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Just Argue Your Case Without Asserting That Spanking Is Hitting

You might change someone’s mind that way

Vuyo Ngcakani
2 min readJun 7, 2021
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

I recently wrote an article titled ‘How To Raise Children That Other People Like.’

In it, I wrote,

‘Delayed obedience was disobedience. We spanked early. It was usually a couple of fingers to the hand or the bum. I believe the last time any of our kids got spanked was when they were about 5-years-old.

This made some of my readers uncomfortable. Some did not agree with my parenting methods. One wrote,

‘no child should be spanked. Ever. Full stop. There is absolutely NO situation where it is warranted. It’s not a form of discipline, it’s an intimidation and fear tactic. And, many say, it’s abuse — it is literally hitting a child.

Words are very important and can be used to evoke a certain emotion. It is no accident that the anti-spanker used the word ‘hitting’. It sounds harsher, meaner.

Let’s say I said to you that I spanked my wife. You would think that we were into kinky sex of some kind. If I said that I hit my wife, you would say that I was an abuser and might call the police.

See the difference?

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Vuyo Ngcakani
Vuyo Ngcakani

Written by Vuyo Ngcakani

writer, husband for 29 years, father of 3, grandfather of 2. I write about fatherhood, parenting, Christianity, & other topics.

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