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Wednesday, August 28, 2002

To spank or not? Old idea gets paddled around

By ANNE GEGGIS | News-Journal Staff Writer

DAYTONA BEACH — Child-rearing trends change, but the spanking debate won't go away.

Outrage greeted the revelation that the leading candidate to run the state's scandal-racked Department of Children & Families is associated with a paper in favor of spanking and wrote one himself.

In some circles, Jerry Regier, who ran the Oklahoma Health Department for five years, is being roundly lambasted for his ties to the fundamentalist group, the Coalition on Revival, which published "The Christian World View of the Family." The 1988 paper that listed Regier as "co-chairman" says that spanking that results in welts and bruises is not child abuse. Regier himself wrote an article 14 years ago that used biblical allusions to urge that physical discipline be used. "Smite him with the rod . . . save the soul," Regier wrote.

Those sentiments have stirred protests from the state Democratic Party and area child psychologists. "There should be more people coming out and saying, This is not the person we want in charge of an agency that deals exclusively with children,' " says Jo Ellen Rogers, a Daytona Beach licensed behaviorist, who works primarily with children.

Other signs suggest that most Americans' views have evolved far from the days when beating children was socially permissible.

For example: paddles have long disappeared from public schools, published research has linked more spanking to less success in adulthood, and state law has specifically prohibited discipline that leaves bruises or welts. Also, rules prohibit foster parents from using corporal punishment on their charges; within the last 24 months DCF started a program that shows them "positive parenting" techniques to help them control children who are often exhibiting the most challenging kind of behaviors.

But opposition to spanking is by no means universal. A majority of Americans — 55 percent — believe it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking. That view is more prevalent in the South, with 63 percent saying it's necessary, according to a 1999 national survey by the Los Angeles-based Children's Institute International.

Regenia Proskine, clinical director at the House Next Door, a marriage and family counseling center in DeLand, says it's unfortunate that spanking has been cast in black and white terms. The shape of that debate, in many cases, has taken away parents' ability to determine what's best for their particular child. What needs to happen, Proskine says, is a discussion about what is healthy correction and what's not.

"When I grew up, I was spanked," says Proskine, a registered play therapist. "I didn't like it, but I didn't feel abused and it didn't scar me for life.

"My parents, with spanking and other modes of discipline, taught me integrity, values andself-discipline," she adds.

She took the example of a child in danger of running into traffic or about to touch a hot stove: "There are times when the immediacy of the moment requires getting their attention. A pop on the behind is not going to emotionally scar the child."

Frank Collins, who taught physical education in upstate New York public schools from 1965 to 2000 and now works at the Port Orange YMCA, says that he thinks that the decline of kids' manners and decorum is partly due to the emerging reality that few consequences result from their actions.

"I think spanking has its place," says Collins of Port Orange, who once worked as an athletic director, coach and dean of students. "A good pat on the backside could be beneficial for improving the behavior."

Proskine's belief that spanking is one of a number of tools for parents is tempered by what she's seen done in the name of correcting a child as a child abuse investigator for New York, however.

"I've also seen kids who are spanked mercilessly," she says. "And that spanking had a far different effect than the kind my parents gave me. Good discipline is not as much about punishment as it is about teaching. When you get too punitive, you lose that message and lose that opportunity for a child to understand the ramifications of his behavior."

Linda Hunt, a Port Orange mother of five children who range in age from 7 to 18, says that she believes that spanking should be "loving discipline" that's used only at certain ages and in particular situations.

Physical punishment is administered only to the rear end and reserved for those times when her children have exhibited defiant disobedience, she says.

"Your voice is the one that's in charge to direct their path," Hunt says. "You're responsible for those children. They are young and they don't know, so it's very important that they heed your voice."

Her eldest child, Katie Hunt, 18, says she thinks her mother's approach has been helpful.

"Your actions, if they are bad actions, need to be corrected or you're going to run all over the place," says the Spruce Creek High senior.

Discipline in the Hunt household has always been a process, Katie says, with the offender waiting in his or her room for the punishment. Hugs came after the paddling, she says.

"It wasn't like, I'm mad at you, so I'm going to hit you,' " Katie says.

Too often, though, spanking does occur in a moment of anger, says Daytona Beach's Rogers, who has her doctorate in psychology.

"Usually you do it when you get really angry and when you don't think there's any other way to control the behavior," Rogers says. "The child learns that hitting is an acceptable response to being angry."

She recommends sending kids to bed early, time-outs and withholding privileges as alternatives to spanking.

Tammy, a Daytona Beach mother of four children, ranging in age from 5 to 12, says that she's had to use physical means to stop fighting between her two eldest children, but corporal punishment is more of a last resort.

"As I've aged, I have re-evaluated disciplinary measures," the stay-at-home mom says. "I'm more apt to verbally defuse the situation or sidetrack the situation before I would spank them."

She remembers one situation, however, that she felt that a spanking was the most appropriate response. As she loaded the children into a car, one of her twin girls, then 3, began running around the car.

"I'm screaming, "Stop! Get back here!" and she's laughing," Tammy said. "We did a full circle around the car. I reached out and grabbed whatever I could, which was her hair . . . To her it was a game. But I wanted her to realize that she scared me to death and she could have been hurt."

But then she sees parents in the supermarket that make her cringe, she says.

"I'm not averse to spanking," she says, "but it can get out of hand very easily."

HICI Special Report — Spanking Children: Productive or Destructive?

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