Why Parents Spank Their Children and Why They Should Stop

10/23/17 • 20 min

Why Parents Spank Their Children and Why They Should Stop What do you feel when your lovely child misbehaves and then the misbehavior continues or repeats? What happens when you feel terribly angry and just want to make your child’s behavior stop? What happens if you spank your child . . . and then . . . much to your relief, your child’s annoying behavior stops! In this episode, not only do Dr. Sara and Dr. John discuss the negative outcomes linked to spanking, John also annoys Sara so much that she takes the impressive step of turning off his microphone. Will John ever get to speak again? How long does his microphone time-out last? This episode includes a clip of what Cris Carter, former Minnesota Viking and Hall of Fame wide receiver, thinks about physical discipline. You also get to hear what Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff discovered in her meta-analysis of corporal punishment research. When talking about B.F. Skinner and the science of negative reinforcement, for the first time in history, John says something that’s technically incorrect. If you’re the first person to correctly identify what John says that’s wrong, you will receive a copy of his book, “How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen.” You can enter by posting your idea on the Practically Perfect Parenting Podcast Facebook page or on John’s blog, at johnsommersflanagan.com.

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How to Listen so Parents will Talk, and Talk so Parents will Listen

It would be nice to know everything. And if you have children, it would be nice to know about all the wild parenting adventures awaiting you. But you don’t know. You don’t know because there’s no special instruction manual that comes along with the birth of your first child. In this Practically Perfect Parenting episode, we talk about all things parenting education, because parenting education is the best substitute for the absence of an instruction manual; it might even be better, because parenting education is experiential, responsive to your needs, and way more supportive than a book. Why should you listen to this episode? Well, one good reason is that John tells the famous bathtub story, and although Sara doesn’t manage to hum the “Jaws” music, unless you’ve watched Caddyshack, you probably won’t guess how the story ends.

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Parenting in the Age of Trump... and Dealing with Other Challenging Role Models

Parenting in the Age of Trump . . . and Dealing with Other Challenging Role Models Here’s a quick parenting quiz. Question: “How do you spell opportunity?” Answer: “T-R-U-M-P” Regardless of your politics, most of us American parents agree, there’s more profane and disgusting information leaking out of the media and into our children’s brains than ever before in the history of time. This information comes from Twitter, late night comedy, football, and the weather; it’s everywhere and it presents a direct challenge to American family values. What’s a parent to do? In this episode, Dr. Sara and Dr. John take on the Trump phenomenon and although neither of them speak Latin, the bottom-line message is “Carpe Diem!” or “Seize the day!” On their way to seizing the day, Sara and John share their own parental shortcomings. They also brainstorm how to respond when teenage boys come home and say things like, “I just learned that oral sex isn’t really sexL!” They discuss how to take outrageous contemporary media content and use it to facilitate children’s moral development. If you want to face the challenge of parenting in the Trump era and turn it into a moral development opportunity, listen to this episode of the Practically Perfect Parenting Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Charles Engelhard Foundation and NPEN.org