TIME - April 12, 2010
Study: Spanking Kids Leads to More Aggressive Behavior
By Alice Park
Disciplining young children is one of the key jobs of any parent — most people would have no trouble agreeing with that. But whether or not that discipline should include spanking or other forms of corporal punishment is a far trickier issue.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not endorse spanking for any reason, citing its lack of long-term effectiveness as a behavior-changing tactic. Instead the AAP supports strategies such as time-outs when children misbehave, which focus on getting kids to reflect on their behavior and the consequences of their actions. Still, as many parents can attest, few responses bring about the immediate interruption of a full-blown tantrum like a swift whack to the bottom.
Now researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet against the use of spanking: of the nearly 2,500 youngsters in the study, those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 were more likely to be aggressive by age 5. The research supports earlier work on the pitfalls of corporal punishment, including a study by Duke University researchers that revealed that infants who were spanked at 12 months scored lower on cognitive tests at age 3.
"I'm excited by the idea that there is now some nice hard data that can back up clinicians when they share their caution with parents against using corporal punishment," says Dr. Jayne Singer, clinical director of the child and parent program at Children's Hospital Boston, who was not involved in the study.
Led by Catherine Taylor, the Tulane study was the first to control simultaneously for variables that are most likely to confound the association between spanking and later aggressive behavior. The researchers accounted for factors such as acts of neglect by the mother, violence or aggression between the parents, maternal stress and depression, the mother's use of alcohol and drugs, and even whether the mother considered abortion while pregnant with the child.
Each of these factors contributed to children's aggressive behavior at age 5, but they could not explain all of the violent tendencies at that age. Further, the positive connection between spanking and aggression remained strong, even after these factors had been accounted for.
"The odds of a child being more aggressive at age 5 if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study began increased by 50%," says Taylor. And because her group also accounted for varying levels of natural aggression in children, the researchers are confident that "it's not just that children who are more aggressive are more likely to be spanked."
What the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, shows is that outside of the most obvious factors that may influence violent behavior in children, spanking remains a strong predictor. "This study controls for the most common risk factors that people tend to think of as being associated with aggression," says Singer. "This adds more credence, more data and more strength to the argument against using corporal punishment."
Among the mothers who were studied, nearly half (45.6%) reported no spanking in the previous month, 27.9% reported spanking once or twice and 26.5% reported spanking more than twice. Compared with children who were not hit, those who were spanked were more likely to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, get frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against others.
The reason for that, says Singer, may be that spanking instills fear rather than understanding. Even if a child were to stop his screaming tantrum when spanked, that doesn't mean he understands why he shouldn't be acting up in the first place. What's more, spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to problems.
For children to understand what and why they have done something wrong, it may take repeated efforts on the parent's part, using time-outs — a strategy that typically involves denying the child any attention, praise or interaction with parents for a specified period of time (that is, the parents ignore the child). These quiet times force children to calm down and learn to think about their emotions, rather than acting out on them blindly.
Spanking may stop a child from misbehaving in the short term, but it becomes less and less effective with repeated use, according to the AAP; it also makes discipline more difficult as the child gets older and outgrows spanking. As the latest study shows, investing the time early on to teach a child why his behavior is wrong may translate to a more self-aware and in-control youngster in the long run.
This article was found at:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1981019,00.html
RELATED ARTICLES:
Corporal punishment slows the intellectual growth of children: researchers
Line between spanking and abuse difficult to determine
Controversial new study on spanking contradicts abundant research that it is counterproductive
"The Spanking Room – A Child's Eye View of the Jehovah's Witnesses"
For fundamentalist Christian group there is No Greater Joy than biblically beating kids into religious submission
Twelve Tribes continue to reject cult label while physically, intellectually and spiritually abusing their children
Harsh discipline of children is a central tenet of Twelve Tribes cult
Child rights advocates in Philippines call on parents, guardians, and other authorities to end corporal punishment
Ignore the Rod: the Parental Rights Amendment Isn’t About Spanking
New Zealand research suggests Maori child abuse only arose after missionaries introduced them to corporal punishment
Posts
Why Spanking Does Not Work
ReplyDeleteA new analysis concludes that spanking fails to alter kids' behavior in the long term. What it does instead is amp up their aggression.
By BONNIE ROCHMAN |TIME | February 6, 2012
Want your kid to stop whatever dangerous/annoying/forbidden behavior he’s doing right now? Spanking will probably work — for now.
But be prepared for that same child to be more aggressive toward you and his siblings, his friends and his eventual spouse. Oh, and get ready for some other antisocial behaviors too.
