National Spank Out Day

I felt so lost when I first decided not to spank. It seemed like there were just no resources for parents like me. After almost 2 years, I am continually surprised by the sheer amount of great information on why spanking is damaging, and tons of great resources on gentle parenting. The links to articles and websites that I have saved in my favorites continues to grow, and I am seriously considering starting a new resource page on my blog where I can continue to link information as I find it for anyone looking for that type of thing.

Today is National Spank Out day, and I don’t have a post of my own ready. So instead I am sharing a few of the posts I’ve written in the past, as well as some awesome posts I’ve seen around the Internet lately.

This is one of the first posts I wrote on spanking, and it still makes me emotional when I remember my daughters face as I told her we did not spank anymore.

This is a great summary on why and how spanking is damaging.

This is my recent post on why children deserve as much respect as adults.

A thought provoking post on the results of spanking.

I still believe that choosing to stop spanking my children changed my life and my children’s lives for the better, I would never go back. I’ve gone from using only spanking, to using mostly time-outs and insisting that spanking had to be preserved for life-threatening disobedience, to realizing that spankings are unnecessary and even “chill-out” times are becoming increasingly rare. My children are just as well behaved or better behaved than before, and I am a much calmer, happier parent. Do I ever have bad days where nothing seems to be going right and I have to fight my lifetime of training to hit my children? Yes. But those helpless feelings happen less and less often, and I am finally confident that I am doing the right thing.

You can read more about my journey by clicking the Discipline label on the side of my blog.