Frequently Asked Questions
(^) As I have taught in many places around the world about
shepherding toddlers, the following questions are often asked.
What is a Spanking Issue?
(^) In this stage when you are teaching children to be people under
authority, spanking should be reserved for issues of defiance—failure
to honor and failure to obey. When dealing with a toddler, it is less
important that he remember the house rules. You should be willing to
tell him every time you place him in the highchair that he cannot
throw his food on the floor. You certainly don’t want to discipline for
childishness. Children are clumsy and they lack mature judgment.
They are going to knock things over and break them. Accidents due to
clumsiness are not an occasion to spank.
(^) With young children you must keep the focus very crisp; spank
only for defiance. As children get older, it is fair to have some issues
that are house rules. If you do not allow sliding down the bannister or
leaping from the bannister to the sofa, it is fair to expect a school-age
child to remember such things. It would be appropriate to deal with
that as a spanking-for-disobedience issue.
When Is My Child Old Enough?
(^) When your child is old enough to resist your directives, he is old
enough to be disciplined. When he is resisting you, he is disobeying.
If you fail to respond, those rebellious responses become entrenched.
The longer you put off disciplining, the more intractable the
disobedience will become.
(^) Rebellion can be something as simple as a small child struggling
against a diaper change or stiffening his body when you want him to
sit on your lap. The discipline procedure is the same as that which is
laid out above. You have no way of knowing how much a child less
than a year old can understand, but we do know that understanding