A new analysis of two decades of research on the long-term effects of physical punishment in children concludes that spanking doesn’t work and can actually wreak havoc on kids’ long-term development, according to an article published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Studying physical punishment is difficult for researchers, who can’t randomly assign children to groups that are hit and those that aren’t. Instead, they follow children over many years, monitor how much they’re spanked, and then take measure of their aggression over time. “We find children who are physically punished get more aggressive over time and those who are not physically punished get less aggressive over time,” says Joan Durrant, the article’s lead author and a child clinical psychologist and professor of family social sciences at the University of Manitoba.
In fact, regardless of the age of the children or the size of the sample, none of more than 80 studies on the effects of physical punishment have succeeded in finding positive associations. “If someone were to hit us to change our behavior, it might harm our relationship with that person. We might feel resentful,” says Durrant. “It’s no different for children. It’s not a constructive thing to do.”
Children who are spanked may feel depressed and devalued, and their sense of self-worth can suffer. Harsh punishments can wind up backfiring because they can foster lying in children who are desperate to avoid being spanked. Later in life, physical punishment is linked to mental-health problems including depression, anxiety and drug and alcohol use. There’s neuroimaging evidence that physical punishment may alter parts of the brain involved in performance on IQ tests and up the likelihood of substance abuse. And there’s also early data that spanking could affect areas of the brain involved in emotion and stress regulation.
Yet, as I wrote last summer in a story about the first real-time study of parents spanking their children, some research has found that up to 90% of parents say they use corporal punishment:
Despite a battery of disciplinary techniques, including the infamous “time out,” redirection and the increasing emphasis on positive discipline (try substituting “hold the cup carefully” for “don’t spill your juice”), spanking and slapping are still pretty popular.
Moms and dads who spank do so because they believe it’s effective, and research actually shows that it is — in the short term. A child reaching for a tempting object will stop if he gets swatted. “It does work in the immediate moment, but beyond that, in most cases, it’s very ineffective,” says George Holden, the study’s author and a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University. “The most common long-term consequence is that children learn to use aggression.”
Case in point: one mother in the study hit her toddler after the toddler either hit or kicked the mother, admonishing, “This is to help you remember not to hit your mother.”
“The irony is just amazing,” says Holden.
continued in next comment...
http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/06/why-spanking-doesnt-work
continued from previous comment:
ReplyDeleteIn some countries, spanking is not a choice. Durrant is currently living in Sweden, where she’s researching child-and-family policies and the evolution of that country’s law prohibiting physical discipline of children. In 1979, Sweden was the first country to pass such legislation; now 32 countries — including much of Europe, Costa Rica, Israel, Tunisia and Kenya — have a similar law.
Neither the U.S. nor Canada has gotten on board. “Whenever I mention the law, there is an assumption that this is government telling me how to raise my child,” says Durrant. “[But in Sweden] they see it as a way to make sure children get the best start possible in life.”
Parents who spank often do so by default. Many, particularly those who were hit themselves, find that spanking is the only disciplinary tactic in their toolbox. Doctors are in a position to change that by educating parents about the stages of normal child development, recommending alternative ways to discipline and referring interested parents to appropriate resources and parenting classes. In Sweden, for example, new parents are hooked up with support groups and given information about developmental stages.
As a result, parents understand their children aren’t being intentional obstructionists; it’s just par for the course. “When children see someone resolve conflict with aggression, they are more likely to learn that behavior,” says Durrant. “Two-year-olds are the most aggressive people in the world. They don’t understand the impact of their behavior, and they can’t inhibit themselves. So the more a child sees someone resolving conflict with aggression, the more aggressive they become.”
A young toddler who upends her cereal bowl on her head probably isn’t being ornery; she’s just curious to see what will happen. Durrant likes to use her son as an example. When he was 3, he dropped his dad’s toothbrush into the toilet. Another parent might have yelled, but Durrant’s academic background helped her realize that he was just experimenting: he dropped objects into water floating in sinks and bathtubs with nary a scolding; why not toilets too? “I explained what goes into toilets and then said, Do you think Daddy is going to want to put that toothbrush in his mouth now?” Message transmitted with no yelling.
P.S. Durrant’s son never dropped anything verboten into the toilet again.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/06/why-spanking-doesnt-work/?xid=newsletter-weekly
ReplyDelete
Childhood abuse may stunt growth of part of brain involved in emotions
ReplyDeleteAlok Jha, The Guardian UK February 13, 2012
Being sexually or emotionally abused as a child can affect the development of a part of the brain that controls memory and the regulation of emotions, a study suggests.
