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Some Thoughts About Spanking

There have been a lot of articles lately about spanking children, some in favor of and others opposed to it. It's occurred to me that my position against spanking in some way empowers those who still justify it as a tool for getting children to behave. Is not a self righteous position flailed (even silently, non verbally) against spankers itself lacking compassion and abusive, does it not invalidate, strike out at, and hurt the spanker?

Let me explain: It's important for those of us who are against spanking to notice that our position isn't having the effect we say we want. Our position is adversarial. It's similar to one's position about peace. "Peace-niks" in the 60's were every bit as violent as the soldiers in Vietnam. That is to say, any position automatically brings forth an equally powerful opposite position.

I know also that my position against spanking is loaded with self righteousness. It's culturally and intellectually biased. We "enlightened" ones for human rights are so right that it automatically gives rise to the opposite position. I have had no space for a local (those born and raised in Hawaii) parent to strike out in anger at their child. They are wrong, and I am right that they are wrong, and, for "reasons," they keep on doing it. They argue, violently, "It's my child and it's none of your @#$&* business."

Something about how I/we have been communicating keeps producing more of the same. It's as though the spankers have to keep hitting me where it hurts, to make me wrong for my self righteous position.

No matter how loving I think I may be I have a sense of what it must be like to be a mother in the supermarket on the receiving end of my stink-eye, masked as compassion, as she yanks and verbally and abuses her child. I first talked with and eventually reported a neighbor who was hitting his children. Nothing seems to ultimately work. If anything, it looks as though my efforts as a communication consultant these past 24 years has had the opposite effect.

Teachers also are frustrated. They can tell which students are yelled at just by looking at their faces. The hurt, the sadness and daily invalidations takes its toll; the brightness, the inquisitiveness the beauty slowly disappears. An "attitude" creeps in. The student draws attention to the fact that there's a communication problem at home. After a few "tries" at getting into communication the teacher resorts to lowering grades. Real low grades replaces the verbal communication skills necessary to effect a transformation between the child and his/her parent(s).

The speech/communication model taught to teachers, through the universities, leaves them powerless to do anything but condone the home situation, privately, in the Teacher's Lounge, mostly non verbally. Most teachers are totally afraid and unempowered to bring up the subject effectively during a parent-teacher conference. Here in Puna, on the Big Isle of Hawaii, most everyone knows some parent who violently yells at, or hits, their children. The only recourse a child has is to misbehave, get sick or fail so as to draw attention to the communication problem. Students unconsciously do poorly on their SAT scores hoping we'll get, that what we call communication ain't it. When a teacher communicates subject matter it gets gotten, when he/she does their imitation of communication many students do poorly.

In my profession we say that spanking is what adults resort to when they've lost their ability to be in communication (verbally) with their child. After the very first spank, family members unconsciously agree upon an imitation of communication within the family thereafter.

Yellers and spankers are unconsciously programmed to not seek out a communication consultant. Why? Because a consultant, in the process of coaching the family in creating a new communication model, would reveal that the child has been merely drawing attention to some out-integrity, some unacknowledged perpetration, conscious or not, within the family. Usually this out-integrity is an addiction. It's something that no family member is even willing to address let alone give up, such as lying, alcohol/drugs, or some deception. Children are integrity meters. They know intuitively when something is wrong. They do what it takes, even get hit, fail in school or make themselves sick, to resolve it.

My purpose in writing this article is to share these thoughts. I offer no solution. Many of my/our solutions aren't working, other than to upset spankers and make them feel badly, or less-than, which results in more violent yellings, harder swats or more vigorous shakings.

Hitting and yelling is an addiction just like alcohol or marijuana and it's equally difficult to acknowledge and master. What I have never done is share with the community at large my experience like I'm doing through this article. Have you? I'd like to read other's thoughts and experiences about spanking. For me, it hurts to see a child spanked. I was spanked "from love" with a hairbrush more times than I can count. Only now do I know that my mother and I had absolutely no choice but to communicate with each other that way. My mother never learned how to get into communication with me to find out what I was trying to communicate nor were there any relationship communication consultants back then. Worse yet, I knew it was right to hit a child and that I deserved to be hit because the "nice" relatives, teachers and neighbors stood by and non verbally supported it.

It's clear we haven't had enough conversations about this subject to make the kind of difference we'd like to make. I support you in clipping this letter and giving it to someone, even anonymously.

Kerrith H. (Kerry) King
Interpersonal/Organizational 
Communication Skills Consultant/Coach
Pres. Community Communications

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