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"Welcome to 'Parent Like An Athlete,' your ultimate guide to parenting with audacity, tenacity, and finesse. Hosted by the dynamic duo, Otis Grigsby, a former NFL warrior turned attorney, and his British wife, Gemma Grigsby, a successful healthtech marketing agency owner. Our mission is to navigate the parenting field with the same relentless drive as an athlete striving to improve by one percent each day. This isn't about winning or losing; it's about mastering consistency, transforming routine into an art form, and making everyday parenting an exciting journey. Are you ready to redefine your parenting playbook? Tune in and join our vibrant community as we tackle today's parenting challenges head-on!"
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There is no way to actually observe disadvantages of spanking under normal conditions. If you can't observe disadvantages in a reliable way, how can you observe advantages or conclude that no advantages exist? Deciding not to spank is one of the worst parenting decisions you could ever make. Most make the decision not to spank by reading some expertâs summary of the research. Few bother with actually reading the research, which means they're unwittingly heading toward one unforced error after another.
00;00;25;14 - 00;00;48;16
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If something in the back of your mind is telling you that the idea that you can raise children without ever having to spank them might be a trap., keep watching. And if you're confident, as can be in your decision not to spank. Leave a comment about why you're so confident after you watch this entire video. Now, in this video, I will break down one of the most referenced research papers on the effects of spanking, explaining how the science was presented in a manipulative way to meet the authorâs
00;00;48;16 - 00;01;06;12
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end goal. How following the science could destroy your family. And I'll share tips on how to lovingly incorporate spanking into your discipline toolbox. And there's a bonus at the end that will show you how to nearly eliminate the need for spanking altogether. I promise most of you haven't heard of this technique. But leave a comment if you've had success using it in the past.
00;01;06;12 - 00;01;31;03
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I believe so much of the problems we see in our kids and young adults is because of New Age parenting advice that rarely holds up under pressure. We're seeing 52% of young adults aged 18 to 29 living at home with their parents, along with increases in mental health issues and self-harm. And I see these issues as the result of unforced parenting errors brought on by bad advice designed to sell something new for the profit of a few.
00;01;31;03 - 00;01;50;02
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If you don't disagree, watch this video to the end. Even if it's on 2x speed, subscribe to this channel like the video and drop a comment so more parents and potential parents can hear something useful. All right, Now let's talk about spanking. Have you ever wondered how it's possible that everywhere you look, people tell you it's unacceptable to spank your kids even though it's legal in every state?
00;01;50;03 - 00;02;14;18
Unknown
Well, there's an entire industry of well-meaning child advocacy professionals who decided that the way to end child abuse is to make it illegal to physically discipline your kid in every country around the world. Seriously. I'm sure you can think of so many poorly thought out government interventions that don't solve the public policy problems they seek to solve, but actually make life worse for everyone who's just trying to live their lives in peace by making it illegal to spank your kids.
00;02;14;18 - 00;02;34;01
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And by they I mean the United Nations and nonprofits like the Global Initiative to end all corporal punishment of children. And to date, the efforts of these organizations has resulted in 65 countries completely banning any physical punishment of children. It's pretty incredible. But what's more incredible is how they've done it with the help of some incredibly misleading information.
00;02;34;02 - 00;02;56;22
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Now, I don't have time to go over it all, but let's start with how they manipulate the definition of corporal punishment to their benefit. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, corporal punishment is defined as the intentional infliction of pain, with the intent of changing unacceptable behavior. It sounds pretty much like what you would expect, but the UN's definition says any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort.
00;02;56;23 - 00;03;22;27
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However light. And then they go on to say that this mostly involves hitting, smacking, slapping or spanking. For example, children with a hand or implement like a whip stick belt, shoe, wooden spoon or similar. But it can also involve kicking, shaking or throwing children scratching, pinching, biting, pulling hair or boxing ears, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions, burning, scalding or forced ingestion.
00;03;22;27 - 00;03;45;20
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Common sense tells you that some of these things are not like the other and lots of the actions listed to define corporal punishment are called child abuse in every American state. But the U.N. wants to call it all the same. To them, any physical punishment is child abuse full stop. No exceptions. And proponents of this line of thinking love to point out that there is no credible counter to their scientific findings.
