Some Thoughts on Parenting, Part 1

An Approach to Spanking

A couple years ago, my oldest son told me I’d gotten soft and that I didn’t spank his younger siblings like I had with him. He wasn’t entirely wrong. We had definitely gotten softer.

We had come out of a church culture that taught you to spank early and often. I think that can lead to over-spanking. Looking back, a lot of our friends from that season fell into that same pattern. There was a real desire to be faithful, but sometimes faithfulness got reduced to frequency.

Over time, I started to realize we were risking something: not failing to shape our kids into disciplined followers of Christ, but breaking them in the process. There’s a difference.

I’ve come to believe you don’t want to break a strong will. You want to aim it. It takes a strong will to be faithful. If you crush that strength, you may get compliance, but not conviction.

So I told my son he was partially right. We had changed. But he was also partially wrong. The answer wasn’t simply more spanking. We were learning.

And honestly, I’ve had to wrestle with the fact that some of his struggles may reflect our failures. That’s hard to admit. Parents grow as their kids grow.

The goal was never just compliant kids. It was strong men and women whose wills are directed toward Christ.

Now, I do think we live in an incredibly soft time. Too soft. I’ve watched more than a few parents get bossed around and run ragged by openly disobedient children. Some of them genuinely believe they’re being biblically gentle in the name of “gentle parenting.” But gentle is not the absence of strength. Gentle is the right application of strength.

Spanking is one of God’s ordained tools for raising godly children. Scripture is clearer than our cultural mood. God is wiser than we are. You don’t get to edit His tools. But good tools can be misused. And when they are, the problem isn’t the tool, it’s the hand using it.

So here’s my best effort at explaining our approach. We’re aiming for what we believe is a measured, biblical use of spanking. Neither reactionary nor neglectful, but focused and restrained.

Before making any argument, the terms need to be honest.

I’ve had friends and associates reject any form of physical discipline outright. Many of them didn’t have children. Most of them came from homes marked by real abuse. I can’t help but think that history weighs heavily in their conclusions.

What I’m describing is not abuse. This is a case for measured, controlled, implement-based or open-hand discipline administered by parents. That is categorically different from striking in anger, hitting with a closed fist, or any form of physical violence. A controlled swat or slap to the bottom, repeated as needed, should produce a quick sting without leaving bruises or welts. That’s what I mean.

The distinction matters. Not just legally or culturally, but theologically. The same Scripture that commends the rod also places guardrails around its use. God does not authorize brutality in His name.

Quick Overview of the Biblical Basis

The most direct biblical teaching on this subject comes from Proverbs. It uses the Hebrew word shebet, meaning “rod” or “staff”.

Proverbs 13:24 “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”

Proverbs 22:15 “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”

Proverbs 23:13–14 says, “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die… you will save his soul from Sheol.”

Proverbs 29:15 says, “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.”

This teaching is repeated, concrete, and practical. It is wisdom literature speaking plainly about something that matters.

And shebet is not easily turned into a metaphor. It is used elsewhere in Scripture as a literal instrument of force. Proverbs 23 even adds the reassurance, “he will not die.” Metaphors do not need survival disclaimers. The text assumes a real, physical act.

The New Testament does not overturn this. It deepens it. Hebrews 12 quotes Proverbs and says, “The Lord disciplines the one he loves.” The word used there carries the idea of training, correction, chastening. Earthly fathers are presented as an analogy to God’s fatherly discipline. And that discipline, though momentarily painful, we’re told, yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. It is a mark of sonship, not cruelty.

Proverbs 22:15 says folly is “bound up in the heart” of a child. That is not merely a behavioral observation. It is an anthropological one. Children are not morally neutral.

J.C. Ryle, who has shaped a good deal of my thinking, wrote, “You must not think it a strange and unusual thing, that little hearts can be so full of sin… it is that fallen nature with which we come into the world.” He also warned us not to expect a child to be “a sheet of pure white paper.”

That’s simply Genesis 3 taken seriously. Our children do not enter the world as blank slates. Their hearts are already tilted toward self-will and foolishness. Corporal discipline, rightly understood, is a theological response to a theological problem.

This is why Proverbs 13:24 says withholding discipline is hatred, while diligent discipline is love. Our modern instincts tend to reverse that. But the text does not. And that framing matters. If discipline is defined as love, then anger-driven striking is ruled out by the very passage people quote to defend spanking. The rod in the hand of a father venting frustration is not the rod of Proverbs.

