‘IT MAKES CHILDREN ANGRY’ | Expert urges end to corporal punishment

During a recent speech in Chicago, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard psychiatrist, related how, when he was a child and misbehaved, his father would “smack me in the back of the head.”

“It was like shock treatment,” said Poussaint. “He had a theory that if you misbehaved, something must be wrong with your brain and you needed a correction.”

The story elicited chuckles from the largely African-American audience, but Poussaint’s point was no joke to him.

One way to help reduce violence in poor, black urban neighborhoods is to reduce it in the home, he says.

In his most recent book, Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, co-authored with entertainer Bill Cosby, Poussaint cites one study that showed that 94 percent of black mothers agreed that “a good hard spanking” was a useful “disciplinary technique” compared with 65 percent of white women and 46 percent of Asian-American women.

Not all black parents who use corporal punishment create violent children, he noted. Poussaint grew up in Harlem, received his M.D. from Cornell and served as a script consultant to NBC’s “The Cosby Show.”

But, Poussaint said, “Violence begets violence — it makes children angry.”

“I think a lot of homicides relate to rage and anger and getting back at someone, even if it’s a nameless face,” he said.

Psychotherapist George Smith, whose Management Planning Institute works with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said he sees the effects of spankings in preschool classes his group conducts: “Kids emulate their caregivers. They become physical.”

Psychiatrist Carl Bell, president of the Community Mental Health Council, said less educated people of all races tend to spank at higher rates.

“Poor black people — poor people in general — have no idea how life works. People who don’t know how life works think it’s best to bully people to get what they want,” said Bell.

Blacks are more religious, said Bell, and cite Proverbs: “He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”

No single child-rearing factor leads to violent behavior, Bell says. “I wish [ending spanking] was the magic bullet,” he said.

But for Poussaint, it’s a start.

“If we think of violence as learned behavior, if you are using it on your child, what are they learning?” said Poussaint. “The black community [has] to put this on the table.”

Source: Chicago Sun-Times, United States
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1219230,CST-NWS-spank14.article

A cross-party group of British MPs is expected on Wednesday to try to introduce a legal ban preventing parents from smacking their children, a campaign group said.

The MPs, headed by Kevin Barron, Chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee, have backed an amendment to the Children and Young Persons Bill calling for youngsters to have the same rights as adults on assault.

The amendment aims to abolish the legal defense of “reasonable punishment,” said the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, which represents more than 400 organizations.

More than 100 backbench Labour MPs have signed a private statement demanding the government allow them a free vote on whether there should be a ban, it added.

The issue was last debated in 2004 when calls for a complete ban were rejected despite a rebellion by Labour MPs. Instead a compromise measure was agreed which forbids any punishment which causes visible bruising, grazes, cuts or scratches.

The government remains opposed to an outright ban but campaigners, including the Children’s Commissioner for England Al Aynsley-Green, say the current situation is ineffective and sends out confusing messages.

“We must act now to end the legal approval of hitting children,” Barron said.

“The current law allowing so-called ‘reasonable punishment’ is unjust, unsafe and unclear. Frankly we are baffled by the hesitation so far about giving a vote on what is so clearly a conscience issue.”

Last year, ministers said the law, which applies to England and Wales, would remain unchanged after a review found that most parents did not want a complete ban on corporal punishment.

“This is one of those principled reforms on which politicians must make a stand whatever the pollsters might say,” said William Utting, the Alliance’s spokesman.

“The law must send the clear message that hitting children is as unacceptable as hitting anyone else.”

Source: Canada.com
http://tinyurl.com/4475e3

Momlogic’s Andrea: I thought timeouts were the progressive way to punish. But are even they too cruel?

Yesterday, when I picked my daughter up from her new preschool, the teacher told me my two-year-old was having trouble following directions that day. I nodded in weary agreement — she’s been very defiant this week.

“I give her timeouts,” I offered, “That’s what you guys do, right?”

Oh. Crap. This discipline thing is tricky. And here I was secretly patting myself on the back for not spanking my toddler’s backside. Meanwhile, it turns out the preschool’s mode of discipline makes mine seem like Abu Ghraib. But, hey, it’s not like I’m waterboarding.

As the teacher expounded on the preschool’s principles of punishment, my mind wandered to my timeout experience the night before. My daughter was locked in her chair prison — it’s amazing to me she stays put. She can escape any time — instead, she begs for mercy. Her crime? Hitting me in the face when I tried to put on her new Dora pajamas. (Maybe I should’ve bought Diego instead?) I don’t know if “distracting” her would’ve helped either of us at that moment. It took every bit of my moral strength not to punch her back.