00;03;45;20 - 00;04;14;10
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So let's look at one of the most cited peer review articles that support the UN's claims. It's called More Harm than Good, a summary of scientific research on the intended and unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children by Professor Elizabeth T GERSHOFF. Now, a quick summary of Professor GERSHOFFâs findings goes something like this. Parents who use physical punishment open the door to loads of unintended consequences, like a higher likelihood of committing child abuse, mental health problems in their kids, and eroded relationships with their kids.
00;04;14;11 - 00;04;33;11
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And all this is from a form of discipline that one, doesn't work better than any other form of discipline, and two is not predictive of any positive outcomes for children. It's pretty intense. So let's look at that science and we'll start with the unintended effects of corporal punishment. So Professor GERSHOFF cites a higher likelihood of abuse among parents who use corporal punishment.
00;04;33;13 - 00;05;00;26
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The problem with this conclusion is that it's based on interviews with parents who were found to have abused their kids. So basically, they asked a bunch of child abusers why they abuse their kids. And 66% of them claimed that, well, they intended to use Non-injurious corporal punishment, but things just got out of hand. It's a little ridiculous when you think about the fact that there were 74 million children in America in 2021 and 588,229 total victims of child abuse the same year.
00;05;00;27 - 00;05;20;06
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I'm not a statistician, but based on some basic math, less than 1% of the parents out there are child abusers. But these researchers decided to observe the worst of the worst parents they could find and conclude that these child abusers became abusers because they were actually just well-intentioned parents who just made a mistake. Why are these people taking the word of abusers?
00;05;20;06 - 00;05;40;28
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Would you take their word? I wouldn't. Here's what I think happened with these abusive parents. These people don't have control over their emotions and they used physical discipline out of anger. Using physical discipline of anger is not well intentioned at all and obviously will not end well. So why give them a pass by normalizing them because they say they were trying to do something the majority of parents in this country are able to do without committing abuse?
00;05;40;29 - 00;06;09;05
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Professor GERSHOFF goes on to say that greater frequency of using corporal punishment leads to a higher likelihood of abuse. All right. Obvious guy agrees with this finding. Of course, people who constantly leverage physical punishment are more likely to become abusers because they don't have control over themselves. No responsible user of physical discipline uses that tool frequently. In fact, Professor GERSHOFF herself acknowledged this in her 2002 paper titled Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences.
00;06;09;06 - 00;06;28;14
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A meta, analytic and theoretical review. In this paper, she states that it was not possible to observe the effects of corporal punishment in the home because parents typically use it infrequently to stop dangerous or egregious behavior. In an example, she notes, parents use corporal punishment on two year olds an average of 18 times per year, not enough to get useful data.
00;06;28;14 - 00;07;00;06
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So she resorted to the use of a study done in a lab filled with kids who had significant prior behavioral issues. And this 1980 study concluded that corporal punishment was no more effective than locking a kid in his room, basically suggesting that parents should resort to false imprisonment over spanking. Sounds like a genius idea. And in the same paper, Professor GERSHOFF acknowledges that it is not possible to find a causal relationship between corporal punishment and undesirable adult behaviors because the punishment could have been used in response to the preexisting behavior rather than being the cause of the behavior.
00;07;00;06 - 00;07;26;09
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And Professor GERSHOFF goes on to say that the reality is kids who have behavioral issues become adults, who have behavioral issues. That is the number one indicator for adults with behavior issues that they had those issues as kids. So interesting information there. Basically, she acknowledged that the retrospective studies featuring adults with behavioral issues may have been spanked as a result of their behavioral issues rather than the behavioral issues being caused by the spanking.
00;07;26;10 - 00;07;44;24
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But no one ever mentions these minor details in the viral reels and TikTok videos. Right? And speaking of a mental health problems, Professor GERSHOFFâs paper shows that the more frequently children are spanked, the more likely they are to develop mental health problems. Again, this seems pretty obvious, which is why responsible parents don't constantly spank their kids. Constant spanking is abusive.
