Your child is throwing the temper tantrum of the century. Scratching, hitting, biting, spitting, and screaming—it cannot get much worse. What do you do? Do you spank your child or will that just make matters worse?

Spanking is one of the most controversial forms of child discipline. Most child development professionals agree that spanking is ineffective and may lead to more aggressive behavior. But many individuals and groups support or encourage spanking as part of a disciplinary approach for children. According to the National Survey of Early Childhood Health, other commonly used forms of discipline include taking away toys or treats, yelling, using time out, and giving explanations.

So what should parents do? Is spanking the best way to discipline children or are other methods more effective?

Child Discipline

Discipline is a way of teaching children the restraint and values necessary to become competent and independent adults. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an effective discipline system contains three vital elements:

• A learning environment characterized by positive, supportive parent-child relationships
• A strategy for teaching and reinforcing positive behaviors
• A strategy for decreasing and eliminating undesired behaviors

Most parents reward good behaviors and punish bad behaviors. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) suggests rewarding your child’s good behavior with things like:

• Praise
• An extra bedtime story
• Delaying bedtime by a half hour
• A preferred snack
• Points toward a special toy or privilege

Bad behaviors, on the other hand, can by punished by:

• Ignoring your child
• Sending your child to time-out
• Taking away privileges

Many parents report that they use spanking to punish unacceptable behaviors, but most child development professionals agree that spanking is among the least effective forms of discipline.

Consequences of Spanking

Research shows that although spanking can stop an undesirable behavior in the short-term, its effectiveness diminishes with each subsequent spanking. The AAP has identified the following consequences of spanking:

• Spanking of children younger than 18 months increases the chances of physical injury, and the child is unlikely to understand the connection between the behavior and the punishment.
• Repeated spanking may cause agitated, aggressive behavior in the child that may lead to physical altercation between parent and child.
• Spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to conflict and has been associated with increased aggression in children.
• Spanking and threats of spanking lead to altered parent-child relationships, making discipline substantially more difficult when physical punishment is no longer an option, such as with adolescents.
• Spanking is no more effective than other disciplinary approaches, and reliance on spanking as a disciplinary approach makes other strategies less effective.
• A pattern of spanking may be sustained or increased.
• Studies reported in the journal Pediatrics show that spanking prior to the age of two was strongly associated with behavior problems when children reached school age. These findings were significant only for white, non-Hispanic children.
• Another study in the journal Pediatricsshowed a link between harsh physical punishment and risk for mood disorders, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, and personality disorders.

For these reasons, the AAP strongly discourages any form of striking a child. They recommend that, if the spanking is spontaneous, parents should calmly explain why they did it, how angry they felt, and perhaps apologize to the child.