This episode explains the systemic effects of spanking - not just that it's harmful, but how it creates lasting patterns. I'll show you what happens in the nervous system when a child is spanked, the dysfunctional beliefs children develop from these experiences, how shame avoidance perpetuates the pattern across generations, why protective behaviors formed in response to spanking show up differently across contexts but stem from the same root cause, and the pathway to breaking the cycle. Key statistics: 94% of 3-4 year olds in the US are spanked. Spanking in childhood is associated with moderate to heavy drinking, drug use, and suicide attempts in adulthood, even after controlling for other forms of abuse. Sources: Fragile Families study on spanking prevalence: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3114638/ Long-term mental health outcomes: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213423000030
What this episode covers:
This episode explains the systemic effects of spanking - not just that it's harmful, but how it creates lasting patterns. I'll show you:
Key statistics:
Sources:
Hello everyone, it has been a while. So today I'm going to talk about something that might be triggering for some of you. So if it's triggering and if you're stuck in the middle of shame avoidance, I recommend not listening to this episode. Maybe come back once you're ready to, you know, potentially bring up pain or confront your own pain. So today's topic is going to be about spanking. And first, I want to explain what spanking is. Then I want to explain what it does to a child's nervous system. And then I'm going to explain some functional beliefs that can form from different spanking experiences. And I'm sure that many people listening have experienced spanking before, and I'm really sorry to hear that. And I wish it wasn't so culturally normalized to treat children that way. Unfortunately, the world has shown that kids' needs usually aren't prioritized over adults, unfortunately. And that is something that I think is a deep tragedy in our society. So to start off, what is spanking? Spanking is when you hit a child either with your hand or a physical object. Fun fact, hitting your kid with a physical object of any kind is now considered a felony in all 50 states. It didn't used to be though. And so if you hit a kid with your hand, unfortunately to the child's nervous system, it is Still traumatic and still a huge problem. So when a child is hit in any way, whether that's by hand, by leather belts, or by wooden paddles or other physical objects, or by hand, what does the nervous system learn in that moment? Well, you see, when you're very young, to a developing brain, The brain is very neuroplastic, which means that you are, as a kid, you're learning things very quickly. You're learning lessons about the world. You're learning what it means. You're learning, you know, how to grow up, how to be a person. So in that moment when someone hits you as a kid, especially if it's an adult or a caretaker or a parent or someone else, the nervous system learns that in that moment you are fundamentally unsafe. And then that memory gets encoded as a high salience event. Now, what is salience? Salience is the brain assigning importance to an event. And when you're younger, And in general, these painful experiences tend to be more salient to the brain, more important. Because to a child, violence like that would absolutely, in the child's mind, be seen as a life or death scenario. You can't exactly tell a kid that I'm going to hit you and then everything's going to be okay after that. That's not how the nervous system works. So what happens is that the nervous system actually stores that trauma in the body. And as an adult, as you're listening to this, if you have memories of when you were a kid and when you were spanked, you probably have some nervous system trauma stored in your body. And as you start releasing nervous system trauma with different practices, like yoga, TRE, for example, trauma release exercises, highly recommended. They're pretty amazing. But, you know, be cautious because when things tend to release, it tends to release everything all at once. So make sure you have a good support system. And I really find it to be a great shame that culturally, even now, even now, culturally spanking is seen as something that is acceptable and okay to do to children. And that understanding of nervous system trauma basically gets conveniently ignored in these narratives because confronting the fact that spanking children causes them to carry with them nervous system trauma can result in a lot of shame from repeating patterns from the past. Like, let's say a parent spanks their kid. Well, then the parent was probably also spanked as a kid too, and that's how it became normalized. And it makes me wonder how many generations going back were children subjected to unsafe situations that made them feel like their nervous system was not safe. How many situations were our children regularly subjected to situations where they feel like they have to be a certain way in order to achieve that conditional safety? Well, look at the state of the world and I think you'll find the answer is often. Now, what are some dysfunctional beliefs that spanking a child can create in childhood? Besides, I am unsafe. That is one dysfunctional belief. Here's a few others. My caretakers or my parents or my family won't protect me. That's one belief that might be learned. Another belief that might be learned is I have to do something specific to be loved. That conditional love, that conditional fear of if I don't do everything perfectly, I'm going to be harmed in some way. That's a dysfunctional belief. Through the lens of child logic, it makes total sense why you'd