Has the pendulum swung too far when it comes to doling out punishment for our kids? I don’t even know ANY moms these days who spank. Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd?

Source: Mom Logic
http://www.momlogic.com/2008/09/time_outs_are_the_new_spanking.php

Whether to spank children as a method of discipline is hotly debated. Some evidence suggests spanking predisposes children to behave aggressively. Others say spanking does no harm if it’s carried out dispassionately.

A study published today in Archives of Disease in Childhood shows that mothers are more inclined to spank their children if they are depressed, live in a home where they are exposed to violence or if their children are difficult to control.

Researchers at Boston Medical Center studied almost 13,000 mother-child pairs as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort. The mothers answered survey questions on whether they had serious disagreements with their spouses that involved hitting or throwing things at one another. They also completed a depression assessment. The children’s behavior was assessed by their kindergarten teachers.

Among mothers with neither depression nor exposure to violence at home, one in four said they spanked their children. Among mothers who said they were either depressed or exposed to violence, one in three spanked. But among those with both depression and exposure to violence, one in two spanked. Moreover, children who had trouble controlling their own behavior got walloped more. Among mothers with depression, 33% of children with good self-control were spanked compared with 53% of children with poor self-control.

That last finding is important because there is a lack of data that reveal how a child’s behavior affects the risk of physical punishment. Indeed, any research that helps explain the causes and ramifications of spanking is valuable considering the lack of evidence that spanking is more effective than other forms of discipline. Spanking is discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics. For more information, see the AAP’s web page for parents on discipline and spanking.

Source: Los Angeles Times, CA
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/09/research-sugges.html

About a month ago, I was shopping at the market when I came upon a woman smacking her young son. “I don’t ever want to see you hit your sister again,” she warned him. Apparently, the lad had walloped his (now-crying) sibling, which led to the mother’s admonition.

I don’t usually interfere with parents disciplining their kids unless I think that it’s crossing the line into abuse (or neglect), but I did make a mental note of the situation. If we were to dissect this scene, what part of it seemed incongruent? Surely, the mother was being reasonable in reprimanding her son for hitting his sister. But to make her point, she hit her son! I just didn’t comprehend how she didn’t see the inconsistency of her message, as well as the correlation between her behavior and that of her son’s.

This point was drilled home to me when a friend recently sent me a video called “Children See, Children Do.” It’s a powerful reminder that, in every sense, parents model the way for their children. Of course, we tend to think of role models in positive terms, as people who enrich our lives and teach us important lessons and values. But in truth, role models work both ways, showing good and bad behavior that kids pick up on. You need only look at rap artists or young celebrities out of control to realize that even if you don’t approve of the content of their songs or the antics of their lives, your kids quite possibly may be emulating them. How many girls thought it was “cool” when 15-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears became pregnant or when Mylie Cyrus posed provocatively on her MySpace page.

It’s no different for parents. Since parents are the strongest role model a child has, what you do matters - a lot. In fact, everything that you do, your children see and, most likely, will end up doing, as well. From screaming at the car that cut you off in traffic to lying to a friend to get out of dinner plans, your child takes it all in and considers it acceptable behavior.

Modeling the way is one of my favorite parenting principles. It’s a relatively simple concept to understand but far more difficult in practice. After all, as flawed souls ourselves, we do act inappropriately at times, especially when we’re angry, upset or anxious. We carry prejudices and biases that at times can be hard to mask. We have behaviors - whether it’s smoking, drinking or speaking negatively of others - of which we’re not proud. We don’t want our children to pick up on our bad habits, traits and behavior. But children take it all in and, seeing us as their primary role model, regardless of whether you tell them it’s bad or not (the old “do as I say, not as I do” mentality), they’re going to think it’s OK to model that negative behavior or attitude.

It’s hard being a parent. We all know that. But it’s also a privilege. Pay attention to your less desirable conduct, habits or attitudes. They all translate into messages that your kids, as your primary audience, are receiving. If you aren’t proud of them yourself, or if you don’t wish for others to see these behaviors in play, chances are that you shouldn’t let your children observe them either.

Step up to be the best parent you can be. And when you make a mistake, such as losing your temper or not following through on something you say you’ll do, be sure to admit the mistake to your child. A child hearing his or her parent say, “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that,” is a powerful thing. It tells your child: “We’re human and fallible, but we do our best, and when we fall short, we admit it.” And a parent who communicates that just may be the ultimate role model.

Source: DetNews.com, MI
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080826/OPINION03/808260378

Parents tempted to treat Junior’s misbehavior with a lashing from a tree limb out back or dad’s leather belt are being urged to think again.

