A South Texas judge made national news last week when a video of him spanking his sixteen year old daughter showed up on You Tube. The girl, who is now twenty-two years old, was being punished for illegally downloading videos from the internet. The video is hard to watch. While the offense deserved punishment, the method in this case is wrong.
It does raise the question; Is spanking ever appropriate? I do see some value in spanking younger children as a deterrent. There comes a point, however, when it can become counter-productive. In case in question, the spanking was highly inappropriate. We're talking about a sixteen year old girl. How demeaning for a sixteen year old girl who is in the process of seeking her own identity to be told by her own father to, "bend over so I can paddle you." It had to have been a blow to her self image.
The other issue in this case is the father's anger. That is the danger when spanking is used as punishment. Do our kids do things that make us angry? You bet they do, but we also do things that exasperate them. (Ephesian 6:4) The challenge is to keep our feelings separated from the child's behavior. That's why it's usually best to delay any discussion or punishment until cooler heads prevail.
The bottom line is physical punishment is not appropriate when the offender is a teenager. Parent who resort to such methods run the risk of having the victim eventually becoming the aggressor. In this case the retaliation came in the releasing of a six year old video.
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