believe that. Because if you saw that when you're expressing a certain emotion, you get punished for that, well then it naturally makes sense that you'd carry that into adulthood and be afraid to express that emotion again. And then other dysfunctional beliefs might be based on the situation. Let's say every time a parent picked up a glass of beer or wine, let's say that spanking's happened then. Well, child will learn to become hypervigilant around other adults that are drinking, for one. I don't want to go too in-depth there because I'm going to make another episode about alcohol abuse and alcoholism and how that is the root of many problems in parent-child relationships But underlying all of this, let's look at the innermost motivations of why. What causes someone in a position of power to spank or hit a child? You know, at the root, what causes this? And what causes this is a complicated answer. It's a combination of shame avoidance and emotional dysregulation. You see, when adults and people can't regulate their own emotions and make the choice to not regulate themselves, that internal pain gets expressed outward. So let me talk a little bit about shame avoidance. What is shame avoidance? Shame avoidance is when you went through a situation that was so painful to you in the in the present moment and you're trying to avoid thinking about it talking about it and confronting it because the pain of admitting or experiencing that situation is simply too much so your brain and your body will actually protect you from thinking about it which can lead to other ways of numbing that emotion or numbing those really difficult feelings Because if you're numb, you can't feel the shame of your past. So a lot of people will use shame avoidance to avoid taking accountability for the things that they've done in the past. Now this differs quite a bit from other situations where people might not actually remember. And that will tie into another episode that I have not yet created on alcoholism and how alcohol actually impairs memory encoding. This is alcohol science. I'm not going to go too far into that though. At the core... The onus of emotional regulation lies on adults. If there is an adult who cannot control themselves around children, then children should be protected from that adult. Simply put, that's how it goes. And I know that, you know, what I'm expressing and what I'm describing might be so out there to some of you. Or other people listening might be surprised I'm even talking about it at all. Like, of course, of course you should not hurt your kids. Of course you should not hit your kids. Maybe that seems obvious. And if it seems obvious, I'm really glad because it means you're probably not stuck in this dysfunctional pattern. So what about people who don't have kids, who are still stuck in that dysfunctional pattern? Well, patterns that are unconscious and unrecognized below the threshold of conscious awareness tend to still repeat themselves. So you might ask, how can that pattern repeat itself if I don't have a kid? Well, some people will call it discipline in the way that they train their animals. And that discipline, they think that discipline as a word means violence or means hurting. It really doesn't actually. It turns out discipline means having healthy habits and discipline itself, emotional regulation is a form of discipline. In fact, I would even advocate that emotional regulation is one of the best forms of discipline because you're no longer going to project your own responsibility for your own regulation outwards onto other people. Instead, you are taking that accountability and responsibility and you're saying, no. My emotions are my responsibility. And so something that I see with a lot of parents, they get stuck. They get stuck with this idea that if you did one bad thing, that it means you're a bad person. But it doesn't work like that. Life does not work like that. People are multifaceted. People have parts. And those parts can all have different goals. And at the core, a lot of people will have protector parts that are designed to protect their survival. So if your survival as a kid depended on something then whatever that survival depended on as a kid you're more likely to repeat that pattern so like let's say if you had a parent for example who wasn't present or wasn't there like physically wasn't there as one example Well, you'd probably be trying to survive by doing whatever you can to make sure that you don't feel abandoned by people in your life. Abandonment wounds, betrayal wounds, rejection wounds, injustice wounds, and humiliation wounds. A lot of that comes into play here. So I'd like to give you some statistics on spanking, aka corporal punishment. Spanking remains a common, though declining, form of discipline with an estimated 1.2 billion children aged 0 to 18 globally subjected to it annually. Despite its prevalence, research indicates spanking is not more effective than other methods and is consistently linked to negative child outcomes. Global statistics, and then I'll read U.S. Global statistics, roughly 6 in 10 children aged 2 through 14 worldwide experience physical punishment by caregivers. Severe punishment across 58 countries with available data, 17% of children were subjected to severe corporal punishment, a.k.a. hitting on the face, head, or ears. In parts of Africa and Central America, 70% of children receive corporal punishment in school during their lifetime. God. Rates range from 30-32% in countries like Kazakhstan and Ukraine to over 60-70% in places like Serbia, Togo, and Sierra Leone. As of 2021, 62 countries have banned corporal punishment, though this does not include the United States. U.S. spanking statistics. A national survey found that 37% of children aged 0 through 17 were spanked in the last year. Spanking is the most common between ages 3 and 4. With 94% of children in this age group experiencing it, 94% of 3 to 4 year olds in the United States are spanked. The tragedy of that is heartbreaking. Like, it's heartbreaking. I don't have other words for that. While rates decrease with age, 13% of 17-year-olds are still spanked. That's crazy. 