A study released Tuesday by doctors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill finds that parents who spank their children with an object - such as a belt, switch or paddle - are nine times more likely to abuse their child through more severe means. Also, parents are much more likely to beat, burn or shake their children if they spank frequently, according to the study which is being published by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Parents get angry when they’re spanking and it’s not working,” said Adam Zolotor, lead author of the study and a pediatrician at the UNC-CH’s Department of Family Health. “If a child gets spanked so often, they just don’t care anymore and will misbehave anyway.”

It’s the latest finding in a growing body of research suggesting parents should use their voice, not their hands or household tools, to keep children in line. This study rests on anonymous admissions of 1,435 mothers of children from North and South Carolina randomly selected to share details of the discipline they and other caregivers use in the privacy of their own home.

Rates of abuse, the researchers found, are alarmingly high, even in a survey dependent on parents owning up to behavior that could cost them the right to raise their children. Twelve percent of mothers who reported spanking a child’s bottom with an object also admitted engaging in behavior researchers classified as physical abuse. Also, 12 percent of those who spanked 50 or more times in the last year admitted abuse such as beating, burning, shaking or hitting the child with an object about their body.

Spanking has been a mainstay in American parents’ discipline regimen for generations. Most national studies show that more than half of parents have spanked or slapped their child in the past year. In the UNC-CH study, Zolotor and his colleagues found that nearly half of those Carolina parents with a child between the ages of 7 and 9 whipped their child’s behind with an object in the past year.

Corporal punishment has been on the minds of North Carolinians this summer. In June, Triangle residents watched Johnston County mother Lynn Paddock admit she lashed out at her brood of adopted children with a plastic plumbing supply line; Paddock borrowed the parenting advice from an evangelical Christian minister who teaches parents how to rear submissive children. A Johnston County jury sent Paddock to prison for the rest of her life for suffocating her youngest son, 4-year-old Sean.

Over the last year, child advocates have appealed, without success, to legislators to outlaw corporal punishment in public schools. Some districts, such as Johnston County, have recently voted to abandon the practice.

“People want to change behavior immediately, and they think spanking is the way to go,” said Tom Vitaglione, a child advocate from Raleigh-based Action for Children who has pushed for the statewide ban on spanking in schools. “Down the line, though, (these children) do far worse. That relationship of trust is broken.”

At least 56 school districts still allow administrators to spank or paddle children. Efforts to ban that practice entirely have met fierce opposition.

John Rustin, vice-president of Family Policy Council, a non-partisan research group in Raleigh that focuses on family issues, opposed the ban and thinks there’s still a place for spanking in North Carolina’s homes and schools.

“Spanking can be administered in a loving manner to help children understand what’s right and wrong,” said Rustin. “But, it’s not just something that ought to be done with little thought.”

Some Christians heed the Bible’s admonition that parents who spare the rod will spoil their children. Several ministers have written books or taught seminars instructing parents how to employ the rod, preaching that a parents’ hand ought to be preserved for loving and nurturing, not discipline. Michael Pearl, the Tennessee pastor Paddock turned to for a discipline advice, suggests in his books that parents whip babies under one with “a footlong willow branch shaved of its knots” and for older children “plastic plumbing pipe, a 3-foot shrub cutting or a belt.”

Beth Taylor, a mother of two boys, said she finally gave up on spanking years ago when her oldest son began acting worse after she turned to a belt to punish him. It was the only tactic she knew, Taylor said. Growing up, her father had whipped her and her sisters with a strap.

“It made him lash out at me,” said Taylor, who lives in McDowell County in Western North Carolina. “It broke my heart. I worried about him hating me.”

Frustrated, she took a parenting class to figure out what was going wrong. There, Taylor said, she learned her spanking provoked her son. Now, to get her oldest son to behave, Taylor disconnects his cell phone. For her youngest, 7, she takes away his video game machine.

“Nothing gets their attention faster,” said Taylor.

Source: Kansas City Star, MO
http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/754399.html

Children who are smacked or yelled at are much more likely to develop serious mental health problems by the age of three, research reveals.

A study of more than 700 toddlers found that those who were harshly disciplined by their parents were at much higher risk of depression and anxiety in later life. Disobedience and aggression were also common problems for infants who had been smacked or screamed at.

The study by Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute showed that parental stress could also have a huge impact on infant mental health.

Children from all walks of life were studied at the age of seven months, then followed up every six months until the age of three.

