Violence will breed Violence, that’s why it’s always been illegal

Once they stopped smacking everything became better…

“Once I started smacking, I noticed it would escalate – the children started hitting each other and would also react violently to discipline. So I would have to maintain the strong-arm tactics, and they also escalated until I had become a bully,” he wrote.

…

He said yesterday that the couple’s 4-year-old son used to “come out fighting straight away” when he anticipated a smack, and that his 2-year-old sister copied him.

“It developed an era of nastiness,” he said. “He would be very belligerent. We had to be belligerent back. Because we had bought into the physical nature of discipline, he knew that was going to be the result of it so he would start fighting before it even started.

“It just developed into an era of conflict in everything. From our gentle and careful parenting, it was becoming aggressive parenting.”

I’m glad this family stopped whatever it was they were doing. Clearly something wasn’t working. So that’s a good thing.

There appears to be a lot missing from this article.

• What exactly was their “gentle and careful” parenting style?
• Did it involve any concept of parental authority?
• If not, why did they expect the child to suddenly respect that authority?
• Why did they start smacking? Was it because their children were getting out of control?
• How did they “smack”? Did they just run up to the kid and whack him or sit him down and calmly talk to him and explain his offense first?
• Why did he become a bully? Why did they feel they had to be belligerent back rather than loving and firm?
• Clearly they evaluated what they were doing and decided (correctly) it wasn’t working. Did that evaluation include a consideration that they might be “smacking” the wrong way?

I have no problem with people deciding which form of dicipline is right for their child – it’s good that this family have found something that works for them. But just because they have decided something is not right for them does not give them or anyone else the right to place a blanket ban on everyone else who may find smacking a very useful and effective tool.

But later in the article, the matter becomes clear.

Now the parents try to be firm but calm. Mr Hodge quoted a recent incident when his son refused to put his shoes on to go out.

“I leaned right into him, kept a calm voice, even slowed it down more, and said, ‘Stop what you are doing right now and let’s go’,” he said.

Which is exactly what he should have been doing anyway. Stay calm, and lower your voice to ensure the child knows you are serious.

“As soon as you lose your temper or force the issue on to him, he fights back, so it’s important not to lose your temper, and explain carefully. He does cotton on that this is serious and you have to do it straight away.”

Ah. So the problem was actually the parent loosing his temper – not smacking. Which means he wasn’t smacking at all, he was getting angry and taking it out on his child – abusing him.

It was escalating. Good discipline teaches control, so by definition should be controlled itself. Since when does controlled dicipline escalate into bullying?

One of the problems around this debate is that the government spent many years putting resources into telling parents that smacknig was violent. They have spent zero dollars telling parents how to use physical discipline reasonably.

So we get cases like this, where what is clearly bad parenting gets labled “smacking”, and good parents are lumped in with abusive ones.

What do the researchers say?

“I have looked at just about every study I can lay my hands on, and there are thousands, and I have not found any evidence that an occasional mild smack with an open hand on the clothed behind or the leg or hand is harmful or instils violence in kids,” she said.

“I know that is not a popular thing to say, but it is certainly the case.

“The more honest researchers have said, let’s be honest, we all wish we could say it’s all very clear and that no parent should ever lift a finger on a child – although I think that is totally unrealistic as a single parent myself – but the big problem is that a lot of the studies have lumped a whole lot of forms of physical punishment together.”

Dr Millichamp said the Dunedin study so far found no evidence of the “slippery slope” theory – that parents who started off smacking often progressed to abusive punishments.

“We couldn’t find any,” she said.

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