70% of college students surveyed reported being spanked as children. And in the U.S., corporal punishment is legal in 19 states, but very concentrated, with 86% of school districts in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi using it. 94% of 3 and 4 year olds 94% and so like when people ask questions like why is the world like this you know that kind of thing people are traumatized I mean if 94% of 3 and 4 year olds are being hit by their parents or caretakers or family that's a huge problem why is no one else talking about this why do other people not see the harm This is the thing. Like, I understand that it's a huge topic of shame avoidance. I understand that people don't want to confront that they've repeated the same patterns that their parents subjected onto them. I understand that people will do usually whatever they can to avoid pain. And unfortunately, that's a big part of human psychology, people avoiding pain. But like, you can actually experience that pain you can experience pain and come out on the other side people think sometimes people think that if you start experiencing the full pain of what you've been through in your life that if you allow it that you're gonna just die and that's a valid fear it makes sense to a child's developing brain it does seem like it would be life or death scenario and that does completely make sense And as an adult, it becomes your responsibility to update the model. And that's really difficult. How can you update the model when you still have nervous system trauma stored in the body? That's the hard part. Finding a way to express and transmute that nervous system trauma into something else. That's one benefit of exercise, trauma release exercises, and other somatic practices. But for a lot of people, it leads to this split where either they immediately dissociate when the topic comes up, or worse, they control specific situations so that they get to continue avoiding experiencing that pain. So when a kid is hit like that, children might learn okay it's not safe to express who i am children might learn it's not safe around this person children might learn i have to always tell the truth or i will be harmed children might learn other dysfunctional beliefs and you might say oh if children learn to always tell the truth wouldn't that be a great thing well think about how often in your life Think about how much harder it would be if your psychological survival felt like it depended on telling the truth. What kinds of habits would you have created from that? What kind of person would you be is it a great thing to be honest and to have integrity sure but normally survival programs that feel like your life depends on it don't always have the most optimal outcomes So now let's move to another dimension of this here. I just gave you some spanking statistics. Now let's type in spanking long-term effects, some long-term effects. And this, this, this is going to be a depressing episode and I'm really sorry. but I have to make it. I feel like I need people to hear this. As recently as 20 years ago, the physical punishment of children was accepted worldwide, which is still mind-blowing to me. Like, how? It was considered an appropriate method for eliciting behavioral compliance that was conceptually distinct from physical abuse. Spoiler alert, it is not. This perspective began to change as studies found links to normative physical punishment and child aggression, delinquency, and spousal assault in later life. Well, yeah, if you teach kids that when you hit them. that you get to hold the power and that they have to bend to your will. Kids are going to learn from that and probably copy the same patterns in adulthood, so that makes sense. Some of these studies involved large representative samples from the United States and some controlled for potential confounders like parental stress socioeconomic status in some studies examine the potential of parental reasoning i'm not going to read all of this to you in this moment but you can type in that so let's look at the conclusion here long-term effects The consistency of research findings on physical punishment and positive discipline, along with growing support for aims of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, has had a substantial impact on the view of health care providers. The American Academy of Pediatrics cautions that carpal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects. and recommends that parents be encouraged and assisted in the development of methods other than spanking for managing undesired behavior. I hope if you're a parent listening to this, this is obvious. I really hope, you know, but I'm not even going to make assumptions here. So, numerous studies have found physical punishment increases the risk of broad and enduring negative developmental outcomes. No study has found that physical punishment enhances developmental health. Most child physical abuse occurs in the context of punishment. So kids learn that when they are going to be punished, that hitting is a possibility, that harm and violence is a possibility. So they learn, the nervous system learns from that, that there are either people that aren't safe, that there are situations that can harm them, and they learn that hitting is a valid way to control other people's actions. So let's look further into the long-term effects here, because this is really tragic. One