Do you want to know why someone who is an adamant supporter of spanking is now completely against it What would make someone decide to forego everything they were raised with to do the complete opposite Well, that's what we're going to talk about on this episode of this parenting life Hi, I'm Mary and this indulgent life I help you navigate parenting education and living your extraordinary life So this week for our first episode of this parenting life We are going to look at the 7 reasons why I decided to become a gentle parent Have you decided to be a more gentle and respectful parent? Let me know why in the comments below and if you're still on the fence What are you worried about that's holding you back? So this week on this parenting life we're talking about my journey to gentle parenting the 7 reasons I decided that this would be the parenting method that I Move forward with despite everything I used to believe I Used to believe that kids needed spanking they needed timeouts and I am Pretty much a Yeller That's what I grew up with It's I guess what I'm used to and I'm working on it, but I've realized that What I thought gentle parenting was aka permissive parenting
It's not Gentle parenting does not equal permissive parenting And so I had to let that worry go first off Then I had to start looking at Why was spanking yelling timeouts? Why did those things? Not work, or did they work? It's started I think as a teacher I am an art teacher and I a few years ago I started looking into teaching for artistic behavior We're really trust children the whole premise is that children are the artist and the art room is their studio and if there's a lot of trust that goes on there because Kids design their own artwork they get their own materials They clean up their own materials There's a lot of trust that goes into that that's not something most teachers Allow to happen So as I was learning and teaching I Started seeing kids in a different light and I started trusting them more and I started realizing You know what? Kids have their own ideas They have their own feelings they're not just vessels to input everything into They don't need us telling them what to do all the time in order to make the right decisions or good decisions There's more to them than that
I Also started looking at our culture and if you realize our culture Does not think well of children, I mean just look at our language don't act like a child Stop being so childish You can just see in the way that we talk we don't think very much of children When I realized that needed to change so the deciding moment came when booky was 10 months old and He kept we had this fan sitting on the small platform Totally within reach of his little fingers Childproofing isn't really something we did or could do where we lived so he just kept going for the fan He wanted to stick his fingers and the grades of the fan I don't know why But this was his thing And my husband got a little annoyed with that I did too But he thought we needed to stop it now and he asked me to slap his hands and I realized at that moment Something did not feel right my instincts kind of went into overdrive and I was just like why am I slapping his hands and Until that point I had completely trusted my instincts with parenting Whatever felt right is what we ended up doing and it had gotten us pretty good so far So we decided to really look into this feeling I had Realized through some Facebook mom groups that you know, I'm addicted to that What I did was a little bit more towards the attachment parenting style So I started researching that which led me to gentle and respectful parents and then that kind of opened my eyes into this world in Realizing I mean I even researched What our different parenting styles I went that far? I wanted to know what the different parenting styles were with the differences where the pros and the cons and I I'm a respecter holic, so I researched all and in the end I decided that I was wrong I could see all the science behind the Authoritarian style of parenting and I realized I did not want that for my child So quick disclaimer I do not blame my parents for everything wrong in my life I know that's a big one that people say Millennials and my generation does I don't Our parents did what they thought they needed to do our parents Tried the best that they could with what they had
I know my mom in her Just wanted to make sure I didn't turn out like her I'm fairly certain There's a big like wave It's like a roller coaster each generation We kind of go back and forth trying to not do what our parents did But in the end I think my mom turned out pretty great I think that Her fears were part of what pushed her and She got some advice that she thought she should go with But as we all know know better do better they didn't have the research that we have now So they couldn't have done anything different They just did what they could and my kids
