Spanking may lower kids' IQs

reply to post by ownbestenemy


All the discussion about a child being allowed to touch a flame or prevented from touching to learn the lesson makes me think of a old saying along the lines of " life cannot be explained, it must be experienced".

I don't think this has a direct link to spanking itself. As usual, they are missing some main points that are the problem.

Parents resort to spanking and yelling when they lose control. Most who lose control are usually not paying attention to the children in the first place. Or are too lazy to implement a full scale discipline measure. For instance, instead of teaching a child patiently to stay in bed by repeating putting them in their bed, they just resort to corpreal punishment instantly.

So most likely the parents who do take time to raise their children, even with long but more successful but less physical disciplinary measures, are more likely to spend time with their kids academically.

That, and the children have a closer bond with their families, families eat togetther, etc. There is a direct correlation between a child's confidence and how well they do in school to the relationship with their parents.

So if I hadn't had my butt whooped for all the mischief I was involved in, I would have an IQ of almost 180? I'm pissed!!!

Granted that IQ would be of little use to me in prison, but hey, at least I might have been head of the escape committee.

Smack, 2.8, smack, 5. Huh? I like pie.

and pohtaytoes.

I don't get how a smack on the @$$ will scramble their brains. But then again, i'm not a government funded scientist.

My kids don't get spanked very often but when they do its because I have attempted SEVERAL times to get thier attention in other ways. I don't think a pop on the butt is wrong. I think beating a child is very wrong and I think too many people confuse the two. I was spanked and was in gifted classes and my children(3 of em) get spankings and are all in gifted classes.
I don't think this study has any truth to it, like others have posted what are the backgrounds on these children, are they living with both parents, one parent, grandparents? do both parents work? Are they in daycare all day? Do the parents leave them with babysitters all the time? Are babysitters reliable( I just saw a video of babysitters doing satanic rituals with the children they watch)? There are too many fasctors in a childs life to determine that just spankings have lowered their IQ.

I don't get how a smack on the @$$ will scramble their brains. But then again, i'm not a government funded scientist.

well said!

i was one of the "troublemakers" when i was a kid. i was also one of those who took my "discipline" in stride, and laughed it off. My pops is a highly intelligent man, though his parenting skills are somewhat questionable. My "discipline" escalated in intensity as my actions escalated in intensity. At some points, i was subjected to what would be considered child abuse by the "authorities" on the subject.

My younger brother was raised in the exact opposite way, i think he only received physical "discipline" once in his life. He was told right from wrong, and imo, generally coddled throughout life.

i have a tested iq of 162, and my brother is dumb as a doorknob. i grew up to be a well rounded, albeit very defiant and anti authority, individual, whereas my brother is as naive as a 5 year old. He has no real understanding of the way the world is, and has this superiority complex that makes the elite look like balanced people.


i know the proponents of this study will likely say something along the lines of my situation being the exception to the rule, but i still say that physical punishment, or the lack thereof has no affect on a childs intelligence. im inclined to believe that a childs personality and character may be affected by it, but not iq.

love and peace

Hm. I read to about page five then things seemed to go off topic.

My two: Obviously there is nothing short of a head injury from child abuse which would tend to lower one's IQ, through some type organic damage to the brain.

However, spankings and verbal admonishments which are insulting to a child can certainly lead to lower self esteem and perhaps depression and elevated stress, resulting in a child losing initiative to pursue his studies, thereby perhaps, and I mean Perhaps, lowering the IQ.

I can certainly attest to this, having seen many sad little abused children who are so obsessed with their own safety, they have little time for academic pursuits.

However, once the child is in a safe environment and becomes happy, studies resume, and no real long term damage has been done, although there might be areas where he is "behind". The study here tends to indicate the IQ is lowered, which could be a permanent and irreversible side effect, and I'm not sure I agree with that.

I think it could be reversed under proper circumstances, provided, as I said, there is no organic damage.

Okay, this explains a lot. It explains a whole lot.

Like why Republican Conservatives are the way they are .

reply to post by TarzanBeta


You're right, I had actually given serious thought to training my children like the military did me when I started having children, however, it's kind of hard to tell a kid of two or one, do push ups and sit ups cause you hit your sister or to wash the floors with a tooth brush...However it did become more helpful in their preteens and teens lol.

Originally posted by amazed
Awesome, thanks for posting this. :-) I don't spank, and my children are very intelligent (top scores in the state) and they are also very well behaved.

In reading this thread, I've noticed posters equating "discipline" with "spanking", seems they do not understand that discipline does not equate spanking. That discipline can take many forms which work far better than becoming violent towards your child. And yesss, hitting someone ie spanking is violence.

I discipline my children when they need it, without resorting to the violence of spanking.

