On May 23, 2021, a teacher and parent coach Chazz Lewis took to his TikTok platform to prove a point about spanking as a discipline for kids. His video starts off super controversially – discussing how he doesn’t like being told: “how to husband.” “If my wife disrespects me, then I need to hit her,” he says while looking right into the camera. “And that’s fine, you don’t have to hit your wife, that’s completely your choice, right? But in my relationship and my marriage, I hit to teach lessons, OK?” He continues, “And in my last relationship, I got hit with a broom, and I’m fine, I’m OK. So a little pow-pow never hurt anyone, alright? She needs to learn not to disrespect me.” Anger bubbles up, right? Everyone knows that it’s not OK to hit a woman – and that’s when Chazz draws the parallel and the point he’s trying to make. “That’s what people sound like when they work so hard to justify hitting children,” he says. In the comment section, Chazz offers more information and tips for parents on why spanking doesn’t work. “Identify the underlying needs and unlearned skills,” he says. “Help them meet their needs, teach them to meet their own needs, and teach them the unlearned skills. This takes more work [than] just hitting a child when they don’t meet expectations because it requires you to have some understanding of their behavior and some knowledge about how to help them.” He continues, “It also requires adults to be able to manage their own emotions (a skill that adults will have to help kids learn). For some adults, this is the hardest part because they are trying to teach a skill that they are learning themselves.” The video has gone viral with close to 515,000 views and 2150 comments of people thanking Chazz for the perspective and sharing their own history of being spanked as a child.