00;07;44;24 - 00;08;12;18
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And of course, kids will develop mental health problems from abuse. But here's what Professor Gershoff's paper and others like it don't say. They don't say that infrequent spanking leads to mental health problems because there is no evidence to support it. Something that Professor GERSHOFF acknowledged in the 2002 paper I referenced earlier. Now, other unintended consequences of physical discipline include an eroded quality of relationship with parents, reduced cognitive ability and increased adult aggression and antisocial behavior.
00;08;12;19 - 00;08;38;26
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Just like the other unintended consequences, these issues become more likely with frequent instances of spanking and again, frequent physical punishment sounds like abuse. And these issues sound like the obvious outcome of abuse. And Professor GERSHOFF, unsurprisingly, offers zero evidence that infrequent use of physical punishment leads to these undesirable outcomes in children. But she does insert hyperbole and fear in the absence of evidence. When addressing her detractors
00;08;38;27 - 00;09;02;13
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professor GERSHOFF argued that her correlation based evidence is valid because, well, cigarette data is correlation based too. Basically, she says that frequent cigarette use leads to cancer and other health issues, but one cigarette won't. In theory, the best option is to never smoke any cigarette, and that's ridiculous to compare cigarettes to spanking. Smoking is an activity that involves inhaling actual poison as a way to relax.
00;09;02;13 - 00;09;22;11
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People want to smoke. 99% of parents don't want to spank their kids. There's nothing relaxing about spanking your kids. It's horrible. I've never done it before, but I've experienced it. It's not fun. There's nothing you can compare to physically disciplining your child, so why bother with unscientific comparisons unless you want to manipulate people? So how could all this manipulated scientific research work against your family?
00;09;22;11 - 00;09;48;19
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We're told that physical discipline is no better than other forms of discipline at getting immediate or long term behavioral results. Even though these researchers admit there is no way to actually observe disadvantages of spanking under normal conditions, if you can't observe disadvantages in a reliable way, how can you observe advantages or conclude that no advantages exist? Why would these people expect retrospective observations of people with behavioral problems to show measurable benefits of spanking?
00;09;48;20 - 00;10;05;13
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So where are the studies of high performing athletes in professionals or just a bunch of normal people? Why not just ask those people if they've ever been spanked? I'm guessing it's because it wouldn't yield their desired results, right? The majority of Americans still believe in physical punishment. But its use Meanwhile, mental health and behavioral problems are on the rise.
00;10;05;14 - 00;10;23;28
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Child suicide is on the rise. People are opting out of parenthood because the kids they see in public are intolerable. And the idea of raising free range kids that should never be physically punished sounds like a ticket to the loony bin. Parents are miserable because they signed up for a job and willingly took healthy fear off the table.
00;10;23;29 - 00;10;39;28
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They want to be BFFs with their kids, and parents are now suffering for it. Moms in particular are suffering, but they're the ones driving this trend. And I don't want to let dads off the hook either. They're to blame, too. They're not leading anymore. They offer no pushback on the assertion that the kids can never be physically punished.
00;10;39;29 - 00;10;58;12
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These guys think they can go to work, make money, and check out on the most difficult aspects of parenting. And if the kid turns into a nightmare, it's mom's fault because she's the primary caretaker. And if they decide to make changes late in the game, it leads to massive conflict. Did you know that the number two reason for divorce is disagreements over how to discipline kids?
00;10;58;12 - 00;11;18;17
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If the anti spanking approach to raising kids was effective, why are marriages dissolving in the wake of discipline disputes? The Bible says that parents who fail to physically discipline hate their kids. Those are strong words. But given the collapse of so many families because of discipline issues, it's hard to disagree with what the Bible is saying. So instead of becoming a statistic, here's what we're going to do with our kids.
00;11;18;18 - 00;11;42;18
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In case you're wondering. We're not spanking until they clearly show an understanding of what we're saying in a clear intent to disregard critical guidance after fully exhausting, authoritative and collaborative parenting techniques. So what does that mean? We need the offense to be of significant importance and not about our ego. They must understand what we're saying and repeatedly dismiss our attempts to correct their behavior through gentle, supportive and collaborative methods.