Researcher Jordana Bayer, a child psychologist, said up to 50% of early behavioural problems persisted through childhood. “In early childhood, behavioural problems such as hitting and kicking and biting and saying no are very common. But if they’re at high levels by preschool age then up to half will go on through childhood and lead potentially into adolescence with conduct disorder and drug use and depression and so on,” Dr Bayer said.

“It’s important for parents to pay attention to when young children behave well and actually reward that behaviour with praise and hugs.”

The findings, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, will be used to develop family support programs.

Murdoch researcher and pediatrician Harriet Hiscock said doctors working with children should always ask about the parents’ stress levels. “There are ways to help reduce this stress and help parents manage their child’s behaviour in more calm and consistent ways.”

Source: The Age, Australia
http://www.theage.com.au/national/childs-mental-health-at-risk-from-tough-love-20080729-3mvf.html

Drat! Just as I was looking forward to a relaxing breakfast with The Globe, on my first full day of retirement after 31 years of teaching, what do I encounter but Lorna Dueck’s column, No Place For The State In Families Of The Nation (June 30). With all the research in child development, it’s hard to believe she writes “we’re born with sin in our genes,” as though children are sinful little beings whose wills have to be broken.

Apparently, the legal guidelines “of never spanking with an object or a closed hand” make it okay, even desirable, for parents to whack their kids into submission. It must be the “open-handed” that makes all the difference, I presume.

Spanking is like fast food: It’s fast, it works for the moment, it takes zero thought but, in the long run, it’s bad for you. Spanking simply teaches children to obey out of fear of being caught and punished. It doesn’t teach self-discipline; it teaches children it’s okay for big people to hit little people, that it’s okay to do something as long as you don’t get caught.
Source: Globe and Mail, Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080701.COLETTS01-3/TPStory/Comment

I figured that spanking was long ago proved bad for kids, case closed. Yow, was I wrong!

An interview I posted last week with pediatrician Lawrence Diller, in which he said that firmer discipline—including, in some cases, spanking—might keep kids from being medicated for ADHD, sparked passionate comment, both for and against spanking. And a piece on spanking that I wrote for a larger article on evidence-based discipline methods also has generated a lot of heat. Where I live in suburban Washington, D.C., you’d think that spanking had been eradicated from family life. But preschool teachers tell me that’s not so; parents just don’t talk about it. I asked Murray Straus, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and probably the world’s expert on spanking research, to tell me what he thinks is going on.

I thought nobody spanked small kids anymore. Yet your studies say that the vast majority of parents are spanking.
This is something that is experienced by over 80 percent of toddlers. It’s dropped a little bit over the years but very little. There’s more corporal punishment in the South, but the difference isn’t that big. The only conclusion you can come to is that everyone hits toddlers.

You’ve been researching the effects of spanking for almost 40 years, and you think that it’s unquestionably bad for kids. Yet many people say that science hasn’t proved that it’s harmful. Why is that?
They take the exceptions. There is 93 percent agreement in the studies that spanking is harmful. It leads to more antisocial behavior in childhood, as well as increased aggression, spousal abuse, and child abuse in adulthood. That’s an almost unheard-of consensus in parenting studies.

I think it’s also a human-rights issue. Just as adults have the right to live their life without fear of attack, children should do.

And despite these findings, you say that many experts, from Dr. Spock to the American Academy of Pediatrics, don’t tell parents never to spank?
In no edition of his book did Spock say, “Never spank.” He would say, “You should avoid it if you can.” If you have a 2-year-old, you soon presume that you can’t avoid it. That’s in the nature of 2-year-olds. With toddlers, in a certain sense, nothing works—including spanking. In another sense, it all works. Most of us wouldn’t be here today if spanking didn’t work. But it has harmful side effects. One reason that prevalence hasn’t gone down is that we’re dealing with children who on the surface don’t seem to respond to other things. Another is that the antispanking advice is “It’s best to avoid it.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a statement on corporal punishment in 1998. When I first read it, I thought, wow, after eight years of debate, they’ve finally done it. But after you look at it word for word, it says you should not hit kids under a certain age or over 6 or 7. Implicitly, it’s free rein on kids between 2 and 6.

Were you spanked as a child?
No. My parents were not following the pattern of their time.

Yet many people, including me, would say, “I was spanked as a child, and I came out OK.” That’s true. But the implication is false. That’s what I was saying years ago, when I was resisting stopping smoking: “I’ve been smoking for 35 years, and I’m OK.” I was one of the lucky ones; the death rate from lung cancer for heavy smokers is about 1 in 3. That same statistic means that two thirds will not get lung cancer.

