with children and occasionally
00:01:27.080 | gets upset and just hits their kids out of frustration. That's the image of physical
00:01:31.800 | discipline. So people think if you're in favor of spanking, what you're in favor of is this
00:01:37.840 | very capricious, arbitrary thing where a parent gets angry and when he's had it up to his
00:01:42.880 | eyeballs, he starts flailing his kids. And people think, "I don't want to be that kind
00:01:48.040 | of parent. I'm smarter than that. I want to do something more intelligent, more sensitive,
00:01:53.000 | and something that would be better for my kids." So that's one set of problems.
00:01:58.520 | I think also, Tony, we have to acknowledge that there are many people, young people who
00:02:04.680 | are parents today who are in their 20s and 30s who were raised by Christian people who
00:02:10.040 | spanked them in anger. And they were abused. They were struck when their parents were angry
00:02:17.040 | and frustrated and out of sorts. And so the parents, when they struck them excessively,
00:02:24.160 | struck them capriciously, something they might get away with one day, another day they would
00:02:29.880 | be spanked for. Spanking wasn't always an orderly process. Sometimes they would just
00:02:35.760 | get hit. And it was all under the rubric of "Spare the rod, spoil the child," which, by
00:02:40.880 | the way, is not in the Bible anywhere. And they promised themselves, "I will never do
00:02:47.320 | that to my kids. I hated that. I'm not going to be that kind of a parent."
00:02:51.560 | And I want to say to young couples who have had that life experience, I want to commend
00:02:55.640 | you. I want to stand in solidarity with you and say, "You must not do that. That was wrong.
00:03:00.880 | It was wrong." However well-intentioned your parents might have been, it was wrong for
00:03:05.040 | them to discipline you in that way. But I want to offer to you something that is very,
00:03:09.920 | very different than that. So I think that a huge problem is that there are people who
00:03:16.240 | were abused. I think it's also important to make a distinction, and I've been doing this
00:03:22.080 | increasingly when I do seminars. I make a distinction between correction and discipline,
00:03:27.840 | especially with little children. There are a lot of things that require correction that
00:03:33.560 | do not necessarily require discipline. And sometimes when parents embrace the idea of
00:03:38.800 | spanking and they say, "Okay, the Bible says I should do this. I'm going to do it," then
00:03:42.600 | they start spanking for everything. It's kind of like that old adage, you know, "If the
00:03:46.040 | only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." And so I think parents
00:03:51.160 | need to make a distinction. There are a lot of things that children do that are wrong,
00:03:54.800 | that require correction, that are not necessarily defiant. The only thing I want to discipline
00:03:59.800 | for is defiant behavior. Failure to honor, failure to obey mom and dad. Defiance I'm
00:04:05.040 | going to discipline. But there are a lot of other things that kids do that require correction.
00:04:10.800 | "No, no, honey, you can't hit your sister." And I can talk to that child about the fact
00:04:19.000 | that you may not hit your sister. Now, if the hitting persists, obviously we're going
00:04:23.480 | to have to deal with that as disobedience, as discipline. But there are a lot of things
00:04:28.880 | or an illustration I gave in one of these earlier podcasts, the child that bowls over
00:04:34.720 | his younger sister and takes her toy, that's impulsive behavior on the part of the child.
00:04:39.920 | He's a three-year-old. He's impulsive. He grabs, he sees something he wants, he grabs
00:04:43.960 | it, especially if he can overpower the person that has it. That's impulsive behavior. That's
00:04:49.680 | not defiant behavior. Now, does it require correction? Sure. "Honey, no, you can't do
00:04:54.840 | that. You must give that toy back to your sister." But it does not require discipline.
00:04:59.720 | If I can have an intervention that solves the problem without discipline, by correcting,
00:05:06.560 | that's going to be my first approach to wrong behavior. Defiant behavior I'm going to discipline.
00:05:13.800 | There's a whole range of other behavior that is inappropriate and requires correction that
00:05:18.360 | is not defiant. And I don't want to use spanking for everything a toddler does that is wrong,
00:05:24.400 | because then that kid's going to be getting spanked way too many times in a day. So I
00:05:28.720 | want to reserve spanking for those types of defiant behavior where the child refuses to
00:05:35.760 | submit to mom and dad's authority.
00:05:38.080 | That is some seasoned advice. Thank you, Dr. Tripp. And thank you for joining us this week.
00:05:43.120 | This is a topic worthy of careful examination. And I know there's a lot more to say and address
00:05:47.040 | than we had time to cover in this short podcast today and yesterday. And for more details
00:05:50.840 | on spanking, see chapter 11 of Dr. Tripp's bestselling book, Shepherding a Child's Heart.
00:05:56.040 | There he addresses key biblical principles and common objections. And we really appreciate
00:06:00.160 | Ted's time on this podcast this week, filling in for John Piper. Ted Tripp is the author
00:06:04.600 | of the bestselling books, Shepherding a Child's Heart and Instructing a Child's Heart. And
00:06:09.240 | whenever we talk about physical discipline, I'm reminded that this topic has bigger ramifications.
00:06:13.080 | And it makes us ask, how do I, as an adult, know if I'm being disciplined by God right
00:06:18.760 | now? Pastor John addressed that question back in episode number 45 of this podcast. Be sure
00:06:23.920 | to check out that episode in the podcast archive, most easily navigated in the Ask Pastor John
00:06:28.840 | app for the iPhone and the Android. And speaking of Pastor John, he will be back on Monday
00:06:33.380 | to field a question from North Africa. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a wonderful weekend.
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