Shepherding a Child's Heart

The “How” of Spanking
How do you go about giving a spanking? There are many
problems to avoid. You must avoid responding in anger. You must
avoid treating your child without proper respect for his person and
dignity. You must temper unwavering firmness with kindness and
gentleness. Remember that discipline is a rescue mission. You must
keep the spanking focused on issues of the heart.
The following procedure can provide discipline that preserves the
child’s dignity:
1. Take your child to a private place where he can be spoken with
in privacy. Discipline must not rob a child of his dignity. You should
never discipline in front of the other children in the family; it is not a
spectator activity. The object is not to humiliate the child. You show
respect for him by giving him privacy.
2. Tell him specifically what he has done or failed to do. Physical
discipline must be attached to specific, easily demonstrated issues. As
your child’s conceptual understanding grows, you may sometimes
correct for more general, attitudinal issues, but not with pre-school
children. Your spankings must always be issue-oriented. The
spanking should always address a specific attitude or incident. Never
spank just for “general purposes” or because you’ve “had it.”
3. Secure an acknowledgment from the child of what he has done.
This will often take some time. Many times children will want to
avoid the spanking badly enough to lie about what they have done.
The conversation may go like this:
Father: “Daddy told you that you should pick up your toys,
didn’t he?”
Child: [child nodding] “Yes.”

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Father: “You didn’t obey me, did you?”
Child: [looking down] “No.”
Father: “You know what Daddy must do. He must spank
you … “
The child has acknowledged what he has done. This ensures that
he knows why he is being spanked.
4. Remind him that the function of the spanking is not venting
your frustration or because you are angry, but to restore him to the
place in which God has promised blessing. Express your concern that
he has removed himself from the place of proper submission to your
authority. The spanking must reflect your obedience to God’s
directives and concern for the child’s good. You have no right to hit
your child under any circumstance other than biblically sanctioned
discipline.
5. Tell the child how many swats he will receive. (This is an
important signal that you are in control of yourself.) The number of
swats will vary with different children. One of our sons had a leather
bottom. He was not easily impressed. We had another son who was
so compliant that he obeyed as soon as he saw the paddle. He required
less.
6. Remove his drawers so that the spanking is not lost in the
padding of his pants. This should be done at the last possible moment.
They should be returned as soon as you are done. It is best to lay the
child across your lap rather than over a bed or a chair. This puts the
spanking in the context of your physical relationship. He is not being
removed from you to a neutral object for the purpose of being
disciplined.
As children get older and more self-conscious you must be careful
not to shame or embarrass them. Here is a good rule of thumb. If you
child is young enough that you care for his hygiene, it will not

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embarrass him if you see his bottom during a spanking. You see his
bottom every day in the course of ordinary business. If he is old
enough that he is in charge of his own hygiene (he bathes himself,
changes his own underclothes and so forth) then leave his underpants
on. You don’t want to embarrass your child or make them feel the
shame of nakedness. You just want to be sure there are no comic
books stuffed into the pants that would keep you from being effective.
7. After you have spanked, take the child up on your lap and hug
him, telling him how much you love him, how much it grieves you to
spank him, and how you hope that it will not be necessary again. This
keeps the spanking referenced to restoration, not retribution.
At this point there should be complete restoration between you
and your child. If he will not be restored to you, if he is mad at you, if
he refuses to receive your affection, then something is wrong. In such
cases, check two things.
Check your own spirit. Have you handled him roughly? Have you
been out of control? Have you sinned against him in the way you have
disciplined? If you have brought unholy anger on this holy mission,
you must confess your sin and seek forgiveness and restoration.
Check his spirit. Is his anger a reflection of rejection of your
discipline? Is he mad at you? Is he trying to punish you for what you
have done? If so, the discipline session is not over.
We have always been guided by Hebrews 12:11: “No discipline
seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces
a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained
by it.” If discipline has not yielded a harvest of peace and
righteousness, it is not finished. On some occasions I have had to say
to our children: “Dear, Daddy has spanked you, but you are not sweet
enough yet. We are going to have to go back upstairs for another
spanking.”
Clearly, I am not going to repeat the entire spanking over and over
if the child is not willing to be restored. But if the discipline session

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has not yielded the harvest of peace, I must signal to the child that
something is radically wrong. I might say something like this: “I
love you, son, I have disciplined you as much as is appropriate at this
time. My desire is to see you submit to Daddy. My goal is total
restoration of our relationship and closeness. I am going to pray for
us. I am going to pray that I will be a dad who is wise and kind. I will
pray that you will submit to God’s order for family life and will honor
and obey Mom and Dad.
This restoration process is paramount. If the issue has not been
your personal anger, but the child’s moving out of the circle of safety,
then you don’t want your child to be in the dog-house. Nor do you
want to be in the doghouse.
When the discipline is over, it is over. There is no carryover. The
slate is clean. It is time to start fresh. The restoration process ensures
that you can do that.
8. Pray with him. Encourage him with the fact that Christ is given
because we are people who sin. There is forgiveness in Christ. Christ
can be known. Christ can remove his heart of stone and give a heart of
flesh. Christ can work by his Spirit to compel him to obey God. Christ
can empower and enable him to obey in the future.
You need to shepherd your children in the ways of God at all
times. There is, however, no more powerful time to press the claims
of the gospel than when your children are being confronted with their
need of Christ’s grace and power during discipline. When the wax is
soft during discipline, the time is right to impress the glories of
Christ’s redemption.
In terms of training methods, you are using both the processes
God has given: the rod and communication. Because you are dealing
with young children, there is a heavy emphasis on the undeniably
tactile experience of spanking. Your words have weight with a young
child if they are underscored with a spanking.
Recall Chapter 7, “Discarding Unbiblical Methods.” You will

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either correct and discipline using the means of the rod and
communication, or you will inevitably fall back on one of the
methods we rejected in Chapter 7. Some parents succumb to bribing,
making contracts, using behavior modification, making heavy
emotional appeals, grounding their children, etc. There are no parents
that do not train. All parents train in some way. The problem is that
much of it is poor training.