1] You cannot beat goodness into a child. You will only teach him to mask his bad behavior with rhetorical dishonesty. Violence creates hypocrites, not saints.
2] No adult has ever inflicted more pain on himself that upon the youngster he raises his hand to strike. Prefacing a spanking by asserting the contrary is a lie. You know it, I know it and, more importantly, the child knows it.
3] Never hit a child in cold blood. Spontaneous violence is a human weakness and can be forgiven. Calculated cruelty is a blot on the human soul and, subsequently, much harder to excuse.
4] There is no evidence that "sparing the rod" will spoil your child. If your real aim is to improve his or her character and not merely to relieve your own frustration, it is better to find alternative means of discipline.
The opposite of #4 is, however, true. How often has a parent said about a "bad" child, "I beat him and beat him but it didn't do any good"? There is a lot of evidence that abused children grow up to be abusing adults.
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