Spanking makes kids stupid

[Skylace]

[faceless]

"the more a child was spanked, the lower his or her IQ compared with others. "

I bet you'd find that the lower a child's IQ in the first place the more it gets spanked! 'Come ere you, ya daft wee bugger, till I give you a slap!'

[Skylace]

That was actually part of the discussion I saw on the news this morning. The idea that a lot of parents who do use excessive corporal punishment don't have as high IQ's either. Regardless, it's a pretty interesting study. And I know it's going to cause a lot of controversy!

[SquareEyes]

Skylace, that sounds about right to me. Having said that, you haven't met my kids :p Excessive twatting should never be necessary though!

This is the way I see it:

When kids are very young, they have to learn right from wrong. Sometimes it involves a slap on the legs or ass. If it's in public, wtf! Let the libs gasp - not your kid - back away! They will grow up better for it, with a sound moral code, imho. Anything beyond a slap and a sharp word shouldn't be necessary.

[Skylace]

[faceless]

[SquareEyes]

Ouch - is this "get at SquareEyes night"?

I was just suggesting that occasional, mild, corporal punishment, in the right context, at the right time, is not wrong.

[Skylace]

[minterdan]

Children form their attitudes to right and wrong at a very early age, when they do not respond to reason. When you "smack" your children, you are hitting them just hard enough for it to sting a little, and that's all. If you are hitting them harder than that, that is child abuse, and it is against the law. To suggest it lowers there IQ is plain stupid.

[major.tom]

At first glance, the results of this study may seem nonsensical. What connection could their possibly be between the brain and the butt? (Don't answer that.) But on a psychological level, it may be spot on.

When the wrong action results in physical punishment, that instills in children very black and white attitudes. But the world is not black and white. Disciplining a child without resorting to physical force requires more effort on both the part of the parent and child. Instead of giving them a smack and sending them to their room, one must actually reason with a child (which is no small task), sometimes repeatedly, for them to understand the error of their ways.

Such patterns repeated over years are bound to affect the child's ability to reason and (as a result) their I.Q.

[Skylace]

Exactly Major. I think that is what most people are missing in this study. It's not an occasional spank or swat. This is when you spank as discipline. When you don't utilize your own critical thinking skills to discipline and attempt to have the child use their critical thinking skills to learn from a situation (instead of just learning to avoid pain) then that will have an affect on brain development.
Teaching a child to use their brain is important. If you just spank them to get them to do what they are supposed to do, they won't be learning anything more then not wanting a smack.
Not to mention there are other studies that show how when we are hit it puts our brains and bodies into a heightened state of trauma and affects our thought processes. Over time the more trauma we experience the more our brain is affected.

[SquareEyes]

Very interesting Skylace. Does that imply that, as humans developed, they were exposed to less trauma and became more stoopid. In my case, that could explain a lot :p

[eefanincan]

[Skylace]