Others have raised the important point of what to replace “spanking” (or assault as I would rather term it) with.

Time-out for example has been much critiqued as abandoning children to their big feelings (though parents may sometimes need to take time to regulate themselves and their emotions in order to respond calmly to their children).

The more parenting books I read, the more I see the current advice as falling into 2 camps – “power over” or “doing to” parenting and “doing with” or “joy based” parenting.

The first is based on a more authoritarian or obedience/compliance model of parenting, whereby love is witheld if certain desirous behaviour is not forthcoming from the child. I am not suggesting parents doing this are at fault; I think the vast majority of us were raised with this model. It is just different and in my view leads to more struggle.

I’m firmly in the latter camp, in that my intention at least (do not always manage it of course) is to support my children to want to “behave” of their own free will, not because I manipulate them to. I also trust that they will want to do this.

I think a lot of the parent-child struggle (and the questions about what to replace “spanking” with) come from the fact that we can not, in actual fact, force (however nicely) anyone to do anything, even a child, without a cost to ourselves and their selves.

I think a lot of us parent in this way from fear. We are often terrified of (a) what others may think of us and (b) raising psychopaths or just children that do not behave “well” if we do not “get” them to do things. We need a lot of reassurance and trust to be reassured that this is not in fact the case and we can feel free to connect with ourselves and with them calmly and joyfully without it leading to “uncontrollable” children.

Through books and parenting coaches out there, and through my own children, I am learning that there is a different way and I am so happy to have found it.
In my experience though, it is possible to have a joyful connection with your children and not to have to shame them into being people other than they are.

The key I am learning is to focus on ourselves rather than our children… when we are in touch with our own emotions and can be fully present for our children then we can be fully present for them and we can respond to them with love and calm instead of stress and yelling. For some of us (like me!) there is a lot of unlearning to do in terms of how we were ourselves raised.

Thanks for being the parent you are and for the positive difference you are making in your daughter’s life. I’m thrilled that we have been able to help.

If more parents treated their children the way you describe treating yours, we’d be out of business in no time. Which is our goal.

You can help to spread the word with your friends, on Twitter, in Facebook, emails, etc. Tell people your experience of eliminating beliefs and send them to our free belief-elimination website: http://recreateyourlife.com.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Regards, Morty

I have had lessons as well. I am thankful this information is in my life in the early stages in her life. The times I have not acted respectfully to my daughter have sent me crying for days sometimes. I cried out to God for options and He has been faithful.

Morty, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! for what you are sharing. I used your free belief eliminator video and I am even more happy with how it has freed me to treat my daughter, myself and my husband with respect and unconditional love. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! If there is anything I can do to help you spread your work let me know. I am a voice artist and am actively living your techniques so that others can learn through the example I can set with my life. AND Thank You from my daughter.

I really appreciate your comments. Thanks.

Regards, Morty

I forwarded your message to Shelly.

Thanks so much for offering to reprint my post in your newsletter. The more parents who see it the better.

Thanks so much for the work you are doing also.

Regards, Morty

My primary concern with corporal punishment, and even yelling at children, does not stem from studies.

We have worked with over 13,000 clients who had a wide variety of problems, serious ones like eating disorders and depression, and everyday ones like procrastination and worrying what people think of us.

We’ve discovered in every case that the source of the problem is beliefs (and sometimes conditioning). How do we know that? Because when the beliefs have been eliminated, the problems disappear and don’t return.

When we search for the source of the negative beliefs, such as I’m not good enough, I’m not important, I’m not worthy, etc., we find 99+% of the time the source is interactions with parents.

Yelling produces almost as many negative beliefs as corporal punishment, so I am not picking on the latter. Not being around much of the time leads to I’m not important.

Hitting anf yelling are the two worst parenting practices from the standpoint of negative beliefs but they are certainly not the only practices that lead to negative beliefs and low self-esteem.

Children require the experience of unconditional love. A child 3-4 years old cannot experience unconditional love if he/she is being hit or screamed at, no matter what the parent’s intention.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Regards, Morty

Your story is a common one.

And yet as I tell my clients all the time, ultimately what your parents do to you does NOT affect your later life; the meaning you give what they do does. And you can now change that meaning (the beliefs) whenever you want.