The results add to the growing body of evidence that childhood maltreatment or abuse raises the risk of mental illnesses such as depression, personality disorders and anxiety well into adulthood.
Martin Teicher of the department of psychiatry at Harvard University scanned the brains of almost 200 people who had been questioned about any instances of abuse or stress during childhood. He found that the volumes of three important areas of the hippocampus were reduced by up to 6.5% in people exposed to several instances of maltreatment – such as physical or verbal abuse from parents – in their early years.
"The exquisite vulnerability of the hippocampus to the ravages of stress is one of the key translational neuroscience discoveries of the 20th century," wrote Teicher on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Early clues of the relationship came when scientists found that raising stress hormones for extended periods in rats reduced the number of neurons in the hippocampal areas, a result that has since been replicated in many non-human primates.
Other work has shown that people with a history of abuse or maltreatment during childhood are twice as likely to have recurrent episodes of depression in adulthood. These individuals are also less likely to respond well to psychological or drug-based treatments.
In the new study, Teicher's team scanned the brains of 73 men and 120 women aged between 18 and 25. The volunteers filled in a standard questionnaire used by psychiatrists to assess the number of "adverse childhood experiences".
Overall, 46% of the group reported no exposure to childhood adversity and 16% reported three or more forms of maltreatment, the most common being physical and verbal abuse from parents. Other factors included corporal punishment, sexual abuse and witnessing domestic violence.
The sample did not include people on psychiatric medication or anyone who had been exposed to other stressful events such as near-drownings or car accidents.
Andrea Danese, a clinical lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who was not involved in the study, said Teicher's results took scientists a step closer to understanding the complex relationship between childhood maltreatment and brain development. "The large sample size allows for reliable detection of even comparatively small effects of maltreatment on the brain, whereas the recruitment from the general population allows for a less biased interpretation of the study, which builds on previous research often carried out in psychiatric patients."
continued in next comment...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/13/childhood-abuse-growth-brain-emotions
continued from previous comment:
ReplyDeleteThe high-resolution brain imaging analysis allowed Teicher to home in on minute areas of the hippocampus and explore the association between maltreatment and this brain region in finer detail than ever before. "This is important because not all areas in the hippocampus are equally sensitive to the effect of stress mediators, such as cortisol and inflammatory biomarkers," said Danese. "Thus, the authors took advantage of this gradient to indirectly test the mechanisms through which childhood maltreatment could affect the brain."
One limitation of the study might be that it required the volunteers to recall their childhood experiences, added Danese. "The findings are based on the perceptions and memories that participants have of their childhood rather than on objective events. This may be problematic because some groups of individuals could be more or less prone than others to report experiences of maltreatment. This 'recall' bias has been described in individuals with a history of depression, who may be more likely to report abuse."
However, Teicher's team was able to test whether a history of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder might explain his observed effects of childhood maltreatment on the hippocampus, and showed that the results were independent of these factors.
Danese said future studies would need to clarify further the direction of the effect. "Although the authors report that childhood maltreatment is associated with smaller hippocampus regions, it is possible that these abnormalities pre-dated and possibly facilitated maltreatment exposure. Longitudinal and twin studies will help to clarify this issue."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/13/childhood-abuse-growth-brain-emotions
Spanking may be linked to later mental disorders
ReplyDeletePositive reinforcement techniques preferred for discipline
CBC News July 2, 2012
Adults who were subjected to physical punishment such as spanking as children are more likely to experience mental disorders, say Canadian researchers who encourage other forms of discipline.
Monday's issue of the journal Pediatrics includes a study on the proportion of illnesses such as depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse as well as personality disorders that may be attributable to physical punishment.
Physical punishment was defined as pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping and hitting in the absence of more severe maltreatment of a child through physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect or exposure to intimate partner violence.
"It definitely points to the direction that physical punishment should not be used on children of any age and we need to be considering that when we're thinking about policy and programs so we can protect children from potentially harmful outcomes," said study author Tracie Afifi, who is in the department of community health sciences at the University of Manitoba.
Afifi hopes the findings from the study that involved more than 34,000 U.S. adults will make parents think twice about spanking.
Afifi acknowledged it's not a causal effect and the study design can't prove the link, but she said the statistical association is clear.
"Parents need to be aware of this relationship," Afifi said.
A surprising finding was that increases in education and income were associated with higher odds of harsh physical punishment, the researchers said.
"It is important for pediatricians and other health-care providers who work with children and parents to be aware of the link between physical punishment and mental disorders based on the study," Afifi's team concluded.
