My Glammy has already told me, if I decide to bring kids into this world I won't be allowed to spank or hit my kids. As a kid, I hated being spanked. It happened often in my home. With 3 of us rambunctious kids, there was at least a couple of spankings a week. Keep in mind the only reason I can run as a severely overweight woman is all that practice from running from my dad as a child is still instilled in me. I can hear a belt being taken off and my instinct is to run upstairs to the restroom that actually locked and wait it out. Flashbacks, weird right? Getting spanked helped me learn to run, fast. Chances are many of us were spanked as a child. My heart always breaks when I hear my friends share their stories of a parent who drank too much that would go crazy with a belt or switch. Did our parents keep spanking us because of the "My parents did it and I turned out just fine." mentality or did our parents spank us because it was absolutely necessary?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, "Corporal punishment and harsh verbal abuse may cause a child to be fearful in the short term but does not improve behavior over the long term and may cause more aggressive behaviors, according to the AAP." In one AAP study, young children who were spanked more than 2 times a month at age 3 turned out to be more aggressive at age 5. The study said, "Those same children at age 9 still exhibited negative behaviors and lower receptive vocabulary scores, according to the research." If studies show that spanking just makes children more aggressive and ultimately make our children not as smart as their peers why do we do it?  AAP went on to say that "Research has shown that striking a child, yelling at or shaming them can elevate stress hormones and lead to changes in the brain's architecture. Harsh verbal abuse is also linked to mental health problems in preteens and adolescents." Read the full study here. Parents, what do you think about the AAP study? Tell us in the comments below.

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