A Word Of Caution On The Issue Physical Discipline

It is one thing to know what God’s Word says about the differences between physical abuse and discipline – that is knowledge. But wisdom is knowing what to do with that knowledge. As parents we have the God given right to use physical discipline with our children in a loving and controlled manner. But we must also be cognizant of the evil world we live in where any type of physical discipline – even toward children is frowned upon. Not only that – we have social service organizations that are just waiting to come in and take children if there is any hint of what they regard as child abuse even if that definition does not match the Scriptural definition.

So in the case of using physical discipline with children I believe we as parents need to follow Christ’s admonition to be “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16) and exercise this right with some caution. That means it is probably not best to be spanking our children in the middle of a store in front of 30 people. It may mean if a child is acting unruly that we pick them up, leave our grocery cart, and take them to our car and take them home and then give them the physical discipline that is due.

I am a firm believer that small children need to be spanked. At very young ages they really don’t understand other forms of non-physical discipline. Obviously as parents we need to do this in love and with measure. That would mean you don’t spank a one year old on the bottom with the same force that you do a four year old. But as children get older there are other non-physical forms discipline we can use in taking away things like video games, TV time, computer time, tablets and phones and grounding them from friends.