A Melbourne mother has been hauled in front of police accused of assaulting her nine-year-old daughter by ‘disciplining’ her with a whack on the bum with a wooden spoon.

Police warned Claire Davidson that she risked being charged with assault with a weapon if she kept up her preferred method of ‘teaching’ after her daughter revealed in a classroom discussion about bullying that her mum hit her with the spoon.

The Australian Childhood Foundation’s Joe Tucci has said: “Children should never have to be hurt to be taught a lesson. It is not effective in shaping children’s behaviour.”

Hear, hear, we cry! We couldn’t agree more. And after watching that Supernanny episode yesterday, we don’t think there’s EVER an appropriate time, place or way to strike a kid. Ever.

But what do you think? Is it ever OK to hit a child – and does it help to modify their behaviour – in a ‘good’ way – if you do?

I was at Coles a few days ago buying some Goji berries because I’m told they’re the best source of antioxidants that money can buy. And because I’m also told antioxidants are really REALLY good for kids. Goji berries are apparently even more full of nature’s goodness than the more fashionable blueberries. So I have decided to try and convince my six- and three-year-old that they’re brilliant. So far, of course, I’m the only one who has managed to suck them down without throwing up. Covering the gag reflex while the children watch very, very carefully, I say “umm yum”. No one – not my wife, not my kids – is convinced. Neither, it seems, is the scientific community who are still arguing about the whole antioxidant caper. So why do I bother? I don’t know. Like most parents, I’m pretty much in the dark. And amazingly contradictory.

But I digress. So. There I am at the Coles check out. Clutching my snake oil and a contradictory Cadbury Twirl. And behind me a 30-something woman is arguing with her four-something little boy. Who is clearly something of a little prick. He’s grabbing chocolates strategically positioned to be well within the grasp of a toddler by the supermarket management so that children and infantile adults (equally driven by compulsion) will pick them up. It’s your bog standard tantrum in the supermarket scenario. She’s getting increasingly irritated. He’s getting increasingly irritated. It’s all going downhill very fast.

Then suddenly, without warning, she hauls back and slaps him on the backside. It’s the shot that’s heard around the supermarket. Everything seems to freeze for a moment. We’re all stunned. And trying to find a happier place. The little boy is screaming even louder. Then I think I hear a man in the queue mutter “child abuse.” The enraged mother thinks she hears that too. So she turns on him. She doesn’t smack him but she does unleash a torrent of abuse.

Which got me thinking…and then it made me mad. Something about hitting a child is abhorrent. It offends our moral sense. We all felt it that day – particularly the child. The German philosopher, and proud parent, Friedrich Hegel once called spanking a “gangrene of the ethical order.” And it’s true! I don’t see spanking as discipline. I think it’s training. It’s like training a dog. Except most serious dog trainers these days wouldn’t even consider it.

Holding the line with your child is important. Discipline is important. But hitting your child is an ethical fail. Face it. You’ve lost it. You’re not showing the very self-control and discipline you’re supposed to be teaching your kid.

Even if it’s done in a cool, calculating and controlled manner it’s a fail. A double fail. Why? Because it’s an attack on the dignity of another human being. This is what hurts the kid most of all. It’s the loss of his or her precarious sense of autonomy – their emerging sense of dignity. Hitting, beating or the sweeter-sounding “spanking” treats another human being, not as a free (or potentially free) person but as a thing or some property.

If you wish to inspire in your child a sense of the value of other people how on earth can you do this through a direct attack on his or her dignity?

Spanking. It’s a mug’s game.

What is surprising is that the Australian paediatrician who led the study is arguing that there is no way to know whether aggressive parenting causes sleeping problems, or if toddlers who are cranky and overtired cause their parents to be more hostile.”It’s always a cause-and-effect argument and you can’t really conclude from this which occurs first,” said Dr. Harriet Hiscock.

Call me naïve, but I kinda thought it was common knowledge that, “He made me do it!” is not a justifiable excuse for violence—particularly when the “he” is a toddler. Furthermore, the study—which examined sleeping habits when children were one-year-old, and then again two years later—found that “mothers’ parenting style was not a big factor in sleep problems at the age of one, but became an issue by the second study.”

Hmmm, I wonder if the inability to fall asleep that these kids developed over time had anything to do with living with the constant stress of parents who frequently lose their tempers….

Photo: Hank van Stuivenberg/Sydney Morning Herald

Look, I’m usually the first person to denounce smacking a disciplinary measure. But I can’t help but feel for British dad Mark Frearson, who was arrested and taken to a police cell for questioning after a witness saw him smack his 7-year-old on the leg last week while shopping.

Mr Frearson said it was dark and he told son Harry to stay with him. When he realised his son had left the shop there was a ten minute search and he was found outside in a nearby park. He said he smacked Harry once on the back of his leg and the two returned home.

A few hours later, police arrived saying a witness had reported Mr Frearson for “assault”. The officers then took Harry back to his mother’s (which must have been terrifying for the kid) and Mr Frearson was arrested and taken to the police station where he spent the night in a police cell.

