A swat in the butt will nip it in the bud

By Bishop Dave Chikosi

A potty-mouthed African kid in the diaspora is seen and heard verbally terrorizing his caregivers in a recent YouTube video that went viral. How this little stinker can get away with such defiance we may never know. But what we know is that somebody failed to nip his little funky attitude in the bud.

One way to do that would have been to swat his behind every now and then. Why the behind? According to my wise former pastor, the reason why God packed more flesh in the human rear than any other part of the body is because He intended our little bottoms to be the seat of judgement where parental discipline is administered.

There is a verse of scripture that my dear late mother used to love to cite every time she got ready to spank the hell out of us. It went something like, “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die” (Proverbs 23:13). It was quite amusing when she quoted it, but it was far from funny when she applied it.

Now the anti-spanking “progressives” will immediately come out with guns blazing and crying foul. They claim that spanking is violence against children, and that is simply not permissible. Sounds nice and noble doesn’t it? Yes, until you realize that some of these same progressives who think it’s wrong to swat a child’s butt for bad behavior, also think it’s okay to murder a baby in its mother’s womb.

If you object to spanking because it hurts and it’s painful, why then do you take your kid to the clinic and allow the nurse to him painful shots? Don’t you know those shots hurt real bad? You know they do, but you go through with it anyway because of the greater good the child will derive from the experience. Painful but necessary. So is spanking.

Do “progressive” parents ever use or exert force to help or save their little ones? You bet they do. They will quickly grab their child by the arm before the child runs into the street. They will forcefully pick up a child and carry him out of the store when he throws a tantrum. And you tell me that the use of force or coercion on kids is wrong?

What about time-outs? Can they replace spanking? I don’t think so. “Go to your room!” just doesn’t have the same effect that a swat or two on a child’s posterior has. The child can learn to mentally navigate around timeouts.

If yours is like me when I was coming up, then sending him to sit in corner will achieve very little. As a kid I developed the ability to daydream during timeouts and entertain myself in my own head for hours. Timeouts were quite a bit of fun.

And if you think taking away the child’s privileges is the panacea, then don’t be surprised when your boy or girl transforms into a little soldier of fortune who only behaves appropriately as a strategy to get his toys or TV time back. Once the little mercenary gets his stuff back and gets out of your sight, he reverts to his old dastard behavior. You can bet on it.

Privilege deprivations and timeouts have their place, but can they replace good ole fashion corporal punishment? I think not.

Spanking advocates are often asked the question: “How can you tell a child not to hit others when you spank them?” This is the violence-begets-violence argument. Our response is simple: If spanking my kids develops in them a proclivity to spank other kids, what does my taking away their toys do? Make them go out and take other kids’ toys away?

What about when I compel them to do their chores? Does that cause them to go force their friends to do chores?

Clearly the violence-begets-violence argument is false. If we take it to its logical conclusion, no one would ever fulfil the noble calling of parenting. A good parent is constantly doing disciplinary things that his/her kids have no business emulating. Why?

Because that’s how the parent-child relationship works. The nature of good parenting is such that mum and dad must impose on kids and require of them certain things that the children themselves are not able or not allowed to impose on or require of other people.

The truth of the matter is that most people who are against spanking fall in one of two categories: those who were abused by parents under the guise of discipline and those who were never spanked by their parents.

But those of us who fall in the middle i.e. neither abused nor left to our own mischief-making, will quickly testify that because of our parents’ loving discipline, we now suffer from a condition known as RFO i.e. Respect For Others.

That’s exactly what that little kid on that YouTube video needs. Like yesterday.

(Some of the ideas in this article were borrowed from Matt Walsh’s blog. Bishop Dave Chikosi can be reached by email at [email protected]. His other essays as well as audio-video materials can be accessed at his blog http://davechikosi.blogspot.com)