There is no need to live with a fear of failure and rejection. Eliminate the beliefs that cause them.

Thanks for your comment.

Regards, Morty

Thanks for reading all my material and for taking the time to comment so often. I really appreciate the dialogue.

Have a great day.

Regards, Morty

Depression is due to many more beliefs than would be formed from spanking and even yelling.

Yet there are a lot of problems that cab be traced to beliefs formed from punishment.

Thanks for sharing your own story.

Regards, Morty

Thanks for taking the time to respond. If we can get enough people interested, we might be able to change the law and eventually, some minds.

Regards, Morty

A link to your post will be in an upcoming May issue of Parenting News You Can Use, our free weekly e-zine for parents and teachers. We want more people to see your article! Anyone wishing to subscribe can visit http://www.WholeHeartedParenting.com. We teach the Redirecting Children’s Behavior Course which offers hundreds of alternatives to spanking and yelling. We talk at length about the impact of corporal punishment and provide skills to replace punishment.

Thanks again for speaking out so powerfully in favor of doing it a different, peaceful way!

Regards,
G.Lakshminarayanan

No, love is not enough. Although it certainly is a pre-condition, for without unconditional love nothing else will work.

More support to come.

Thanks for joining the conversation.

Regards, Morty

This one really hit home for me as this is what I see has lead to a lot of my negative beliefs around rejection and fear of failure. I am now just in early adulthood starting to address this and really understand the damage that was done by the constant negative re-enforcement handed down by my parents. Having been told constantly that I wasn’t good enough or doing well enough (even though I was a straight A student at school and through university).

I have noticed a huge improvement since leaving my parents place and concertrating on changing my negative beliefs but I really don’t think most parents even realise the amount of damage they are doing with mental/emotional abuse.

Thanks for the suggestion. I got the contact info in your email.

Love, Morty

I hope everyone who reads my post also reads your comments.
You make so many useful points I could write an entire blog post discussing them.

Glad you found the parenting e-book Shelly and I wrote useful. Her CDs will be available soon.

Sounds like you are doing your best as a father and your kids are lucky to have a parent with your attitude toward parenting.

Regards, Morty

Thanks for your suggestion of reading material that has alternative ways to interact with children. I’m not familiar with Rosenberg, but there are a bunch of useful books, including the books by Faber and Mazlish.

Regards, Morty

Thanks very much for taking the time to express your views.

Let me respond to a few things you said.

First, you said I maligned Dr. Dobson. I didn’t say a single thing about him. I quoted him and gave the source of the quote and also said Time magazine called him the most influential evangelical. If you think he came across badly, then it must have been his own words that produced that impression, because if you reread my post, it wasn’t based on anything I said.

I agree with you that parents don’t own their children. What I said was that the behavior of most parents implies that they believe that. How else can one justify forcing another human being to do what you want instead of what he wants, when he is not hurting anyone with his behavior? What gives a parent to right to impose his will on a defenseless child if he’s not “the boss,” someone with absolute authority to do whatever he wants with the child and the child has no recourse?

You said your punishment as a child was a deterrent to your “bad behavior.” First, all of the studies I’ve seen indicate it has a short term deterrent, but the child doesn’t learn about what’s appropriate and what’s not, only don’t get caught doing what the parents don’t like or you’ll get into trouble. And if the parents aren’t around and you are sure you won’t get caught, there is no “inner”deterrent.

Second, what is “bad behavior” if not behavior parents don’t like. There is no objective definition for a a child’s bad behavior. And most of what parents tell children to do is arbitrary, for their own benefit, and not for the benefit of the child. As I said, parents hate the question “why?” because they usually have no answer except: I said so.

You are free to support corporal punishment if you’d like, but all of our 13,000 clients who were spanked have told us that that was a major source of the negative beliefs they have about themselves, such as I’m not good enough, I’d bad, There’s something wrong with me, I’m not lovable.

This is a very controversial issue and I appreciate the dialogue. I am open to learning from the comments of my readers. I hope you are too.

Regards, Morty

Thanks for taking the time to express your views. I appreciate the dialogue.

First, I never said all people who receive corporal punishment go to jail or are violent. A tendency to voilence is one of the many consequences.

