Mayim Bialik is strict, but she won't spank

Name: Mayim Bialik is strict, but she won't spank
Uploaded: 2017-08-10T15:48:36Z
Duration: 5 min 59 s
Description: Before she makes her case against spanking, Mayim Bialik takes on the old line from Proverbs about sparing the rod.

Before she makes her case against spanking, Mayim Bialik takes on the old line from Proverbs about sparing the rod. more

Read it in context, she says. In biblical times it was also accepted to throw stones at a disobedient son, so the Bible makes a poor parenting guide for the 21st century. Science, she argues, sits on the other side. The first long-term studies of children who were hit do not look good, and major medical groups now say there is no compelling evidence that hitting is the only way to raise polite kids.

Mayim Bialik, in a white shirt with black trim, sits in front of bookshelves and a microphone. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Mayim Bialik starts with the old Bible line about sparing the rod.

She grants that a smack can stop a behavior fast, and she explains why using Freud's pleasure principle. Animals seek pleasure and avoid pain, so after a smack the brain quickly learns to stay away from the source of that pain. "Hitting teaches avoidance rather than obedience," she says. Some kids shrug it off, but for others it can be traumatic, and there's no way to tell which child is which just by looking.

Children want to trust the people who care for them, she says. "Being hurt by someone who says they love you makes no more sense to a child than it does to an adult," she says. You can't hit your spouse, a student, a stranger or even your dog, she points out, yet the law still protects hitting a child.

Most of the time, she believes, parents hit because they run out of patience or miss the first signs that a child needs attention, food or a bathroom. She understands the pull of a quick fix in a house with many kids and little help. She has never had help with her kids except from her ex-husband, and she doesn't hand them off to a nanny. Her kids drive her mad sometimes too.

Not hitting has not left her kids spoiled, she says. "I'm one of the stricter parents I know," she says. "It's not my job to be my kids' friend. I'm their mom." She sets limits, enforces them the same way every time, and removes her children when they are being destructive.

Her proof is a basket of wooden trains. When her older son was three, he started throwing them, often close to his baby brother. She warned him once, and at the next throw every train went into a basket on top of the refrigerator for three days. He cried each time he saw that basket, and when the trains came down, he never threw one again.

A young adult female wearing a white long-sleeved t-shirt with Darth Vader graphic in an indoor home office setting. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Before she makes her case against spanking, Mayim Bialik takes on the old line from Proverbs about sparing the rod.

Whining gets the same steady treatment. A week of hearing "the answer to that voice is no" makes it stop, she says. When she warns that more thrown sand means leaving the park, they leave. Every parent within 15 miles of her house, she says, has watched her walk out with one or two wailing kids, because that is often what following through looks like.

Her words landed with many viewers who were hit as children. Again and again, they wrote that it taught them fear, resentment or how to hide what they did, not how to behave. One recalled a single mom who canceled a family trip to Disney after one warning, even though she couldn't get her money back.

Every day, Mayim tries to show her kids compassion and love, and she calls it "emotional money in the bank." When the hard days come, the family has comfort and safety to draw on.