I'm sure will do the same So there's no mom judging here No mom shaming Everyone is on their own journey Everyone is at different stages in their journey I just hope that this helps you kind of look at your parenting style a little bit and make sure that you understand why You have chosen what you have chosen? So my seven reasons Why I decided to begin, which other parent reason number one Punitive punishments don't work studies over the last several decades have showed us But they don't work if they do work It's only in the immediate Part that they work long-term Instead shows us so many other things for one hitting baguettes hitting When you hit your child your child will then go hit others it's just they are little sponges and they soak up everything that you do and they see you punishing them when you're upset and you feel they wronged you and So when somebody else wrongs them? That's how they solve their problem Emily Rothman of the Boston University she's an associate professor She says that's and I'm going to read it here So give me a second the experience of having someone direct aggression to you Increases the likelihood that you'll fall back on aggression would in a fight-or-flight Moment Having been hit by a parent can elevate stress and reduces a child's coping skills So they may lash out I Would say they would do lash out most the time in fact whenever as a teacher I've seen kids hit other kids and I bring them over and I talked to them every Single time Or at least 98% of the time That child Child a hit child B Because he felt child B had wronged him in some way and so he felt he needed to hit him when you don't teach your child how to handle these situations without hitting Then that's what they're gonna revert to When you spank a child for what they've done wrong? They're going to feel the need to hit other child when they do wrong It's just the way things work, it's just that's what they have associated That's the step by step process that they have come to the conclusion of punitive punishments also create a cycle of misbehavior Catherine Taylor says the odds of a child being more aggressive at age five Increased by 50% Let me say that again the odds of a child being more aggressive at age five increased 50% if he had been spanked more than twice in the month prior to the study began 50% so if just two speakings in a month increases aggression, imagine what? Spankings every day or even once a week would do So most children don't behave better just because there's pain in fact studies have shown that The more you spank the more child miss a child will misbehave Children will learn to lie better
They will learn to hide things better And if it does work, they just kind of learn to give up because it just starts feeling like They are bad and they can't do anything right? They'll never get it right every time they try They just get spanked because the child doesn't have impulse control yet They don't have that ability to regulate and to stop themselves from squirreling off And so even though they've tried and tried and tried to try to try and hosen and they fail then they get spanked To them It doesn't matter that they've tried a hundred times already They make mistake once What's you know? Do I cry anymore? So as you can see, even though spanking does work It just creates a fear of doing wrong It creates anxiety I Mean you get afraid of annoying people You are afraid of yourself even and that brings us to point number two reason number two Spanking is actually detrimental to your child's health mental health and their physical health There have been numerous studies over the last several decades that show the damaging effects on the brain as well as the toll it takes on the body There are several studies and if you read the blog you can see several links to these studies or articles on these studies That show the effects on mental health you have depression anxiety Antisocial tendencies, especially in little boys suicidal thoughts if not actions Personality disorders self-injury and even substance abuse Some of these will start early most of these take 5 10 15 years to really show the effects Studies have shown that physical punishment may actually decrease the gray matter in your brain and that gray matter is actually really important to your overall Working system It is in charge of the nervous system
It is in charge of sensory perception It controls your memories and so much more there was also another study that says that spankings Correlated with an increased risk of obesity arthritis and even heart disease So Not only did I just read this Ok, I mean, but I feel like my husband and I actually have experienced this For me personally Obviously, we actually we both have the obesity issue But I would say that's not completely just for spankings I mean, don't get me wrong There's a whole series of reasons there I do have arthritis And then my memories I do have long term memory, but my short term memory is very very Short I don't have one Okay, my short term memories Suck for like a better word I I've always felt since I was a child That I had the memories of an eight year old woman in the body of an 80 year old woman
I Experienced tons of physical issues I have sensory issues I mean smells touches taste I Can't stand some things to the point where it actually affects my ability to do things So I do have nervous system issues I do have endocrine issues so I would say that it's quite a possibility that The spankings had something to do with all of these issues I wouldn't say all of them, but it's a possibility My husband herself He has gut issues he has aggression issues we both have anxiety issues I Would say probably we've also both had a suicidal issue our thoughts faith is the only thing that's gotten me through those We've probably both have gone through depression so Yeah nurse I'm not gonna get into the particulars here again You can read more on the blog But we have a lot of things that kind of correlate with these studies and you start to wonder If even a small percentage of this is true if even just a fraction of the issues that we have can be Attributed to our spankings and physical