Spanking children: choose a "healthy" discipline, according to pediatricians

In a new policy statement published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, the group of pediatricians recommends that adults who care for children apply "healthy forms of discipline" – such as positive reinforcement of appropriate behaviors, limits and definition of expectations – and not use spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, insulting, humiliating or shaming.

The policy statement updates guidelines issued in 1998 which recommended that "parents be encouraged and helped to develop methods other than spanking in response to undesirable behavior".

"In the 20 years since the publication of this policy, a lot of additional research has been done, and we now say with much greater force that parents should never hit their child and should never use verbal insults. who would humiliate or humiliate the child, "said Dr. Robert Sege, first author of the statement of principles and pediatrician at the Floating Children's Hospital of Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

The policy statement describes corporal punishment as "non-abusive and open frauds to change the behavior of children" and indicates that spanking is considered a form of corporal punishment.

How to discipline without spanking

The statement encourages pediatricians to advise parents of their patients when they desire advice on the use of spanking. Sege said that there are other forms of discipline that parents can employ, regardless of the age of their child.

For example, for children under the age of one who could behave badly, "the best thing to do is just pick them up and move them around, distract them, change the subject – and that's usually all. what they need and they can do it, "he said. "Your average 6 month old child does not have the ability to learn the rules.They will eventually become one."

"What we are talking about to parents is to pay attention to your child's good behavior and pay less attention when they behave badly," Sege said.

"Children love the attention, they feel like it, and if they behave badly, we recommend something called a timeout," he said. "If they're 2, you have to ignore them for two whole minutes."

According to Mr. Sege, for older children, it can be effective to let the natural consequence of misconduct be played out.

"So, if they run into the street, you do not want the natural consequence to be that they get run over by a car." But a natural consequence could be that they have to hold your hand when they are in the street or they can not go out alone to a busy street before they have seen them always back and forth, "said Sege.

In other words, holding the hand of mom or dad becomes the consequence.

Overall, "the love relationship between a child and his parents is the most important relationship," said Sege.

"Parents can use this relationship to teach their children to avoid harm, without putting violence, shame and humiliation into it," he said. "As a result, children are more likely to grow up feeling secure and positive, knowing how to regulate their own behavior."

Science on spanking and child development

Yet Ryan, who has studied the use of corporal punishment, noted that only a correlational relationship has been established, not a cause-and-effect relationship.

"No one has randomly assigned children to receive different types of parenting strategies or disciplinary strategies, in and of itself … so it's hard for anyone to say that spanking a child makes him or her more aggressive by As a result, even if there are any theories suggest that this could be the reason why the correlation exists, "Ryan said.

"Although all the evidence is correlational, there is little correlational evidence that it is an effective strategy, and if it were effective, you should see correlational evidence," she said. she declared.

"If it was an effective strategy, you would see no correlation between spanking and child behavior, or you would see a correlation that would be the opposite of what you see," she said. declared. "What you see is a positive correlation between spanking and higher levels of behavioral problems.If that was effective, you should see the opposite."

Since the research shows only a correlation relationship, some wonder if children who are more aggressive or misbehave are more likely to be spanked afterwards. And could that be the reason why corporal punishment has been associated with more serious behavioral problems in children?

"There is probably a reverse cause-and-effect relationship, but some longitudinal research suggests that when children are examined over time – taking into account basic misconduct rates – children who experience Non-corporal punishment, which has the same kind of behavioral problems, shows an increase in behavioral problems over time, in a way that children who are not disciplined in this way do not, "said Ryan.

"So yes, it's probably true that children predisposed to inappropriate behavior for any reason are more likely to be spanked by parents who use this form of discipline than children who are less likely to behave badly for some reason, "he said. "But it is also true that spanking is correlated with an increase in behavioral problems over time in children with similar levels of reprehensible behavior compared to nonphysical forms of discipline."