So, some of you think inflicting pain increases intelligence? ROFL It causes stress, which causes lower IQ, which is proven in other studies. Stress also causes illness, which is proven, stress also causes anxiety and other mental disorders.

Originally posted by mrmonsoon
reply to post by tothetenthpower

 

Ok, lets get a few examples..............

What if your child..........
1) set an animal/pet on fire on purpose?
2) tortured a pet?
3) tortured another child?
4) killed a pet on purpose?
5) tried to kill another person child or adult?
6) burned down someone's house on purpose?

I am in no way suggesting your child/children have done these things, I am asking what you might do in reaction to these kinds of events?
These are just a few examples off the top of my head.

Those are all examples of a person who has a mental illness, so if someone has an illness, we should punish them? I suggest THERAPY really quickly and possibly if necessary some form of medication, though I hate the idea of medicating children.

FreeSpeaker, I've spoken of this before, both my children were taught in a loving and THOUGHTFUL manner to not touch the stove. Neither had to get burned to learn the dangers of fire, and neither had to be spanked to learn the dangers of fire. How? When my first child was tiny, she kept reaching for the stove one night while I was trying to cook. I kept telling her "no owie", she kept reaching. I picked her up and let her look at the burner while I put a tiny piece of paper on it. Of course the paper burned. I said OWIE NO TOUCH. She never touched, she learned by watching that tiny piece of paper burn.

It is called thinking and using your brain to come up with ways to teach and discipline children without resorting to violence.

I also find it interesting, that in many cases, those who advocate violence towards their children, are also violent towards other adults. As seen in this thread and the meanness obviously within some of the posts towards those who do no believe in violence towards their children.

TarzanBeta, if war was caused by NOT slapping your child, then we should have zero wars in this world, as all over people are still violent towards their children.

violence...... begets violence. Teach children that the way to handle a situation is to resort to hitting someone ie becoming violent, then they learn that when they have problems in life, the way to deal with those problems is to resort to violence.

As a parent you don't "force" your children to become productive adults, you TEACH them.

I would also like to see a study on the IQ of parents who do choose to spank their children. I would bet that parents who spank their children, also have a lower IQ than those parents who do not spank.

Here is a tidbit of information for you guys. Serial killers have been studied for a long time now. In every situation, the finding show that they were spanked and abused as children. If spanking created "perfect" adults, we would not have serial killers. Childhood abuse may not be the sole excuse for serial killers, but it is an undeniable factor in many of their backgrounds.

Parents who abuse their children, physically as well as psychologically, instill in them an almost instinctive reliance upon violence as a first resort to any challenge.

Chew on that.

Harm NONE WHATSOEVER
Peace

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh what do you want a golden globe award???

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
reply to post by TarzanBeta

 

Funny how other animals don't spank their kids though huh?

Interesting little thought people don't think about. I guess the other animals know a secret we don't.

~Keeper

Not to butt in too much but to use animals as a reason to not spank as they don't have hands is flawed. They do however, growl, bite and slap their offspring to teach them to not do something the socially correct way. Watch any animal show and you will see the tiger mom nip the kitten to train him/her to not do something. Ditto for other animals. Technically, I guess that could be considered a spanking in animal language (?).

Originally posted by Veritas Lux Mea

Originally posted by djvexd
In the past 10 years+ we have seen a balooning of kids with little or no respect, common sense, or down right anger towards grownups. Why? It seems to coincide with this push to stop correcting kids. I don't advocate walloping kids however I don;t advocate letting kids run rampant either.

Yes, but there are other HIGHLY EFFECTIVE ways of getting your point across.

I think it all boils down to how much a parent wants to LEARN. The ones who hit their kids mostly haven't taken the time to learn and impliment better strategies, I think..

When I was getting into trouble, I BEGGED my dad to spank me instead of ground me or talk with me about it. Why? Because the pain of spanking stopped after 2-3 minutes (and didn't leave an impression on me).. but grounding me and making me APOLOGIZE for my wrongdoing was worse because it actually required more effort on my part.

Spanking is the easy way out.. its benifits (if any) are ONLY short-term and only causes MORE problems in the long run..

- Mea

Shoot, I got the spanking, the grounding, the apologizing for wrong doing and maybe some other punishment if it were bad enough to compensate the other wronged party. BTW, it did NOT lower my IQ or either I should have made Einstein look stupid. In my immediate family their was no way to penalize us without physical punishment because we laughed at anything else and took a nap at "timeouts" and other "nice" ways to punish us.

Ahhh you gotta love research like this.

It makes its own headlines!

I expect that explains why there are more honors class students in China than there are student in America as a whole.

I bet none of them were ever spanked.

