A Lower IQ? Whatttttt?!

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090924-childhood-spanking.html

Abstract Week 5 The Science of Spanking Your Children


Summary:

In a recent study involving hundreds of U.S. children, it showed that the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others. In that study two groups of children were tested, 806 aging 2-4 and 704 aging 5-9. Both groups ended up getting smarter after four years, nut the 2-4 year olds who were spanked scored lower on an IQ test than those who didn’t get spanked by 5 points. In the age range 5-9 the children who got spanked also scored lower than those who didn’t by 2.8 points. This study also took into account the parental education, income, and cognitive stimulation by the parents so the tests ended up being statistically significant. Some doctors say that being spanked causes a traumatic experience resulting in having the child stress which can affect the brain adversely. And that the stressed cause could potentially lower the IQ of the child. It is supposedly making the children stray away from independent thinking and causing them to do just what they are told and not think for themselves.



Application:

I have never really thought that spanking could have a bad affect on a child’s IQ; it never really crossed my mind that that was one of the downsides of spanking children. Sure, I thought of the emotional abuse it could contribute to but nothing long term like this. And even though that spanking has been shown to have negative consequences that parents will still fall back on it because it is a quick fist. I believe that the negative consequences will outweigh the positives, so I don’t think people should spank their children for everything. I do understand however, that that is a way to show children that what they are doing is wrong and cannot be done that way. But from personal experience I understand that there are other ways to punish a child that is equally effective. Such as putting them in a time-out. That is what my parents did most of the time and it worked better than spanking, from what me and my sister knew, we knew that spanking would last for three seconds and then we could go back to what we were doing. But with the time outs we were bored for five minutes, which seemed like a lifetime to us, and we didn’t want that to happen again. So I see where these people are coming from. Having your child be less intelligent because of the way you punish them just seems unreasonable to me when you can have your child be just as intelligent as they can with a punishment just as useful as spanking.

R. Gent