The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly opposes striking a child for any reason and the Canadian Pediatric Society recommends that physicians strongly discourage the use of physical punishment.
The authors suggested a more explicit position that spanking, smacking and slapping should not be used with children of any age.
Spanking is outlawed more than 30 countries. It is legal for parents to use physical punishment on their children in Canada and the U.S.
"Everybody's tempted when kids are bad, but there are other ways of teaching your kids the right behaviour," said mother Nikki Quinn of Halifax.
Afifi recommends children be disciplined with positive reinforcement techniques, which have been reviewed and supported in medical literature.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/06/29/spanking-mental-health-drug-abuse.html
Spanking: Parenthood's Dirty Little (and Common) Secret
ReplyDeleteby Claire McCarthy, M.D., Huffington Post July 2, 2012
This week a study was released saying when children are disciplined using harsh physical punishment like spanking, they are at higher risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and other mental health problems -- even if they aren't otherwise abused or maltreated. This is scary, because I just recently read an article in the Boston Globe that said that 70 percent of Americans think that spanking is sometimes necessary -- and 90 percent of parents of toddlers spank them.
Ninety percent?
Clearly, as the article pointed out, this is happening behind closed doors. If you even talk about spanking your kid, let alone do it in public, there's a reasonable chance that social services will be knocking on your door.
Although I wouldn't have guessed 90 percent, I certainly know that parents spank their kids. As a pediatrician, it's part of my job to talk with families about discipline -- and in those discussions, spanking comes up relatively frequently. And when those investigators go knocking at my patients' doors, as part of their investigation they call me. So I've had lots of conversations with families about spanking.
What has been very clear to me is that the vast majority of parents who spank do it in an effort to do the right thing. They aren't out to hurt their kids; they are good parents. The Globe article quoted Dr. Murray Straus, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire who studies the effects of corporal punishment on kids, as saying that people think that spanking will work when nothing else does. From what I've heard from parents over the years, this rings true to me.
Parents see spanking as a way to make their children understand that they are really serious about something. My mother spanked me as a child -- but she reserved it for two circumstances: when I did something dangerous (like running out into the street) or when I told a lie. These were the things she most didn't want me to do, and she saw spanking as the way to get that message across.
But research shows that actually, spanking isn't more effective than any other form of discipline -- and it can end up having effects that parents really don't want. It's not just mental health problems like the current study and other research show. Spankees are also more likely to have trouble controlling their temper -- not surprising, given that so often parents do it in moments of frustration or anger or both. It's not exactly setting the best example for temper control. They may even have a lower IQ.
continued in next comment...
continued from previous comment:
ReplyDeleteThe most common "side effect" of spanking, though, is that spankees are more likely to hit other children. This makes sense to me, and is something I talk about with parents a lot. When you spank a child you are teaching them that hitting is okay -- especially that bigger people can hit smaller people. Is that a lesson you really want them to learn?
Now, not every kid who is spanked turns into a depressed, angry high-school dropout who beats people up. There are plenty of kids who turn out just fine. But if it's not more effective, and there are other ways to discipline your child, why take the risk?
I don't spank my kids. But that doesn't mean I haven't thought about it in those moments when I have either been pushed to the absolute limit of my anger or frustration -- or when one of my children has done something that has scared the bejesus out of me and what I wanted more than anything was to be sure that they never, ever did it again.
But I don't do it. My memories of being spanked are filled with humiliation and pain, and those aren't memories that I want my children to have.
Until I read the Boston Globe article, I didn't know that many countries -- like Sweden, Germany, Spain and Venezuela -- have banned spanking. Attempts to do anything similar even on a local level here in the U.S. have fallen flat pretty quickly.
Although I understand why spanking is parenthood's dirty little secret (nobody wants social services at the door), I wish we could find a way to talk more openly about it. If we don't talk about it, we don't get the chance to help people understand why it can be harmful -- and help them learn about other ways of discipline. If we don't talk about it, we miss a chance to reach out to stressed parents and give them support. Parenthood is really hard work -- we do better at it when we have help.
We all want our kids to be safe, well-behaved and to learn right from wrong. I think we can do that without spanking -- especially if we work together. Only if we work together.
To see the links embedded in this article go to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-mccarthy-md/spanking_b_1608747.html
What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong
ReplyDeleteNegative consequences, timeouts, and punishment just make bad behavior worse. But a new approach really works.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis | Mother Jones, July/August 2015 Issue
LEIGH ROBINSON WAS out for a lunchtime walk one brisk day during the spring of 2013 when a call came from the principal at her school. Will, a third-grader with a history of acting up in class, was flipping out on the playground. He'd taken off his belt and was flailing it around and grunting. The recess staff was worried he might hurt someone. Robinson, who was Will's educational aide, raced back to the schoolyard.