study led by community health sciences professor Catherine Taylor was the first to control for a host of issues affecting the mother, such as depression, alcohol, drug use, spousal abuse, and abortion while pregnant with a child. After controlling for all of these factors, each of which can contribute to children aggression, spanking remained a strong predictor of violent behavior. The odds of a child being more aggressive at age five increased by 50% if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study began. This is not, this is not confusing. Like, This is a natural cause and effect. You teach the kid that hitting and violence is okay. And then the kid learns from that. Or they learn to hide themselves when they are expressing and feeling pain in order to prevent sharing that vulnerability in other ways. Among mothers surveyed, in 20 cities where their children were both 3 and 5, half reported not spanking their 3-year-olds in the previous month, 27.9% reported spanking once or twice that month, and 26.5% reported spanking more than twice. As 5-year-olds, the children who had been spanked were more likely than the non-spanked to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, become frustrated easily, have temper tantrums, and physically lash out against other people and animals. The reason for this may be that spanking sets up a loop of bad behavior. And so now let's keep looking here. So now let's talk about spanking long-term effects in adults because this is where it really gets interesting. So, PubMed research. There's associations between spanking, increased odds of mental health disorders, physical health conditions, and other defiant behaviors. Spanking is also associated, fun fact, with increased odds of adult mental and behavioral health impairment, including suicide attempts. Suicide attempts linked to physical abuse. And this is not confusing either. When someone is in a situation, as the brain is still developing, and they learn that they are not safe, that they are not protected, what is the natural response? Look at the natural response from a child's view. One natural response might be, I guess I have to just do everything by myself. Another response might be, I have to hide my pain from other people. Or, even at a deeper level, depending on when the child was spanked. Sometimes it comes before language has developed and it can result in the body, the body's memory of wincing, maybe just not trusting as deeply. A lot of people feel like they can't relax And, you know, this is all highly established research. I'm not cherry picking the studies. And this is where it's really, really tragic. Because parents, in either altered states or emotional dysregulation, take out their anger and pain on a child, and then they wonder later on why the child is the way that they are. And to me, this is such a clear and obvious pattern. Like, to me, it's so obvious that a child being hit in any way, really, in any single way, to a developing brain, that can wreak havoc. It can cause hypervigilance later in life. It can cause anxiety later in life. It can cause depression later in life. It could cause suicide later in life. I mean, if you're a parent, I really want you to hear this. I really hope that any parent who's considering or contemplating whether or not they should spank their kids hears this. Do you want your kid to trust you with their problems as an adult? Do you want your kid to feel safe around you? Do you want your kid to feel like they can relax when they spend time with you? Do you want your kid to have good mental health in the future? Or physical health? Because spanking is also linked to chronic inflammation conditions and a lot of other things too. Do you want your kids to feel like it is safe to reach out to you about whatever they're experiencing? And are you willing, if you catch yourself in this pattern, are you willing to Take accountability for your role. Because a lot of parents get stuck thinking that they have to be perfect parents. I am here telling you, to anyone listening, you do not have to be a perfect parent. You don't. And if you're listening to that you might be like what what do you mean i don't have to be perfect that doesn't make any sense no parenting is not about perfection it is about repair it is about the ability to come back to your kid and say maybe i don't remember things the same way that you do but i can see that you're in pain from this I feel deeply sorry that you would ever feel that pain from me. What can I do to support you in this moment? Really, four steps. Four steps. It's very simple. The repair. It's the repair aspect of it. to be able to take accountability and first validate what your kid is experiencing. Validate, oh my God, validate, please, please validate your kids. Like if you ignore all of my other videos, if you ignore all of my other advice, ignore everything I've ever said, validate your kids. Validation can be the difference between life and death. I swear to God it can. Validation can be the difference between your kid who grew up and became an adult and chooses to live over dying. Validation of your kid's reality does not mean you have to see things the same way as them. You can say, hey, I'm not experiencing life the way that you are and that is okay. The way that you see the world is valid. Or even something simpler than that. I'm sorry you're in pain and I can see that this is really hard for you. What can I do to help? It's so simple. It's validation is literally so easy. And a lot of people don't do it. You know why they don't do it? It's shame avoidance again. Because a lot of people think that if you validate someone, you are agreeing with them. And I'm here to tell you that you're not. I can disagree with people all day and still