punishments as a kid Why am I going to risk my son having any of these? Why would I if there's another way why won't I take that way? So yeah number two is a big one for us It really could affect your child's health Reason number three Punitive punishments do not teach a child to self-regulate their emotions Research shows that time and time again children who are raised in spank control households Do not have the tools to regulate their emotions They routinely rely on aggression or repression to not only deal with their own emotions, but the emotions of others we cannot expect our children to Control their temper if we cannot control our own So in how this relates to us personally for me I bottle up my emotions and then I explode in my household negative emotions were not to be displayed and If they were you could expect to be either punished or ignored So I really don't know how to deal with my emotions very well
This is a whole learning journey that I'm sharing with you For Hubby emotions were dealt with by making jokes We're kind of just shoving it under the rug I Mean I get it jokes break the tension it's easier to deal with emotions when all of a sudden you're laughing about it instead And negative emotions aren't comfortable things to deal with I'm not sure which direction was better, but it definitely has attributed to our own issues as adults Not being able to process our own emotions and deal with the emotions of others Is definitely one of the top three reasons why we have decided to try gentle parenting You see hubby has anxiety and OCD has Possibly even a DD as well as his father and his siblings by his father as well So there's a genetic component there that I have to be aware of with my son And then of course there's me As I've gotten older I become more and more and more afraid of messing up to the point where I don't even start things I Have anxiety in most situations My hubby has had to actually push me to get out of the house sometimes Because he can be hard for me in social situations People think of me as a social butterfly because once I you know get started, I'm usually okay But be honest, I'm scared out of my mind most the time
I'm afraid of being rejected I struggle to maintain my composure when I feel overwhelmed most days Basically, we can barely name more than the handful of emotions Never mind know how to deal with them I Don't want that kind of life for boogie if he is gonna have a genetic predisposition to anxiety depression and Feeling of being overwhelmed anxiety then I want to make sure to give him the tools that he needs to deal with those issues in a Productive and not destructive way Reason number four why I've decided to gentle parent punitive punishments make it more difficult to learn In a quote by Molly s Costello PhD, she says I'm going to read her mere spanking of Rhodes developmental growth in children and decrease as a child's IQ a Recent Canadian study shows this analysis conducted at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa offers new evidence that corporal punishment causes cognitive impairment and long-term developmental difficulties difficulties, sorry I Think that sign is it up right there I don't know I need to go on but basically there's actually been studies that have showed a correlation with a decrease of IQ and development through spanking When you use shame hitting spanking and yelling, you actually ignite the flight-or-fight response In your child and it shuts down the analytical side of the brain here are a few problems that I've also listed in the blog along with some others with corporal punishment and Its effects on learning and development One study showed that just a light slap of the hand of a toddler delayed exploratory development children explore the world through their hands They have to to touch everything It's kind of like a puppy with their mouths and puppies put things on their mouths children in need They do the mouth, too But they need to touch it
They want to know what things feel like how it moves and how it fits in their hand and When you slap their hands you're training them to not explore At that age children can't really distinguish between good object and bad object They just know that sometimes they touch something in their hand gets that so for them They learn to not touch anything and that's going to delay the development of your child There have been multiple studies that have shown that the use of corporal punishment by the time a child is in kindergarten Can actually affect their education Vocabulary math and so on by the time the child is in fifth grade I Want to think about that Your child's future education can be determined by if you use corporal punishment When they are preschoolers Spankings lead to resentment of authority figures Think about it Something happened to school the teacher tells you you spanked the child Now Did that child? Feel like he had done something wrong Possibly not he may or she may feel That that was unwarranted and that it's unfair and they resent you for that and then they resent their teacher for that And when they don't trust their teacher They're not going to want to listen to what they have to say Same with you When you just continuously lecture yells Bank and other forms of hitting them They're gonna stop listening to you I know I did And finally studies have found that students who have grown up in punitive environments Actually do worse in their executive functioning skills including delayed gratification Which is often one of the reasons why parents spank because a child couldn't wait So essentially you are creating more of a problem if you spank your child for not being able to wait time to think about Reason number five why I've decided to be a gentle parent and stop spanking I Learned through extensive research that spankings are actually not biblical Let me say that again spankings are not biblical I Know I'm gonna get a lot of flack from my fellow Christian community But you know, what do some research? yes, the Bible is infallible, but Translations are not Go back to the original Translations