Will was "that kid." Every school has a few of them: that kid who's always getting into trouble, if not causing it. That kid who can't stay in his seat and has angry outbursts and can make a teacher's life hell. That kid the other kids blame for a recess tussle. Will knew he was that kid too. Ever since first grade, he'd been coming to school anxious, defensive, and braced for the next confrontation with a classmate or teacher.
The expression "school-to-prison pipeline" was coined to describe how America's public schools fail kids like Will. A first-grader whose unruly behavior goes uncorrected can become the fifth-grader with multiple suspensions, the eighth-grader who self-medicates, the high school dropout, and the 17-year-old convict. Yet even though today's teachers are trained to be sensitive to "social-emotional development" and schools are committed to mainstreaming children with cognitive or developmental issues into regular classrooms, those advances in psychology often go out the window once a difficult kid starts acting out. Teachers and administrators still rely overwhelmingly on outdated systems of reward and punishment, using everything from red-yellow-green cards, behavior charts, and prizes to suspensions and expulsions.
How we deal with the most challenging kids remains rooted in B.F. Skinner's mid-20th-century philosophy that human behavior is determined by consequences and bad behavior must be punished. (Pavlov figured it out first, with dogs.) During the 2011-12 school year, the US Department of Education counted 130,000 expulsions and roughly 7 million suspensions among 49 million K-12 students—one for every seven kids. The most recent estimates suggest there are also a quarter-million instances of corporal punishment in US schools every year.
But consequences have consequences. Contemporary psychological studies suggest that, far from resolving children's behavior problems, these standard disciplinary methods often exacerbate them. They sacrifice long-term goals (student behavior improving for good) for short-term gain—momentary peace in the classroom.
University of Rochester psychologist Ed Deci, for example, found that teachers who aim to control students' behavior—rather than helping them control it themselves—undermine the very elements that are essential for motivation: autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others. This, in turn, means they have a harder time learning self-control, an essential skill for long-term success. Stanford University's Carol Dweck, a developmental and social psychologist, has demonstrated that even rewards—gold stars and the like—can erode children's motivation and performance by shifting the focus to what the teacher thinks, rather than the intrinsic rewards of learning.
continued below
In a 2011 study that tracked nearly 1 million schoolchildren over six years, researchers at Texas A&M University found that kids suspended or expelled for minor offenses—from small-time scuffles to using phones or making out—were three times as likely as their peers to have contact with the juvenile justice system within a year of the punishment. (Black kids were 31 percent more likely than white or Latino kids to be punished for similar rule violations.) Kids with diagnosed behavior problems such as oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and reactive attachment disorder—in which very young children, often as a result of trauma, are unable to relate appropriately to others—were the most likely to be disciplined.
ReplyDeleteWhich begs the question: Does it make sense to impose the harshest treatments on the most challenging kids? And are we treating chronically misbehaving children as though they don't want to behave, when in many cases they simply can't?
That might sound like the kind of question your mom dismissed as making excuses. But it's actually at the core of some remarkable research that is starting to revolutionize discipline from juvenile jails to elementary schools. Psychologist Ross Greene, who has taught at Harvard and Virginia Tech, has developed a near cult following among parents and educators who deal with challenging children. What Richard Ferber's sleep-training method meant to parents desperate for an easy bedtime, Greene's disciplinary method has been for parents of kids with behavior problems, who often pass around copies of his books, The Explosive Childand Lost at School, as though they were holy writ.
His model was honed in children's psychiatric clinics and battle-tested in state juvenile facilities, and in 2006 it formally made its way into a smattering of public and private schools. The results thus far have been dramatic, with schools reporting drops as great as 80 percent in disciplinary referrals, suspensions, and incidents of peer aggression. "We know if we keep doing what isn't working for those kids, we lose them," Greene told me. "Eventually there's this whole population of kids we refer to as overcorrected, overdirected, and overpunished. Anyone who works with kids who are behaviorally challenging knows these kids: They've habituated to punishment."
Under Greene's philosophy, you'd no more punish a child for yelling out in class or jumping out of his seat repeatedly than you would if he bombed a spelling test. You'd talk with the kid to figure out the reasons for the outburst (was he worried he would forget what he wanted to say?), then brainstorm alternative strategies for the next time he felt that way. The goal is to get to the root of the problem, not to discipline a kid for the way his brain is wired.
