A viewer asks: “It’s very painful to hear my son scream but it seems to be the only thing that helps him receive any kind of feedback from us. I was guided by my friends at my church that they regretted not spanking their children. And the Bible quotes about sparing the rod. Are we in divine alignment spanking our son when he does make improvement from this? But it also sounds like an exorcism because of the way he has been programmed by the darkness.” What can we tell her?

We are categorically opposed to corporal punishment as a solution for behavioral difficulties and disciplinary needs. We recommend against fighting fire with fire as general advice across the board, in dealing with adversaries of all kinds. That rarely gives a successful outcome. It much more commonly worsens things. In the case of spanking a child, it may have a seeming advantageous place because it seems to work, at least for a while, but so would anything that disrupts ongoing negative behavior and redirects the attention. But giving a child something worse to worry about is not solving the problem of how they came to misbehave, only giving them an additional trouble and reason to fear the future, and perhaps mistrust your authority and the validity of your love for him. The stakes are higher than you think in what you choose to do or not do in reaction to your son and his conduct. So we are advising you to think through very carefully how you can set limits and enforce boundaries without becoming a combatant. There are many sources of information available to parents of today on how to deal with troubled children and extremes of behavior that can even become dangerous. We cannot lead and tell you how to live your life in a detailed way, as with orders from on high, but only suggest and help inspire through pointing out pros and cons and possible choices and alternatives to consider. The views of those who think spanking children is a great way to keep peace in the home and the children in line are thinking quite simplistically. It will work in mild cases where it is not actually needed but will be a wake-up call and a shock motivating children to exert better self-control simply to avoid the humiliation of being subjected to unfair mistreatment. But children who are unable to control themselves, because their internal struggle is too great for them to manage, will simply be yet again a victim of parental mistreatment on top of being punished from deep within their own mind by inner torment beyond their control.