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My wife and I found a great resource on Child Discipline. The title is DQ Factor. I'm not sure of the author right now. In one chapter, the author states that for certain personality types (or perhaps all, I don't remember), spanking was like 20% effective whereas isolation (being sent to their room) was 90% effective. In just about all personality types, the author suggests to use natural consequences where the child's health and well being is not at stake. He relates a story of a mother who's daughter poked around and was consistently late for school. The mother instituted a policy of, "We leave for school at 7:30 regardless of what state you are in." That means, if the child is still in her pajamas, she goes to school in her pajamas. If she hasn't finished her breakfast, then she'll have to wait for lunch.
The wife and I have begun to implement more of this type of discipline and have found it to be rather effective thus far. As for spanking, the wife and I use it as a last resort. What we call spanking is typically a few (3 or less) swats to the gluteous maximus, normally with the hand. My 3 year old is still in diapers, which take the sting out completely and eliminate the risk of bruising. Even though it doesn't hurt him, he get's the point. Now, my wife has not found spanking our son to be effective. Come to think of it, I haven't spanked either of our older children (4.5 years and 3 years) in several months. I've threatened, but have not needed to follow through. I really don't like doing it. When I do, it's because the child has done something where I am not willing to let the natural consequences come about (the child could get seriously hurt), is normally due to direct and willfull disobedience, or the child is completely hysterical and needs something to bring them back. Now that I'm thinking about it, perhaps a splash of cold water in the face would work better for the hysterical child... But when I just told him/her to not do something and they look me in the eye and do exactly what was just forbidden, they are just asking to be disciplined. The author of DQ Factor attributes disobedience in children to a certain insecurety. The structure provided by a loving parent helps to provide the security that the child needs.
The long and short of it is that spanking has been proven by research to be considerably less effective than other forms of discipline. Some creativity on the parents' part is helpful. There are some situations where a spanking is completly unneccesary, like killing a house fly with a shotgun. A swatter would get the job done without all the messy collateral damage.
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Imagination is more important than knowledge.
----Albert Einstein
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