validate them. You can disagree about core topics and still validate them. You can validate how they feel. You can validate that they're seeing things differently from you. You can validate when they're going through a hard time. all of these things you can do without having to have the exact same memories without having the same exact reality because to a child's nervous system being hit stores trauma plain and simple hitting your kids stores trauma and even if you can't see it now maybe you won't see it now maybe you won't see it in 20 years maybe when your kid turns 30 they start talking about this and they remember They remember because kids and nervous systems are literally designed to survive. The body keeps the score. And that's also the name of a very good book that I highly recommend anyone who's more interested in this topic to listen to and read. The body remembers. The body's not just going to forget what happened. Can you do all these other good things for your kids and cancel out that nervous system trauma? Not really, no. It's hard to cancel out nervous system trauma. It is a very specific process and should only be really done under the care of a professional. Maybe someone who knows how to release somatically. And I would much prefer to see a future where children aren't hit to begin with, so we're not from scratch, really, starting from a place of trauma. You know, when people respond with anger, fear, and all these other extremely painful emotions, most of the time they're running survival scripts. It's literally like code. I wish there was some way I could show you what I see in my mind when I see this. It's literally like code. Protector parts run these survival mechanisms that make it feel like a situation is life or death. And those protector parts form at different ages from different experiences. A lot of people think that you can't be a good person and also be abusive, but that's a misnomer. Do you think abusive people start with talking and thinking about, okay, I'm going to wake up today and I'm going to cause harm? No, like most people don't want to cause harm. Most people really do not want to cause harm. It is the unchecked, unconscious pain that most people avoid within themselves that causes harm. It's the shame that you refuse to look at. If you have shame within you and you refuse to look at it, well, that's the kind of pattern that gets repeated. So then what's the way out? The way out is repair. The way out is to take accountability. The way out is to say, you know what? I'm done running the same shame avoidance survival algorithms that kept me alive. Thank you for keeping me alive back then. Shame avoidance, thank you. First, you got to thank the part because that part kept you alive. Thank you for keeping me alive in those situations. And I would like to move on. And sometimes parts can choose new roles within your internal system. Sometimes they're not ready to choose new roles yet, but it takes time. It takes trust. It takes a lot of self-trust. You've got to be willing to love and validate yourself sometimes before those parts are even willing to show you that pain. Because the brain and the body are going to do whatever it takes to keep you alive as a survival mechanism. And a lot of children early on learn that they have to do or be a certain way to be loved. Spanking is just one way of learning that. And it's a deep tragedy. And I hope that your understanding and knowledge of why shame avoidance is not the answer. Do you want to repeat the same patterns that caused you shame? No, you don't. So dive into your own shame. This is me giving you a recommendation. You can take it or leave it. If you have a lot of shame that's really, really deep and painful, I recommend working with a therapist, maybe someone who can do EMDR. Because EMDR is a great way to release a lot of previous stories and narratives about what you went through. And be willing to take accountability for your role. The role in repeating the patterns, the role in causing harm. It's possible to be a good person and to accidentally cause harm. And I think that's what happens in most cases. People accidentally cause harm all the time from these unchecked survival programs running because those are the same programs that kept them alive as kids. And spanking is no exception. This is why parents who were spanked are more likely to spank their kids. If you're a parent listening to this, you were spanked, and you're about to have kids, please listen to what I'm saying. You gotta find a way to break out of that pattern. You don't want your kids to deal with this over and over and over. I mean, be the generational breaker that you want to see. If you know in your heart violence is not the answer, then find a way by confronting and feeling your shame without trying to run away from it. Allowing that feeling to in your body without running away from it. That's how you get through it. And I'm here to tell you, You can come out the other side. You will survive that. You will. You need a support system, obviously, and definitely have that in place first. A therapist would be great. I honestly recommend therapy to everyone because one of the central components of therapy is the therapist teaching you how to love and validate yourself, which is a really important skill. A skill that not all adults have, which is really the hard part. To be able to say I love myself even in spite of the pain I've been through in the past. To be able to say I love myself regardless of everything I've been through, regardless of the things that other people have told me about who I am. I know who I am and I love who I am. It's powerful to be able to get to a place to believe that and live your life in accordance with those values. Thank you for listening.