Parents' physical discipline has been shown to adversely impact child socioemotional (McLoyd & Smith, 2002), and academic development (Gershoff, et al., 2016). However, no prior research has investigated the impacts of parents' physical discipline in a process-oriented model. Therefore, we tested a developmental cascade model in which child externalizing and internalizing problems mediate the relationship between parental physical discipline and child literacy development. Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) were used to test a longitudinal mediation using a piecewise latent growth curve model. Results demonstrated that externalizing and internalizing symptoms mediated relationship between parents' physical discipline and trajectories of child literacy. Furthermore, parents' physical discipline during a child's Kindergarten year predicted more externalizing and internalizing symptoms one year later and lower literacy skills in 8th grade. Overall, findings suggest that parents' physical discipline may have cascading detrimental impacts on child literacy development through problem behaviors.