Okay So here's some reasons on why I think that the Spanking is not biblical and if you go to the blog, I've actually posted a ton of links That you can read more about this including some free ebooks So let me start off first by saying that host bear the rod spoil the child quote that everybody likes loves to quote It's not even in the Bible in fact It's from a fairly lewd poem in the 17th century Called hubris I think that's how you pronounce it by Samuel Butler so let's stop using that phrase because it's not even a biblical phrase and it's actually Really gross when you start using it in reference to children Just putting that out there do your research on it? so this topic is Quiet and in deep and deep that anymore This topic is quite in-depth So I'm only gonna cover just like the surface level here in this video Again go to the blog look at those links, you'll find way more information that I can cover in this short little clip So start with proverbs first of all proverbs is filled with Poetry and metaphors So if you kind of take that and content Automatically maybe that's not what they're talking about
But let's say it's it's straight fact Okay, let's say that Yes parents did gain their children few things that go with that First of all in the original Hebrew Okay, not a translation Then there general Hebrew the word that they used that we now translate as child Actually meant a boy between like 12 and 20 I don't know how to pronounce the word so I'm not going to but it's na apostrophe AR And Basically that word is used when they're talking about a child Who is no longer gonna be a child? It's somebody that can be ripped away from their mother Okay, that's why it's used in reference to Moses because he was ripped away from his mother but that's one of the only two times in the Bible it's used for someone that's not of That bull way 12 to 20 age group, okay second of all um This kind of discipline was used to prevent actual death Because back then You could actually be stoned for defying your father's so it's either Hit him with a cane now That won't break his back or he dies by stoning later
I Would say in that kind of situation you might want to go ahead and spank but we're no longer in that situation anymore so that's null and void a Second Jewish leaders actually speak out against corporal punishment The Jewish people who follow the rules of the Bible write the laws of the Old Testament They don't even believe in spanking So again, it was there to prevent a fate right that would be better than death Secondly, we have the New Testament and in the New Testament Jesus came to save us from our sin and the Old Testament law Was no more Otherwise we wouldn't be able to eat pork we would have to circumcise we There's so many things we would still have to do including sacrificing animals but again Jesus came and saved us from all of those things Next jesus said he that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her john, 8 7 So if Jesus has told people when the law has said they can do this by the way To cast the first stone only if you've done no wrong I'm guessing we should probably do the same as parents Jesus is that gentle parent right like Jesus can do it So can we He specifically has said only those who have not sinned may cast the first stone So if you've never lied, you've never cheated you've never yelled screamed hit Then I guess you've been spanked but my guess is you've done all those things Jesus his story was filled with grace So if we were to be more like Jesus and we should be showing the grace to our children that Jesus shows us if God doesn't punish us for all of our transgressions and offenses and he died on the cross to save us from all that and gives us grace and We just suffered natural consequences Then I'm fairly certain our children should also just suffer Maybe logical consequences, but mostly just natural consequences something to think about I want to end this reason with a wonderful quote I found It says we do not yell spanked or threatened because the end result of those things is fear in a wise man kku, Jesus Once said that perfect love drives out fear Okay, now we're at reason number six spanking hitting and shame Tells children they are not in control Now, I know you're saying they're thinking well, they're not married They are children How could you let the children be in control? Well, first of all, sometimes you should let children be in control Otherwise, how are they going to be adults in control? But that's not really what I'm talking about as an adult