"This approach really captures a couple of the main themes that are appearing in the literature with increasing frequency," says Russell Skiba, a psychology professor and director of the Equity Project at Indiana University. He explains that focusing on problem solving instead of punishment is now seen as key to successful discipline.
If Greene's approach is correct, then the educators who continue to argue over the appropriate balance of incentives and consequences may be debating the wrong thing entirely. After all, what good does it do to punish a child who literally hasn't yet acquired the brain functions required to control his behavior?
continued below
WILL WAS STILL wielding the belt when Leigh Robinson arrived, winded, at theCentral School playground. A tall, lean woman who keeps her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, she conveys a sense of unhurried comfort. Central, which goes from pre-kindergarten through third grade, is one of a few hundred schools around the country giving Greene's approach a test run—in this case with help from a $10,000 state anti-delinquency grant.
ReplyDeleteWill, who started first grade the year Central began implementing Greene's program (known as Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, or CPS), was an active kid, bright and articulate, who loved to play outside. But he also struggled, far more than the typical six-year-old, to stay in his seat—or in the room. When he couldn't find words for what was bothering him, he might swing his hands at classmates or resort to grunting and moaning and rolling on the floor. A psychologist diagnosed him with a nonverbal learning disorder, a condition that makes it hard to adapt to new situations, transition between settings, interpret social cues, and orient yourself in space and time. At the beginning of second grade, Central designated Robinson as his aide.
Out on the playground, she approached the boy reassuringly, like a trained hostage negotiator. "Do whatever you need with the belt," she told him gently. "Just keep it away from people." Slowly, Will began to calm down. They walked over to some woods near the school, and she let him throw rocks into a stream, scream, and yell until, at last, he burst into tears in her arms. Then they talked and came up with a plan. The next time he felt frustrated or overwhelmed, Will would tell another staffer that he needed his helper. If Robinson were off campus, they would get her on the phone for him.
A few years earlier, staffers at Central might have responded differently, sending Will to the office or docking his recess time. In a more typical school, a kid who seems to be threatening others might be physically restrained, segregated into a special-ed room, or sent home for the day. Children with learning and behavior disabilities are suspended at about twice the rate of their peers and incarcerated at nearly three times the rate of the overall youth population, government data shows. Will, like most of Central's student body, is white, but for black kids with disabilities the suspension rate is 25 percent—more than 1 in 4 African American boys and 1 in 5 African American girls with disabilities will be suspended in a given school year.
Before Greene's program was put in place, conventional discipline at Central was the norm. During the 2009-10 school year, kids were referred to the principal's office for discipline 146 times, and two were suspended. Two years later, the number of referrals was down to 45, with zero suspensions, all thanks to focusing more on "meeting the child's needs and solving problems instead of controlling behavior," principal Nina D'Aran told me. "That's a big shift."
The CPS method hinges on training school (or prison or psych clinic) staff to nurture strong relationships—especially with the most disruptive kids—and to give kids a central role in solving their own problems. For instance, a teacher might see a challenging child dawdling on a worksheet and assume he's being defiant, when in fact the kid is just hungry. A snack solves the problem. Before CPS, "we spent a lot of time trying to diagnose children by talking to each other," D'Aran says. "Now we're talking to the child and really believing the child when they say what the problems are."
continued below
The next step is to identify each students challenges —transitioning from recess to class, keeping his hands to himself, sitting with the group—and tackle them one at a time. For example, a child might act out because he felt that too many people were "looking at him in the circle." The solution? "He might come up with the idea of sitting in the back of the room and listening," D'Aran says. The teachers and the student would come up with a plan to slowly get him more involved.
ReplyDeleteThis all requires a dramatic change in mindset and workflow. Central School diverted building improvement funds to divide one classroom into two spaces. One side was called the "Learning Center"—a quiet spot for kids to take a break, maybe have a snack, and problem solve before going back into the classroom. The other area became a resource room. The school also committed to 20 weeks of teacher training, with an hour of coaching each week from Greene's trainer via Skype.
Will's breakthrough session happened in first grade, after several failed attempts, when D'Aran, then a guidance counselor, and his teacher sat down with him. He'd been refusing to participate in writing lessons with his classmates. Over 45 minutes, they coaxed Will through the initial moans and "I don't knows" and finally landed on a solution: Will said if he could use lined paper that also had a space to draw a picture, it would be easier to get started writing. Before long, he was tackling writing assignments without a problem.