The stakes are also higher than mere behavior management. Proverbs 23:14 says the rod “saves his soul from Sheol.” The aim is not just a compliant child, but a believing one. Spanking is one tool among many in raising a child in the instruction of the Lord. And that elevated purpose acts as a guardrail. A parent who has the child’s soul in view will not be careless, reactive, or cruel. They will spank because they love their child and are concerned for their spiritual well-being.

The Frequency Arc of Spanking

There will be different reactions to what I’m about to say. I know that. Some of this is simply how we’ve tried to apply a biblical command in real life. There’s room for disagreement on the timing and the particulars.

Take the question of when to begin spanking. I’ve heard mothers say, “When they start fighting you on the changing table.” What they mean is a light swat. That’s all. If someone objects to that, fine. But I do think discipline has to begin once a child is mobile. The moment they can crawl or toddle, their capacity for danger multiplies. A child who can move can reach the stairs, the stove, the street. You cannot reason with a one-year-old about traffic. You can restrain them, and sometimes you must make disobedience sting.

My view is that the arc of corporal discipline across a child’s life should slope downward. The early years, the single digits, are where it is most frequent. That’s when folly is loud and obvious. That’s when defiance is quick and unfiltered. But if corporal discipline is doing what it is supposed to do, its use should taper off. By the time a child is in grade school, it ought to be increasingly rare.

Proverbs assumes that wisdom can take root. “The rod and reproof give wisdom” (Proverbs 29:15). The rod is not the goal. It serves something larger than itself. It is a means to an end. The end is a child who has internalized correction, who feels the weight of conscience before he feels the sting of consequence. When that happens, the physical reminder becomes unnecessary. That is the point.

If corporal discipline is constant in later childhood, something has gone wrong. Either the parents did not require obedience early on, or they have confused discipline with venting frustration. The rod is not a substitute for instruction, presence, affection, and steady example. Used rightly, it makes itself progressively obsolete. Used wrongly, harshly, or as the only tool in the toolbox, it becomes a sign of parental failure, not strength. And at that point, it can become counterproductive.

It Can’t Be a Mere Symbol

All that said, spanking cannot be a symbol. If it produces no real discomfort, it’s just a show. Kids know the difference. A ritual tap that doesn’t sting teaches them something, just not what you think. It teaches them to play along. It teaches them that consequences don’t really cost anything and that Mom and Dad are mostly acting.

Worse, it can train a child to sit still through the form of discipline while the heart remains unmoved. He learns how to take it without taking it to heart. He learns how to endure correction without being corrected.

If a parent isn’t willing to spank with enough firmness to make it genuinely corrective, then he shouldn’t pretend to spank at all. Half-measures don’t produce obedience; they produce little actors. And you don’t want a compliant performance. You want a softened will.

I will say this as well: unless you truly have no other option, spanking should be done in private. A child shouldn’t have to become a spectacle in front of siblings. There’s a basic level of dignity you want to preserve.

When we lived in that small apartment, Emily would take the boys into the bathroom. These days, I take them to their room. I tell them plainly, “You’re getting spanked for this reason.” Then I spank them. I tell them I love them, but they cannot do what they did. Afterward, if they’re softened, and they usually are, I hug them. We pray together. And that’s it. If they are defiant, it may require another round or two

When they’re very small, you use very simple words. As they grow, you can explain more. But I do think new parents often overexplain, talking past what a child can actually grasp. It is enough, especially when they are young, for them to know it was wrong and that children are to obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right (Eph 6:1). That foundation will carry more weight than a lot of words they’re too immature to understand.

Neither First Resort Nor Last

Spanking belongs in the middle of a deliberate parental toolkit, not at the edges.

There are two failure modes on either side. On one end is the parent who reaches for the rod at the first sign of trouble. There’s little wisdom or proportion. Every infraction is treated as if it carries the same weight. That flattens distinctions and usually produces either fear or resentment.

On the other side, and I think this is far more common, is the parent who holds spanking in reserve as a kind of final option, something deployed only after every other strategy has failed and the whole household is already at maximum frustration. That almost guarantees discipline will be administered in the wrong emotional state.

There are other tools to use.

