Experts advise parents to avoid spanking children

The controversial issue of whether spanking young children is an acceptable form of discipline has come to the forefront again, in light of two new studies on the topic of corporal punishment. Canadian study shows that children who are spanked face more psychiatric problems as adults than children of parents who do not believe in spanking do. However, another survey reveals that the physical punishment of young children is still advocated by the majority of American parents.

TWO STUDIES
In the Canadian study, questionnaires were completed by 4,888 Ontario residents aged 15 and older who reported being spanked sometimes or often as children. These subjects reported experiencing twice as many anxiety disorders as those who had not been spanked. Adults who had been smacked as children were also more likely to have problems with alcohol or drug abuse as they aged. A less significant link was found between having been spanked and the development of major depression.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal late last year, was followed by an American survey showing that in June and July, when 1,066 American parents were surveyed, 61 per cent reported that they condone spanking as a regular form of punishment for children under the age of seven.

TYPICAL SPANKER
Based on this finding, it seems that C.C. Echeverria, a San Diego native, may be the typical parent. She spanks her young children, aged two and four, regularly when they misbehave, and sees nothing wrong with the practice. She believes spanking is appropriate, particularly in a very young child who cannot be reasoned with.

A young child may not understand if told that a certain action is wrong, she says. “Spanking is one of the few ways they will understand it. They learn from it,” she says. “If you do it correctly, they learn. [There are] no long-term effects. It’s just one way of teaching them.”

LOVE HURTS
She rejects the idea that hitting her children sends them the message that they are not loved. “There’s always the hug and kiss after the fact. They don’t go to bed thinking I’m mad. They know I love them.”

Echeverria may not only be setting her children up for equating violence with love, but for facing more problems as adults because of the nature of the discipline, according to the Canadian survey, as well as experts on raising children.

EXPERTS DISCOURAGE PHYSICAL DISCIPLINE
Dr. Laura Nathanson is a pediatrician at the University of California San Diego, and author of The Portable Pediatrician for Parents and The Portable Pediatrician’s Guide to Kids. She strongly advocates not using a strong hand to keep young children in order.

“If it hurts, it’s a message that says big people can hit little people,” she explains. “If it hurts, it’s a message that says my mother or father hurt me and no one will do anything about it and my mother and father don’t care. That’s a bad message.”

LOSING TEMPER DANGEROUS
Slapping or spanking is particularly wrong when the child and parent are embroiled in a battle of wills, and the parent loses their temper, she says. “The parent says to the child to do something and the child says no, and they go back and forth and finally there’s a spanking. That situation is toxic.”

This kind of interaction teaches a child the wrong things, she says. “If you get love and violence and pain mixed up together you’re going to have a very screwy (adolescence and) adulthood.”

Dr. Nathanson says parents need to preserve their bond with their children and let their children know they are loved. She suggests that parents let the child know there is a difference between being given a choice and being given an order. A parent should not give an order unless he or she is prepared to follow through with the promised outcome if the order is not followed, she adds. If a child is told not to climb onto a piece of furniture and does so, he or she should be told to get down, then taken down if he or she doesn’t comply.

FEW WORDS
She also says that parents do not need to go into great explanations of why something is prohibited. She says only one word per year of age of the child is enough to make the point, starting with “no” for a child in their first year of life.

If a parent realizes they are spanking their child in anger this is a serious problem, she stresses. “The situation is bad and bound to get worse. Change (the) situation. Break the cycle.”

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