GREENE, 57, HAS curly brown hair, glasses, and the habit of speaking in complete paragraphs, as though he's lecturing a psychology class instead of having a conversation. At the annual conference of Lives in the Balance, the nonprofit he founded to promote his method and advocate for behaviorally challenging kids, I watched him address a crowd of around 500 teachers, psychologists, and other professionals. His baby face and tweedy blazer called to mind a high school social-studies teacher, but he worked up a full head of steam as he spoke of millions of kids being medicated and punished for misbehavior.
The children at risk of falling into the school-to-prison pipeline, Greene says, include not only the 5.2 million with ADHD, the 5 million with a learning disability, and the 2.2 million with anxiety disorders, but also the 16 million who have experienced repeated trauma or abuse, the 1.4 million with depression, the 1.2 million on the autism spectrum, and the 1.2 million who are homeless. "Behaviorally challenging kids are still poorly understood and are still being treated in ways that are adversarial, reactive, punitive, unilateral, ineffective, counterproductive," he told the audience. "Not only are we not helping, we are going about doing things in ways that make things worse. Then what you have to show for it is a whole lot of alienated, hopeless, sometimes aggressive, sometimes violent kids."
Greene was trained in behavior modification techniques—a.k.a. the Skinner method—as are most people who work with families and children. But in his early clinical work as a Virginia Tech graduate student, he began to question the approach. He'd get parents to use consequences and rewards, but the families kept struggling mightily with the basics—from dressing to chores and bedtimes. To Greene, it felt like he was treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
continued below
Around the same time he learned about new brain research by neuroscientists who were looking at brain functions with powerful fMRI machines. They found that the prefrontal cortex of our brains was instrumental in managing what is called executive function—our capacity to control impulses, prioritize tasks, and organize plans. Other research suggested that the prefrontal cortexes of aggressive children actually hadn't developed, or were developing more slowly, so that they simply did not yet have brains capable of helping them regulate their behavior.
ReplyDeleteBut brains are changeable. Learning and repeated experiences can actually alter the physical structure of the brain, creating new neuronal pathways. Nobel laureate Eric Kandel found that memory may be stored in the synapses of our nervous system. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for studying the Aplysia, a very simple sea slug, and discovering that when it "learned" something, like fear, it created new neurons.
The implications of this new wave of science for teachers are profound: Children can actually reshape their brains when they learn and practice skills. What's more,Dweck and other researchers demonstrated that when students are told this is so, both their motivation and achievement levels leap forward. "It was all sitting there waiting to be woven together," Greene says. He began coaching parents to focus on building up their children's problem-solving skills. It seemed to work.
By the early 1990s, Greene had earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He moved to Massachusetts, where he began teaching at Harvard Medical School and directing the cognitive-behavioral psychology program at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also began testing his new approach in children's psychiatric clinics that had previously used Skinneresque methods. In 2001, Cambridge Health Alliance, a Boston-area hospital group, implemented CPS, and reports that within a year, its use of physical and chemical restraints (like clonidine, which is a powerful sedative) in young patients dropped from 20 cases per month to zero. A subsequent five-year clinical trial at Virginia Tech involving 134 children aged 7 to 14 validated the method as an effective way to treat kids with oppositional defiant disorder.
By 2001, when The Explosive Child came out in paperback, Greene had become a sought-after speaker, even appearing on Oprah. The first peer-reviewed paper in a scientific journal validating the effectiveness of his model appeared in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and that led to even more invitations to speak at teaching hospitals and other facilities.
In 2004, a psychologist from Long Creek Youth Development Center, a correctional center in South Portland, Maine, attended one of Greene's workshops in Portland and got his bosses to let him try CPS. Rodney Bouffard, then superintendent at the facility, remembers that some guards resisted at first, complaining about "that G-D-hugs-and-kisses approach." It wasn't hard to see why: Instead of restraining and isolating a kid who, say, flipped over a desk, staffers were now expected to talk with him about his frustrations. The staff began to ignore curses dropped in a classroom and would speak to the kid later, in private, so as not to challenge him in front of his peers.
continued below
But remarkably the relationships changed. Kids began to see the staff as their allies, and the staff no longer felt like their adversaries. The violent outbursts waned. There were fewer disciplinary write-ups and fewer injuries to kids or staff. And once they got out, the kids were far better at not getting locked up again: Long Creek's one-year recidivism rate plummeted from 75 percent in 1999 to 33 percent in 2012. "The senior staff that resisted us the most," Bouffard told me, "would come back to me and say, 'I wish we had done this sooner. I don't have the bruises, my muscles aren't strained from wrestling, and I really feel I accomplished something.'"
ReplyDeleteMaine's second juvenile detention facility, Mountain View, also adopted Greene's method, with similar results. Incidents that resulted in injury, confinement, or restraint dropped nearly two-thirds between April 2004 and April 2008.
