Wipper Snapper

If you are like most parents you probably promised yourself you would never spank your child. There are other healthy ways to discipline and redirect your child, right? Use of time-out, positive reinforcement, adding and taking away privileges are all effective means of discipline. But there always seems to come a time where the other techniques just don’t cut it. Even the most compliant child can have those moments. And, if you have a particularly strong willed child, those moments may be very frequent. As a mother of three—two which happen to be remarkably strong willed—I’ve often found myself in situations where I needed an immediate consequence to stop negative and unacceptable behaviors but did not want to make a scene or hurt their self esteem.

The WipperSnapper was my solution. It is so effective that in a short amount of time just showing it to the child is enough to redirect them, without a word being spoken. Of course, some still may say, “But it’s a pain inflicting device!” To which the only reasonable response can be, it is less painful and harmful than spanking and far healthier for the parent child relationship than allowing the child to grow up without appropriate discipline.

When my daughter was 16 months old, the parenting book I was reading said she was now old enough to get “swatted” with a wooden spoon, they felt you should never to use your hand which should only be associated with affection. I used it for the first time in a very challenging and appropriate moment and my daughter said, “Hey, don’t hit me! Hitting is not nice!” First, I was shocked that she had the reasoning power to put that together. How come other parents can give the occasional “spank” or “swat” and their child never questions it? It really made me think. I was not going to teach her not to hit by hitting her. So I tried to think of a harmless alternative to the simple spank or swat. What could be just as swift of a punishment, somewhat uncomfortable yet impossible to do any real harm? The answer finally came to me. The WipperSnapper. I discovered a snap on the wrist is something that doesn’t really hurt, yet everyone seems to shy away from. I realized it’s really the anticipation,
not the snap that makes you cringe.