00;11;42;20 - 00;12;04;02
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So for us, some examples of significant importance Are behaviors related to safety, violent, violent aggression, and abusive or egregiously disrespectful actions towards others. Basically, I'm talking about behaviors that just cannot happen again. Before spanking, we will explain what's about to happen and why. we will never spank for behavior our children weren't previously warned about. And there will never be a time that we spank out of anger.
00;12;04;03 - 00;12;23;06
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So I've got three thoughts here on this point. One, my dad never spanked out of anger. There were several times I did really horrible things and my dad didn't spank me at all because he was just super upset. And he said as much when he did spank us, it was always very calm and under control. He reminded us that we knew the consequences of our actions and did what we wanted to do anyway.
00;12;23;06 - 00;12;36;11
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And so he had to do his job even though it hurt his heart to do it. And afterwards, he told us he loved us and he hugged us. Second thought, he learned all this from the Bible. People love to mischaracterize a book that they can't be bothered to read. Spare the rod, spoil The child is not in the Bible.
00;12;36;11 - 00;12;59;18
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In Proverbs 13:24, it says, Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them. It doesn't mean you should incessantly beat your kids. Like so many reading comprehension, challenged, people on both sides of the argument believe. In fact, the Bible is clear about the risk of doing just that. Ephesians 6:4 says Fathers do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them.
00;12;59;18 - 00;13;17;11
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Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. There's more great stuff to help parents in the Bible and it's been tested for centuries without fail. The Bible isn't wrong just because people misuse passages to support their evil actions. Third though. My wife's parents spanked her out of anger and they did plenty more, and it was just flat out abusive.
00;13;17;11 - 00;13;40;04
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She still deals with the emotional damage from the physical discipline that her parents dealt out, which means I have to deal with that emotional damage and it sucks sometimes. She was 100% against physical discipline and it honestly made sense why after hearing her story. But she changed her mind after hearing my dad's faith based approach. She understands the risks of essentially physically disciplining children wrong and the risk of opting out altogether.
00;13;40;04 - 00;14;03;24
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So we will use spanking sparingly with a goal of disrupting egregious actions and in a way that's careful to never break our children's spirit of curiosity and adventure. We look forward to our kids breaking stuff in pursuit of knowledge and creative expression, and we will never spank to shut down a tantrum. Here's why. Spanking a kid who's learning how to self-regulate his emotions is lazy and really dumb.
00;14;03;24 - 00;14;25;28
Unknown
You're definitely teaching him to stop his response to his negative emotions when you want, but you're not teaching him how to stop those emotions. Emotions are a gateway to the spiritual dimension and powerfully negative emotions open the door to spiritual attacks that impact your kid and eventually your family if you're not doing something about it. So why would anyone want to use a physical response to something spiritual in nature?
00;14;25;28 - 00;14;42;25
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There's tons of non-faith-based techniques out there that you can use and they're fine. But I have a faith based option that is superior and undefeated in my experience. So here goes. This is the bonus if you been waiting for it. Turn on some praise and worship music and turn it up loud when your kid starts to lose their mind over anything, Then sing along.
00;14;42;26 - 00;15;04;07
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Sing loud, or put on a praise and worship YouTube mix and sing along and sing it loud or start singing your favorite praise and worship song a cappella if you can hang. No lies were told when the Bible says there's power in the name of Jesus. Watch how that unrest in your child's mind just like melts away. It might freak you out a bit when you see it, but there's nothing to be afraid of and consider using this tip on yourself.
00;15;04;07 - 00;15;22;01
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We adults are not actually that great at emotional self-regulation. We're just better than toddlers at hiding our emotions. And the results are not pretty. So try the same thing when you feel like you're about to have a breakdown or explode with anger. Call on Jesus out loud and with praise and watch those emotions just fade away. Like share and subscribe
00;15;22;01 - 00;15;30;06
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If you want others to be helped as much as you were by this video, there's too much garbage out there getting share to not respond with something positive. Thanks so much for your time and have a blessed day.