Spanking vs. No Spanking

Posted by~ Sheldon Redditt on 11/15/2014

When I was growing up, we got spanked period.  I think they had a spanking committee back then that met and came to an agreement.  The agreement was that if we catch your child acting up, we have the right, no it is our DUTY to spank your child!  Back then their beliefs were that it took a community to raise a child.  So, if Ms. Mandy caught me acting up in the neighborhood, she would spank me.  Then she would call my mother to tell her she spanked me and 9 times out of 10 I would get another spanking when I got home.  Where was Child Protective Services back then? Lol.  Our parents had a motto, that stated that, "WHERE EVER YOU SHOW OUT, THAT'S WHERE YOU GET WORE OUT".  I know a lot of you remember that line! 

When I became older and had sons of my own, I pretty much raised my sons the same way. I believed that spanking was a form of discipline that kept them in line.  I would talk more with them, than my parents did with us but if talking wasn't working, I would spank them.  I believed the problem with a lot of the so-called bad kids was that their parents didn't spank them.  I would shake my head in disgust when I would see a child acting up in the supermarket.  These children would scream at their parents, saying that they hate them and then if they didn't get what they wanted they would continue to act out.  My thoughts were always, "when is the spanking coming?"!  As kids, we didn't embarrass our parents, our parents embarrassed us!

A Change of Heart

A lightning bolt struck in Pensacola, FL on October 31, 2011, that changed my whole way of thinking!  Enter Miss Hayden Redditt, my first daughter, into the world. Suddenly, with my daughter, everything that I thought I believed, has changed.  I remember sitting down with my wife and telling her that, I WOULD NOT be spanking our daughter.  I told her I don't think that a father should spank his daughter because if they do spank them, she will grow up thinking it's ok for men to hit her.  So, if my daughter has to get a spanking, my wife would be the one doing the spanking.  My wife looked at me like I had grown a second head.  She knew I just didn't want to ever have to spank our daughter and that would leave Mommy as the bad guy.  My planned worked until she was a little over a year old and she tried to stick a pencil in the electrical outlet, without thinking I spanked her and told her, "No No, you don't do that!".  That was the first and last time I ever spanked my daughter!  I felt so bad!  I think I cried harder than she did.  To make matters worse, anytime she was acting out and I would threaten to spank her, she would begin to spank herself repeatedly, which made me feel even worse.  Neither my wife or I like to spank, so Hayden began to receive time-outs for acting out.  Time-outs seemed to work for the first 2 years or should I say, until she turned 2.  Then, for a lack of a better term, all Hell broke loose.  Time-outs were becoming pointless.  She would let herself out of time-out, when SHE felt like it.  We asked her to do stuff and her response was inherently, "I don't want to!"  Now, if I had ever told my parents that I didn't want to do something that they asked of me, I probably wouldn't be here writing this blog right now!  My wife and I are really at our wits end.  We have read countless books on how to discipline, without spanking.  I have talked to my friends and all of them say the same thing, I don't spank my daughter, I let my wife do that.  But, what do you do when your spouse feels the same way you do?  I even talked to my Mom about this and her response was no you can't spank her.  WAIT, WHAT?!?  Did THAT just come out of the mouth of the former Spanking Heavyweight Champion of the World?  My wife told me the other day that our daughter has gotten a lot worse when she is out in public.  I hadn't been anywhere with them in a while because of my knee.  Yesterday, I saw this first hand, for the first time, when I told her that she couldn't get a toy.  I tried explaining to her that she just received so many toys for her birthday and that she hasn't played with all of those toys yet.  She was having none of it.  She started crying and screaming in the store, "but! I want it Daddy, I need it!".  The more I told her no, the louder she became.  I was so embarrassed.  I had become that parent at the supermarket with the out of control child.  People were looking at us like control your child!  I swear I saw a guy shaking his head in disbelief.  I was so embarrassed, that I left everything in the basket and walked out of the store, even leaving my Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, that I found at a great discount.  That really upset me lol.  I also left the clothes that my daughter had picked out.  She was really upset and begged me to go back and get them.  I explained to her, that I would not be going back and that she would not be getting new clothes today because of her behavior.  I told my wife that I had no idea it had gotten this bad.  The question is, what are we gonna do about it?  My wife said that she thinks part of the problem is, that I never tell her "no" and that if she wants something, I buy it every time.  Whereas, she tells her "no" or "not now", or suggests waiting for her birthday or Christmas.  We both don't believe in spanking, but time-outs don't work.  Nothing is working at this point.  What do we do?  All advice is welcome.  We know we have to get this under control and fast or it's gonna really be a serious issue as she gets older.  So, do we just put our foot down and spank her like my parents did?  I think I turned out okay.  Or do we continue try to find alternative ways to discipline her without spanking?  We need HELP.