You need to be ultimately in control the situation To keep everyone safe The problem is you're dealing with a human being that has their own pains Thrown desires their own mote emotions and their own needs when we punish them for Expressing all of those to us then we're actually teaching them not to trust themselves Why is this important Spanking sell your child they are not in control of their body It's training them that those bigger control those who are smaller that those who are stronger Control who those who are weaker? Shame based discipline actually trained a child not to trust their instincts Whether it's and about food their own skills or around other people They will continually question themselves and probably the most Important one for me in this is that spankings can lead to abusive relationships? It's really personal to me but children learn two things was baking even if they don't realize it One hitting equals power they see that whoever hits has the control And the fastest way to get what you want is to hit – they learn that you were spanked because the person that loves you once was best for you Now think about that you've probably if you see if you have spanked or were spanked as a child You've probably heard that phrase I spanked you because I love you Great so when they're an adult or even a teenager and they get into a relationship with an abusive person And that person then hits them and says I'm hitting you so you've learned not to do this because I love you And what was best for you then? That's okay, right? Think about that for a second problem is that does become a child's mentality as an adult it's What happened to me? Okay, and so many of other other abusive people, you know, you sit there and you look and Which I guess you follow a victim And you're like, why did you stay? Why would you stay with somebody like that? Well, this is kind of what goes through their head They don't want to hurt me But I'm doing something wrong and I need to learn to not do that And so they punished me for that so because they love me They're trying to help me be a better person I deserve it Because I've done something wrong I Know it sounds really stupid right now but That's essentially what you're telling a child when you spank them to teach them a lesson So it brings me to my final point number seven if it is not acceptable for One adult to hit another adult why is it acceptable for an adult to hit a child? This quote kind of clinched my decision to become a gentle parent for me When a child hits a child We call it aggression when a child hits an adult We call it hostility when an adult hits an adult we call it assault When an adult hits a child we call it discipline It's a quote by I'm probably gonna pronounce this wrong, but Hames, you know Like I said this These last two points are quite personal in my first marriage
I did experience this I always thought of spanking as a necessary thing you must do But then when I realized that we we can't even hit a dog Without getting in trouble, but we can hit a child What is right with that if if we Think it's so wrong In this day and age to hit our spouse Why can we why can we hit a defenseless child? Elysa spouse is an adult who has Ultimately some control over their lives they can at least leave Our tribal camp a child has no control over their situation So why is that? Okay It's not it's not okay If you can't get another adult if a child can't hit you then you can't hit your child It's just simple as that if hitting is wrong, then hitting is wrong you you can't You can't have that kind of dichotomy it doesn't actually work it doesn't actually exist You either have to say that sometimes hitting is you have to either say hitting is right to teach a lesson or hitting is wrong We should only be should be teaching our kids that the only time to hit somebody is in self-defense to get out of a bad situation And somebody is hitting us Then it's okay to hit back because you're trying to get away It's to get away It's your self-defense that I think is okay, but you're not actively trying to punish somebody at that point You're just trying to get away So why is it okay if we hit our child? Some people will say well you don't leave marks on a child My ex didn't leave marks on me I don't bruise easy I Couldn't even take photos of things because what he did to me couldn't see so is that ok then is my Abusive ex-husband in the clear because he didn't leave marks on me just like you don't leave marks on your child Did that sounds stupid to you it is it's stupid
It doesn't work They're both wrong So In conclusion, I just want you to think about These things because I know I had not It took me kind of just kind of second-guessing My trained response because that's what it is Me going to hit my child to keep him from doing something that would cause him Danger, so me causing him pain to keep him from pain, basically Was a trained response? So I want you to think about Why? You have decided to do what you have decided to do whatever that is with a gentle parent or mainstream parenting So there you have 7 reasons we decided to become more gentle and respectful parents, I Hope this episode not only answered some questions You might have had But I hope it also has helped you kind of reflect on your parenting styles It made you just Either more firmly believe what you do believe or made you question something that may need changed in your parenting Please comment below with why you parent the way you do or what's holding you back from choosing the gentle parenting path? If you want to be inspired if you want to be more mindful parent if you want to know what takes To take that next step into creating your extraordinary life Then make sure to hit that subscribe button below and then don't forget to hit the like Button to show me you want more videos like this? You get weekly tips and inspiration on how to create your ideal life Thank you so much for watching and see you soon for the next episode of this parenting life