The 47-year-old has made a formal complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission about the ordeal.

He said the police reaction was “massively over-the-top” and the experience was traumatic for his son.

Mr Frearson, from Plymouth, Devon, said: “I find it shocking how easy it is to have someone arrested. To think that all this happened on the back of one allegation.
“I appreciate the police’s concern but even if they felt they had to take Harry away I don’t understand why they felt it necessary to arrest me and lock me up before interviewing me or the witness.

Just a bit over the top, don’t you think? Especially in the light of the dreadful child abuse allegations that have come out of the UK in the past week.

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The majority of parents raise their hands to their children
from time to time. And the vast majority of people who physically punish their kids are loving, devoted parents. They don’t see anything wrong with spanking
or slapping their kids, and this view is all but condoned by our society. This
makes sense: a quick slap or a spanking is bound to stop misbehaviour in the
moment.

But, as the child psychiatrist Alan E. Kadzin argues, corporal punishment not only does not permanently change behavior; it actually increases
aggressive and noncompliant behavior in the long run. And children who are hit
by their parents are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, to
do poorly in school, and to have strained relationships with their parents. That’s
a whole lot of good reasons not to ever raise your hands to your children,
especially since corporal punishment is likely to become increasingly severe
and frequent over time.

Unfortunately, these clear scientific findings are not
enough to change parents’ behavior. 85 percent of adolescents have been
corporally punished by their parents. This high number may be partly explained by studies finding that people who are
confident in their parenting abilities are impervious to science that goes
against their parenting style. So when society says that hitting children is
okay, and a parent finds that hitting stops a child from talking back in that moment, the parent is unlikely
to listen to a psychologist claiming that hitting doesn’t work.

Societal thinking must change before parents’
views on corporal punishment change. In 23 countries, it is illegal for
parents to hit their children, and parents in these countries are, not
surprisingly, more likely to view physical punishment unfavorably. In the United
States, however, the prevailing wisdom is that
parents have the right to discipline their children as they see fit, within
certain obvious limits. But, as Kadzin argues, if it’s illegal for an adult to hit another adult,
why should it be okay for adults to hit the smallest, most defenseless
people?

Interestingly, and disturbingly, the United States
is one of only two countries that has not ratified the U.N.’s Convention on the
Rights of Children. The obvious argument against ratification is that it would infringe
on parents’ rights, since it forbids violence against children, even in the home. But the less obvious argument is that it would prevent 17-year-olds from entering the armed forces.

I don't think science has a fighting chance of defeating that brand of national wisdom.

Image: bible.ca

The mother’s anger was so violent that, as I walked away from this sad scene, even I felt a little frightened. I could only imagine how the woman's rage had affected her young daughter. As I walked home, I felt completely helpless. I wondered if I had done the right thing to simply walk away. How else, I asked myself, could I have responded? I felt pretty certain that alerting one of the park's police officers wouldn’t have helped; most likely the only outcome would have been to make both the mother and her daughter feel even more freaked out. And telling the mother not to hit her child would have only increased her rage–who was I to tell her how to raise her children?

I thought of a story my mum had told me recently about a friend of hers. While walking in a supermarket, a man had seen a mother forcefully hit her small child, who kept reaching out for food items from her seat in the grocery cart. The man gently approached the mother, and made a sympathetic comment to the effect of, “I know how hard it can be with young children. It feels like they just won’t listen.” As the man spoke about his own difficulties with parenting, the mother started crying. “I know I shouldn’t hit her,” she said, “and I try not to. But it's so hard.” They spoke for a long time about other ways to discipline children. The mother was at her wit’s end, and really needed someone to simply ask if she was okay.

I hope the next time I encounter a child being mistreated, I am brave enough to try out this method of honest engagement. Has anyone ever tried confronting an enraged parent in this, or any other, way? 

Photo: Spiritual Reseach Foundation 

A new study has found that harsh discipline and parental stress is increasing the risk of mental health troubles in young children. Children as young as three have been diagnosed as suffering from depression and anxiety.

The study, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, followed more than 700 toddlers, aged between seven months and three years, to reveal the risks of parenting practices.

“Study author and child psychologist Dr Jordana Bayer said constant smacking and yelling at a child was fuelling abusive behaviour.

“We are not talking about a parent who smacks just once,” she said.

“Remember when parents smack or hit their child, they might learn to do that as well. When parents are stressed, it’s more challenging to be relaxed and respond to their children in ways they would like to respond to them.”

Children subjected to physical punishment are more likely to kick, hit and bite others and become socially withdrawn.

Parents who continue to smack their abusive children could be setting them on a path of alcohol and drug abuse, crime, unemployment and suicide.”

The problem seems to be increasingly stressed-out parents who are taking their frustration out of their kids. It always amazes me that childbirth classes are widely available but the real hard stuff — parenting — is difficult to get help for.

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