Second, I didn’t say that not speaking would result in higher self-esteem. I did say, based on my experience with over 13,000 clients, that spanking and yelling at children produces negative self-esteem beliefs.

That’s not a theory, it’s a report from thousands of people. Is that an absolute fact. No, new knowledge is always possible.

But when thousands of people with a host of problems, such as depression, eating disorders, anxiety, procrastination, etc. find the beliefs that cause those problems (when the beliefs are gone, the problems disappear too and don’t come back), they realize that the source of most of the beliefs are interactions with parents. And the interactions forming the most negative beliefs are spanking and yelling/criticism.

Thanks for taking the time to write.

Regards, Morty

Thanks for taking the time to write about your experience as a child and a mother.

It sure isn’t easy being a parent a lot of the time. Sounds like you are certainly trying hard to do the best for your daughter.

Punishment never works in the long run. Shelly intends to provide some useful tools shortly.

Regards, Morty

I raised three children, and I did not spank them, and the times I yelled out of my own frustration were as traumatic for me as for them. I found that sitting down and talking with them about the importance of the task I was asking them to do, and enlisting them in the family home upkeep worked best. And leaving them a note with tasks that they could check off worked well. I always asked myself, how would I want to be treated? How would I want this communicated to me? And then I also learned what motivated each of my three children and made agreements with them based on their currency. It teaches better life skills for living with the world at large, I believe. Lots of praise for what they do, whether it is perfect or not helps, and not redoing what they have done because it’s not perfect for you helps motivate them to keep doing their assigned jobs. Treating the family like a business where everyone has jobs to do is another technique. Having family meetings to discuss issues but mostly to praise accomplishments also helps. Consistency is most important, doing what you say you will do in every case is important to help children feel safe and understand boundaries.

A friend of mine in London has a charity that is doing wonderful work in this area. check out:

I will write more and Shelly will provide a lot more detail in her CDs than I can in a blog post.

But for the moment, I will ask one question: Why do children have to be disciplined? Because they won’t do that their parents want? Why don’t the children discipline the parents for not doing what they want? What’s the difference? What makes the parents the “boss”?

Why is children coming to the table when parents call them more important than playing? Who says?

We have a lot of assumptions about parenting, discipline, punishment, etc. that need to be re-examined.

By the way, not everyone who is spanked becomes aggressive. But they all form some negative beliefs that take their toll later life.

Thanks for the conversation.

Regards, Morty

I’m sure it will be a great complement to Gordon’s and, most likely, others’ parenting systems.

Look forward to it.

All the best and thanks for your work,
Dmitri

So I do wonder what is at the core of my depression.
My grandmother, other than flying off the handle switching was so remarkably sane otherwise. She did suffer migraines and I have as well. In those days little was available for that pain and I wonder if she was just not in her right mind when she dud this. For me, I learned to be very cautious. I never knew what would ignite her to go on the warpath.

I’m glad tho to see you talking about this and Dobsons work also upsets me. He misleads so many parents. I never hit or yelled at my children. It was terrifying for me.
Keep up the good work!!

There are a lot of mistakes parents can make in addition to punishment. Not being around a lot usually leads to the belief, I’m not important.

Notice you used the word “behave.” That means to do what someone else wants us to do.

THAT is what we need to start questioning. That implies ownership.

Regards, Morty

Thanks for joining the dialogue.

There are alternative to punishment. We have to make sure every parents knows the negative consequences of punishment and the alternatives.

Regards, Morty

I used to believe that spanking was the best way to discipline because of a religious dogma under which I was raised, but after learning the irrationality of that system of belief I have moved to other ways of relating to my children. Despite changing when they were young, the fallout of negative beliefs is already there.

I still have too many bad habits, but I have noticed that my children are 100 times better “behaved” when I am loving and don’t yell, scream or berate them, and when I spend time with them. I’ve also noticed many of the “problems” we’ve had resolve themselves naturally as kids get older.

It’s sometimes difficult to properly show love to your kids thanks to negative parenting beliefs. Morty and Shelley’s book on parenting was helpful in shedding light on those beliefs. I recommend it as a great resource in your parenting library. I would actually love to see a set of videos for eliminating the 4 negative parenting beliefs in that book.