So what’s the harm?
It depends on the harmful side effect. Take physical aggressiveness, one aspect I’ve looked into—hitting a marital or dating partner. In one of our national surveys, among adults who were not spanked as kids, 6 or 7 percent had hit their partner in the past 12 months. Among those who were spanked the most, it goes up to 25 percent. That’s still 75 percent who do not hit their partner that year.

James Dobson and other proponents of spanking as a disciplinary tool say it’s OK if spanking is done in love. Yet you say spanking in love can lead to sexual problems in adulthood.
I think that’s what most parents who spank do. There’s only a minority of parents who are aggressive, mean people. Most spank because they want to correct the behavior of their child. They want the kid to grow up to be a good, law-abiding citizen. The harmful side effects occur despite that. One of them occurs in part because of that. One of my studies is on the relationship between corporal punishment as a child and being aroused by sadomasochistic sexual behavior. What I found is that the more kids were spanked, the more likely they would want to be spanked as adults while having sex. Most kids who are spanked don’t develop an interest in being spanked while having sex, but a substantial number do, particularly when their parents were high in love and support. That maximizes the fusion of love and violence. If parents spank you and you hate them, that doesn’t bring about a fusion of love and violence.

Source: U.S. News & World Report, DC
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2008/6/16/more-on-spanking-the-side-effects.html

I was going to write about something entirely different this week but the passionate response I received from readers to my last post got me thinking further about this matter, specifically the way we discipline our kids today compared to in the past.

I was honestly surprised to discover how many of you felt that smacking was a necessary step in disciplining your children. But I was even more surprised that it was not just the older generation saying this but parents of young children.

Certainly there were many readers who felt, as I do, that smacking a child is wrong for the reasons I pointed out. However, just as many felt that the lack of smacking was part of the ’soft’ approach to parenting that is contributing to a generation of spoilt, badly behaved, disrespectful children.

I don’t wish to generalise about children today as the vast majority of them are bright, inquisitive, loving and well-behaved (most of the time!) However, it is undeniable that the behaviour you would find at your local school is very different now to 30 years ago when smacking and even the cane was accepted practice.

So it begs the question, have we gone too soft? And has the decline in physical punishment played a part, or has something else changed?

Personally, I wonder if rather than it being a smack that kids are crying out for these days it is our time? If we have become so stressed and busy in our complicated lives we’re depriving our children of the one thing they so desperately need, our attention.

One of the comments on the previous blog stated that while physical punishment is not ideal, emotional punishment such as verbal abuse can be far more damaging and I wholeheartedly agree. But I believe even more damaging is the child who receives no punishment at all because nobody noticed the behaviour in the first place.

Maybe the kids we complain about who roam the streets causing trouble would benefit from a smack, not because of the smack, but because it meant someone cared enough to punish them.

You have to wonder if we’ve gone from one extreme to the other, from imposing punishments that were overly harsh to having no consequences at all. Or are we better parents than the previous generation because we have learnt to respect our children’s rights and allow them opinions and choices?

I guess I sit somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to be too ’soft’ and let my son run free with no rules or limits, but I also want to allow him to express his feelings even if it means the occasion tantrum is the result of it. I know some days I feel like throwing one!

Interestingly, many of you commented that often the best way to dissolve a toddler tantrum is to talk to your child and see what the problem is rather than punishing the naughty behaviour. But couldn’t we apply this to disruptive behaviour from a child of any age?

If you looked into the background of a teenager who is fighting at school you would most likely find some serious emotional issues hidden under all that aggression. Thirty years ago that child would probably have been given the cane and a stern talking to. These days they would most likely be expelled, leaving them to fall between the cracks, branded as a failure and set for an uphill battle to prove otherwise. As much as I abhor the thought of the cane you do have to wonder which is potentially more damaging to that child’s future.

I certainly don’t claim to be an expert, but in my opinion using praise to reward a child for good behaviour is a powerful tool. I believe children inherently want to do well to make us proud and will do whatever it takes to capture and hold our attention. So it stands to reason if they get more of our focus when they do the wrong thing than when they behave they will act up every time, whether they are two or fifteen.

On the other hand, you don’t want to praise them so much they end up with an over inflated ego thinking they can do no wrong. Perhaps some of the kids we see auditioning for Australian Idol could have benefited from a little more honesty and a little less praise! It’s all about balance.

That’s the thing with parenting, there’s no manual, no right or wrong way and you don’t get a second chance. You just do the best you can with what you know at the time and hope like hell it is enough. The only thing I know for sure of is you can never say ‘I love you’ too much, or hug too many times. That is the one thing that will never change.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/4xwywf