Pretty much everything I learned in the Sixties and Seventies turned out to be wrong

If they can't spank, they're gonna yell.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, some school chums, all girls, were discussing how their parents disciplined them. We were members of the "highly gifted" pull-out program in El Cajon. The one thing I remember their saying was, "I hate it when my parents yell at me; I'd so much rather they just gave me a spanking."

I want you to notice, the spanking was a trivial matter compared to getting yelled at. I don't remember anyone explaining why they hated yelling so much, though I assumed it was because of name-calling or guilt-casting or simple aspersions. I couldn't understand why getting called names was worse than getting beaten, till I realized it had to be that my parents were so out of control when they spanked that it amounted more to a beating than to a spanking.

More notes I took during the hour, no comment, just found them significant.

For a typically willful child, this isn't going to work.

Numerous studies exist on the effect of corporal punishment on children. A new one came out last month from the Duke University Center for Child and ... Policy.

The study showed that spanking your child can slow intellectual development when they're older.

The operative word: "can". duh!

Not spanking your child CAN lead to a selfish, self-centered, spoilt, narcissistic creep.