I always try to ask myself whenever I deal with any of my 4 children, why do they have to obey me? Is it a matter of immediate safety, like running with scissors or not playing in the street? Or is it simply something that -I- want done right now? And if it is simply what -I- want, then why do they have to obey me? I don’t own them; they own themselves. And just as I don’t have the right to force another adult to comply, so it is with my children. Children need love and attention just like they need food and water and they will resort to “acting out” to get it. Hitting or humiliating them will only hurt them physically and emotionally.

Finally, whether studies showed spanking to be effective or useless is irrelevant. Hitting is not an acceptable form of persuasion in any other area of society, why is it somehow ok with kids? Dobson is quoted in the article as saying, “[P]ain is a marvelous purifier. . . It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.” Ok, pain “purifies.” So why don’t we spank disruptive employees until they cry? Why not beat up rude people until they cry? Why not hit people that take longer to learn things and make them cry? Again, regardless of the studies, violence is not an acceptable form of persuasion in the rest of life, why is it acceptable with weak, defenseless children?

Thanks for responding.

As I said in response to an earlier post, Shelly is created a CD course that will explain the importance of beliefs in raising children, describe the type of behavior that leads to negative beliefs, and suggest techniques that will lead to positive beliefs.

There are other courses available that can be useful, including Gordon’s.

Regards, Morty

I agree. That was one of the points I tried to make: that many people can see what;s wrong with physical punishment but don’t realize emotional abuse can have just as lasting negative effects.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Regards, Morty

My wife Shelly who has been a Lefkoe Method facilitator for years is in the process of creating a CD package that will provide a bunch of parenting tools that lead to positive rather than negative beliefs. That treat kids with dignity and respect.

It should be available in a few months and we will announce it to our entire list at that time.

Thanks for your response.

Regards, Morty

Mostly I was smacked for things I did which I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do. Presumably the message was ‘You don’t do that. Don’t do it again’. I became introverted and was then bullied in secondary school (11-16 in UK).

I have a nine year old daughter. When she was very little I found my instinct came out of nowhere to smack her when she was defiant. I did it once out of sheer exasperation, trying to get her dressed for nursery. She looked at me as if to say “What are you doing? You hit me! You are supposed to love me. You are my mum”. She didn’t get dressed. I felt awful. I never smacked her again.

I am afraid I do shout at her sometimes though. This is when I have asked her nicely several times and she still won’t do something, eg. brush her teeth to get ready to leave the house.
I don’t enjoy shouting. It’s a horrible energy. I always feel exhausted afterwards.

I have noticed that saying “It’s time to do ………….” is usually the best way for her to know that she needs to do it now. If I say “Please can you do………………..” she usually dithers for another half-hour and several reminders.

When my daughter has temper-tantrums she usually hits me and my husband. We never hit her back. We always say “No, we don’t hit people do we?”. I would like to have more tools for dealing with these situations!

I do EFT myself, but can never do this in the situation, as my daughter is too angry usually, and sometimes so am I.
Thank you!

As for myself and my siblings, we grew up in a very strict, disciplining home where unfortunately our father let the belt sing through the air. However, none of us have turned out aggressive.

I hope you write another post continuing on the subject, providing helpful tips on proper / appropriate discipline. I don’t believe it would be healthy to allow a child’s behavior to run rampant without some form of discipline / correction.

As you correctly pointed out in one of your videos, what parenting university did my parents go to? It is SO sad that this crucial life skill is being ignored by the conventional education system.

But there is help out there. To all those interested I’d strongly recommend to consider the Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) by Thomas Gordon. I’m using it myself and am truly amazed by the change in my two kids (6 and 10) and in myself.

Morty I feel more concerned when I see kids being shouted at angrily over trifles than I do by a slap, I don’t know why.

The physical pain and humiliation of corporal punishment is bad enough but being screamed at seems WAY worse somehow

Morty I feel more concerned when I see kids being shouted at angrily over trifles than I do by a slap, I don’t know why.

The physical pain and humiliation of corporal punishment is bad enough but being screamed at seems WAY

I really appreciate your blog on the adverse effects of spanking and/or yelling at children. However, I would be very happy if you could provide some insights or pointers to the right techniques that can help us get our children do what is good for them e.g. keeping good personal hygiene, maintaining a clean bed etc.

Many thanks and regards,
Lakshminarayanan