One is rebuke, a clear verbal correction. Not screaming with vague language. You name the sin and call it what it is. This is not a deep explanation. It’s a straightforward statement that what they are doing is wrong and must stop. Sometimes that is enough, especially when you appeal to conscience. You help them see that it displeases God, harms others, or puts them in danger because of selfish desire. The aim here is not to create fear of punishment but to begin nurturing internal moral awareness.

You can also use warnings, but not the “I’ll count to three” approach. Counting teaches them they can disobey for three more seconds. I don’t like attaching a number to it. It’s better to say, “If this continues, this will happen.” That’s clear. There is an expectation with a defined consequence. God deals with us this way. He is long-suffering, but He is not unclear.

Loss of privileges is another form of discipline. It means removing something that is valued. In the church, we practice something similar when someone is suspended from the Lord’s Table. In the home, it might be screen time, a social event, or some special opportunity. A child needs to understand that he does not have a right to everything. Much of life consists of privileges given to those who have demonstrated the wisdom to use them well.

These are all options. They are tools that hang on your belt. Spanking is among them. When you mix them together wisely, you tend to get good results. Much of parenting is learning when to deploy which tool.

When children are young, as I’ve said, spanking and simple rebuke often carry the most weight. But as they grow older, you must shift toward more instruction-heavy correction. You sit down and explain, from Scripture and from reason, why what they are doing displeases God and harms both themselves and others.

It’s Not a Formula

Children who are never corrected don’t drift toward maturity. They drift toward themselves. Left alone, a child’s world narrows until everything bends around his wants, his moods, his impulses. Sometimes that grows into outright criminality. More often it hardens into something that looks respectable on the outside—a self-righteous man or woman who cannot receive correction because they were never taught that correction is a form of love.

When discipline is administered in love, using a range of tools, including spanking in its proper place, it ordinarily yields what Hebrews calls “the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” That is the promise held out to us. But it is not mechanical. Parenting is never automatic. There is no lever you pull that guarantees a result. God does not permit us to raise children without faith. I have known good parents who were diligent, prayerful, and steady, and yet their children grew into shameful adults. That grief is real.

We can become obsessed with finding the right formula. Get the tone right. Get the timing right. Apply the correct measure. But there is no magic recipe where you add spanking and remove the need to plead with God day and night for your child’s soul. The Lord will not allow us to parent without dependence on Him.

J.C. Ryle, in The Duties of Parents, says:

“Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, sympathy, a willingness to enter into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys—these are the cords by which a child may be led most easily—these are the clues you must follow if you would find the way to his heart.”

Ryle also warns against harshness. He says, “Do not govern your children by a spirit of anger. A hot-tempered parent is the worst of all. He frightens the child, and does him no good.”

The rod in Proverbs is always in the hand of a father whose eye is fixed on his son’s heart. The moment your focus shifts from the child’s soul to your own irritation, you are no longer practicing biblical discipline. You are venting. Scripture never commends that.

The case for measured corporal discipline rests on the plain instruction of Proverbs, on the analogy of our Father’s discipline in Hebrews 12, and on a framing vision of love aimed at wisdom and salvation. A parent who refuses ever to spank is not choosing neutrality. According to Proverbs, he is choosing to leave folly bound up in the heart of his child. That is not compassion. It is a different destination.

But the parent who spanks in anger, or without tenderness, or without regard for the child’s good, has erred in the opposite direction. The rod is meant to be held by a father or mother who loves deeply, thinks clearly, prays constantly, and disciplines with hope. The goal is not pain. The goal is life.

Parenting has its own growth arc. My oldest son was right when he told me we’d gone soft on some of his younger siblings during prayer time. That was me correcting, even overcorrecting for a stretch, after realizing we had spanked him too much when he was little.

You will grow as a parent. And at times, you’ll need to repent to your children. Do it early, when you’re first convicted. Younger kids, especially, are quick to love and quick to forgive. Don’t wait. Adjust as you go.

I’ll say this plainly: you will rarely meet a one-year-old who grows up and tells you that you were too firm in ordinary discipline. But I’ve met more than a few men and women in their forties and fifties who admit they wish their parents had required more of them: clearer boundaries, steadier correction, firmer love.

May God strengthen us for this work. It is no small task. We need wisdom, self-control, and the courage to apply what we believe in a measured way.