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. Having 3 rambunctious kids meant there was at least a couple of spankings per kid a week.

The only reason I can run as a severely overweight woman is all that practice from running from my parents trained me to run fast. 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? Most of my friends were spanked when they were children. 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?

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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 makes 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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