Original Content: https://windhavenministry.org/ending-corporal-punishment-of-children-spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child/
So today I want to teach about the issues behind corporal punishment of children and what the biblical meaning of “the rod” really is. When we can gain a better understanding of what we are doing, it helps us to make better judgment calls when it comes to teaching our children.
The word discipline has multiple meanings. Definition one, according to Oxford Dictionaries, is “the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.” Definition two is “a branch of knowledge, typically studied in higher education.” Punishment for disobedience does not have to be corporal. Oxford’s definition of punishment is “the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense.” (This information can be found with a simple internet search, “define discipline” and “define punishment.”)
So how do we decide what is the best penalty for an offense? When dealing with children we need to understand a few things. One of the first things to develop in a child is their eyes to see. Their ability to understand words and speak their emotions comes later. So the first way a child learns is visual.
So this is a simple line of logic, which is also circular logic. Circular reasoning (Latin: circulus in probando, “circle in proving”; also known as circular logic) is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. So when we apply circular logic to teaching a child not to hit, this is how we do that.
If a child learns visually, and they see people hitting others, they learn how to hit. If we are teaching them not to hit, but we hit them through a spank on the bottom, they learn from the action we just applied how to hit. They do not understand that what we are saying is the opposite of what we are doing. The old adage, “do I say, not as I do” does not work here.
We teach better through our actions than our words. Contradictory actions to our words confuse the child about the lesson being taught.
So we live in a world where corporal punishment is legal and utilized regularly, even for children. This puts a lot of grey areas into the problem of abuse in our world. In the daycare I work in, we spend all day teaching these kids not to hit each other. We rarely get to a curriculum because our day is spent fielding the blows of one child to another. The simple logic here is, “where do we get the understanding that hitting a child in any way is the right approach to teaching a child not to hit?”
Many of us turn to our Bible for answers. One of the favorite verses we like to use is, “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Yes, the rod is a symbol of discipline, but we have to understand how the rod was used. The rod was the shepherd’s tool, that was used to gently guide sheep, not to hit them. It was a rod of correction, but of gentle correction. The rod and staff were meant to bring comfort, not pain. (BibleStudyTools.com)
So the rod was never meant to be used for inflicting pain or bruising. Georgia allows corporal punishment of children, and this is what the Georgia Department of Children and Family Services says about it: (Paraphrased) In Georgia inflicting temporary pain or even temporary bruising that doesn’t cause long-term physical damage to a child is okay.
There are already two holes in this logic. It is not very difficult to cross the line from discipline to abuse when hitting is involved. You will not know if there is any permanent damage from a blow to a child until 1) the bruise goes away, and 2) a doctor examines them to see if there is any underlying damage to the area that was hit.
I’m going to give a real-life example. My ex-husband used a paddle on my son, and that is perfectly legal to do here in Georgia. However, he used that paddle to “discipline” my son for wetting the bed, which was messed up in itself because it wasn’t even a behavioral issue but follow my logic here. And I did already try to fight this in a southern Houston County, GA court and was stonewalled by the legal system. But that is neither here nor there for the purpose of this example, and I’m still fighting that system to this day. It is what drives my entire ministry and the purpose of this article is to solicit awareness and understanding.
I took my son to our family chiropractor at the time and had him do his standard set of x-rays for chiropractic care. I discussed the bedwetting issues with him because my solution for this was to get a professional opinion in hopes it would stop my ex-husband from using the paddle in this way. The chiropractor showed me in the x-ray a small bone near the coccyx, or tailbone, that if shifted out of place can be a cause for bedwetting. It was out of place… and hitting a bone like this would cause it to be out of place.
If the bone fused into place later in life, it becomes more difficult to correct with chiropractic adjustments. This chiropractor had experienced this situation with several children in his practice, including an older teenage child who didn’t go to sleepovers because he or she still wet the bed. So I have to beg the question, “how many of our children’s bedwetting issues stem from spanking?”
Every time my ex-husband continued to spank or paddle with a board, it knocked this little bone out of alignment, making the problem continue to get worse. Even after I explained this to him, it didn’t change his disciplinary tactic… which was very skewed, and it came from a place of him growing up in church being taught the wrong version of, “spare the rod, spoil the child” and “my dad spanked me with a belt and I turned out fine.” This is how we so easily cross the line of discipline to abuse.
This is how easy it is to cause “permanent damage” to a child physically from spanking. So by Georgia’s own definition, this would now be considered abuse. This isn’t even the half of it, but that is not the purpose of this post. I’m not here to put my abuser on blast but to share what I’ve learned from my experiences with how simple it is to cross a line, and how our legal system continues to fail us in the protection from abuse. If I was putting anyone on blast, there would be names in this post. And that is not the case here.
Most of the people who know me and the people discussed in this post already know the situation and this story. Whether or not they understand it from this perspective is not my concern, and I hope that if they do read it now, they will gain an understanding and shift their own priorities from abuse to teaching. The child referred to in this post is almost an adult now, and I am super proud of his decisions and spiritual growth. These events occurred years ago.