Children. hard as it is to believe, are as much individuals as adults are. Each will develop in accordance with their range of experience and personal judgment. IQ measurements are wonderful playthings for statisticians. But in reality, they translate to something more repulsive; the notion that IQ is a measure of which one should be 'proud.'

I refuse to measure my children by some industry's metrics. Stupid is as stupid does.

Actually I can see where this might actually be true. Minor blunt force trauma to the head can lower IQ points and if a child is receiving a spanking it is usually a result of a child's head being somewhere up their rear, ergo....

Originally posted by Ahabstar
Actually I can see where this might actually be true. Minor blunt force trauma to the head can lower IQ points and if a child is receiving a spanking it is usually a result of a child's head being somewhere up their rear, ergo....

ROFLMAO!!!! That's the first thing I thought when I read the OP, what the ????? How can spanking a butt reduce IQ? Guess I never thought of the head up the rear scenario!!!! Too funny!

First let me give the OP congratulations on creating this thread. There are few threads over 3 pages that I read the whole thread through this one is at 6 pages ATM). Yes I read each and every post on this thread (even though I must surely had a very sad IQ).

Okay now let me give my opinion on this by giving a little history on myself (yay now we can all see why Raist is the way he is).

My father was verbally abusive and many times physically abusive. There were times I was spanked for good reason (yes I recall a great deal of my punishments whether deserved or not, I learned from them) and I respect my father for those spankings as they make sense. I also recall times when I did little or nothing and got held in the air by one arm and “spanked” until he could not hold me up any more and I was bawling. I also recall not being able to finish what was on my plate and being backhanded out of the kitchen chair. Yep I remember every form of punishment I got. I even remember getting paddling’s at school and begin ticketed or arrested by the police. Not one of those punishments has left my mind.

I also recall that my father never tried to be a constructive human being (until recently with his strokes making him rather feeble). Sure there were times in between his drunkenness that he was a decent enough person but they were rare.

Okay so to sum that up I was spanked, beaten, emotionally scarred, ticketed, and arrested. I dropped out of school in my last few years because I was trying to break out and “live” life the best I could because my mother was somewhat a coddling person who wanted to protect me too much at times (yes I experienced two separate worlds in the same house and in different homes after their divorce). Well let’s just say I was rebelling to rebel I wanted to learn what was right and wrong or die trying (this explains the tickets and arrests).

I had it bad much of the time yes but others had it worse I suppose (at least I am alive to tell the stories), but I also learned from the whole thing. The right punishments (spankings when I needed them) and the wrong ones (how to know when things have crossed the line of abuse).

I have since gotten my GED and an AAS in criminal justice (I graduated Suma cum loti). Yes I know my grammar at times is still rather atrocious but one needs to look at what it was before many college essays. I believe the last IQ test I took I scored a 124 (but I got sort of bored and wanted to get it over with because I was hungry). If spanking lessens ones IQ I was surely a genius at one point and would have made Einstein look like some drooling fool.

I spank my son now no more than a few pops on the rear when he decides he is not going to listen. He was really well behaved until he started getting around other kids and started picking up on their treatment of adults. All his teachers (in school and church) talk about how well mannered he is. He says please, thank you, and even excuse me. He even knows some words on flash cards (oh BTW he just turned 3) and has known these words for about 6 months now. Most of the time my son listens very well and is asking me to play puzzles with him where he actually helps to put the pieces in their correct spots. He has known his ABCs and could count for some time now (I am going to start teaching him basic math soon). I don’t really see him as being low on IQ but actually ahead of most of the kids in his class.

To sum this up I see no correlation between spanking and a lower IQ. I do see how ever that each kid is different. For instance I was the worst of my siblings as far as things I tried and did in life and with the law. I am however the first to ever get a degree in my family. Maybe I actually got some sense beat into me at times.

That should sum it up quite well. What say you?

Raist

reply to post by KSPigpen


Oh, you get a star just because I nearly spit popcorn shrimp all over my laptop from your post.

Raist

I would tend to agree with this study and if true I guess..... we can conclude that GW must've been severely abused!

Ok. I only read the first 3 pages of this thread so I can't speak for those posting in the later pages. But people really seem to forget that spanking doesn't = beating/child abuse.
Children should always know the reason why they are being punished, should never be hit out of anger, and should know that you still love them.

But it really depends on the kid, some just need a good talking to. Others need to be spanked to get the message across. But everything in moderation. The point is that your kid needs to respect you and not walk all over you - if they can do that then you have done something wrong.

Obviously the study in the OP completely misses the point of spanking.
The only person I know who wasn't spanked is the only one of my group of mates who is doing bad at uni, is selfish, has no respect for others and thinks only of pleasing himself.