Spanking is not the same as child abuse, but just because you should not be arrested for spanking your child does not make it an effective parenting tool.

In 2016, Elizabeth Gershoff, a professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, conducted a meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking that encompassed approximately 160,000 children. Gershoff found that the findings consistently turned out negative.

Parents should not need a research study to tell them that spanking their child is not an effective form of discipline. Violence begets violence, and while spanking is not intended to harm the child but act as a negative reinforcement, there are better ways to go about this.

The point of discipline is to teach the child. Rather than learning why the behavior is bad, the child is learning simply not to do it without knowing why they are not allowed to. Choosing not to steal just because people know they will be punished for it is not why they should not steal. It is more important for the child to be raised to do the right thing because they morally know the difference between right and wrong and can think through decisions on their own. Spanking is just like Pavlov’s theory; the child may develop a conditioned behavior, but they do not learn anything from that.

It is far more useful for parents to utilize the “1,000-word essay punishment.” Movies from the ’90s may joke about them and have every character in detention have to write one, but as far as punishments go, this is the most useful. It requires the child to sit down, think and process what it is they did and why it was wrong. It also assists the child in developing writing skills, which are something they will need to use for the rest of their life.

While this will not work for young students who do not have the skills yet to write, it is a useful discipline tool for older children. Until children are old enough to write, a time-out without toys does the same thing, allowing the child time to reflect on what they did and understand why it was wrong.

In a world where too often people act without thinking or do things without knowing why or to what avail, it is even more important to instill in our children the importance of reflection and improvement.

Smacking their bum will not teach them a lesson any deeper than “I did this one thing and got hit for it.” If parents can teach their children to think about their actions and improve upon them, the parents teach them a lesson far more important.