LIKE THE LONG CREEK guards, staffers at Central were skeptical at first. When an enraged second-grader threw a chair at educational technician Susan Forsley one day, her first instinct was to not let him "get away with it." But she swallowed her pride and left the room until the boy calmed down. Later, she sat down with him and Principal D'Aran, and they resolved that if he felt himself getting angry like that again, he would head for the guidance office, where he'd sit with stuffed animals or a favorite book to calm down. Forsley eventually learned to read his emotions and head off problems by suggesting he take a break. "Is giving him a consequence—suspending him, calling his grandparents—is that going to teach him not to throw chairs?" she asks. "When you start doing all these consequences, they're going to dig their heels in even deeper, and nobody is going to win."
Will had graduated from Central and outgrown most of his baby fat when I arrived for breakfast at his home one Saturday morning. As he and his brothers helped prepare apple pancakes and fruit salad, he took a break to show me "Antlandia," a board game he created to showcase his knowledge of insects. Now in fifth grade, he'd made friends at his new school and was proudly riding the bus—something he couldn't handle before.
Between bites, Will consented to describe his experiences with the teachers and staff at Central School. "When they notice a kid that's angry, they try to help. They ask what's bothering them," he said, spiky brown bangs covering his eyebrows as he looked down at his plate. His mom, Rachel Wakefield, told me later that CPS had trained Will to be able to talk about frustrating situations and advocate for himself. Now, she said, he actually had an easier time of it than his big brother. "It's a really important skill as they enter into adolescence," she said.
From Greene's perspective, that's the big win—not just to fix kids' behavior problems, but to set them up for success on their own. Too many educators, he believes, fixate on a child's problems outside of school walls—a turbulent home, a violent neighborhood—rather than focus on the difference the school can make. "Whatever he's going home to, you can do the kid a heck of a lot of good six hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year," Greene says. "We tie our hands behind our backs when we focus primarily on things about which we can do nothing."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/schools-behavior-discipline-collaborative-proactive-solutions-ross-greene
Government of Canada Pamphlet - What's Wrong with Spanking?
ReplyDeleteThis newly revised brochure, produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada in partnership with the Department of Justice, provides tips on child discipline and positive parenting for different age groups as well as a useful link (bottom of the page) to The Criminal Law and Managing Children’s Behaviour, which describes what actions are acceptable and what may lead to criminal charges.
http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/publications/healthy-living-vie-saine/spanking-2015-fessee/index-eng.php
Tips to Guide Your Child's Behaviour in a Positive Way
Sometimes parents feel frustrated by their children's behaviour and do not know what to do. All children need guidance to help them learn self-control. Positive guidance, or 'discipline', teaches children skills, raises their self-esteem, and strengthens the parent-child bond. Physical punishment is not positive discipline. Children need safe, stable and nurturing relationships with their parents.
This pamphlet provides some tips to help parents guide their child's behaviour in a positive way.
Why Doesn't Spanking Work?
Spanking is not an effective way to change your child's behaviour. Spanking can harm your relationship with your child. Research shows that spanking teaches your child to solve problems with aggression.
Your child needs your guidance.
Your child needs you to be consistent and patient.
Tips to Guide Your Child's Behaviour in a Positive Way
#1 Calm down before you act.
When we get frustrated, we can react without thinking. If you react in ways that are hurtful, you can make the situation worse by scaring your child. Try to breathe deeply when you feel yourself getting frustrated. Wait until your body relaxes and you can think clearly before doing or saying anything.
#2 Think about what you want your child to learn in this moment.
Your child will learn how to deal with frustration by watching how you deal with it. Children who are spanked are more likely to solve their own conflicts by hitting others. To teach children how to be respectful and non-violent, you need to treat them with respect and interact without violence. Show them how it is done.
#3 Consider your child's point of view.
Most of the behaviours that frustrate parents are normal reactions to hunger, tiredness, boredom, restlessness, fear, illness, pain, discouragement, frustration or stress.
Has your child missed her snack?
Was he up late last night?
Did she miss her nap?
Does he need to run outside?
Is she getting sick?
Is there stress in the family?
Ask your child if something is bothering him. When you understand the reason for your child's behaviour, it is easier to handle the situation without losing your temper.
#4 Think about your child's stage of development.
Babies are just beginning to learn about the world. They need to know that they live in a safe place. They often cry because they do not have words to tell you how they feel or what they need. It can be hard to figure out what they are trying to tell you. Babies never cry to make you mad. They just need to be comforted and protected. They need to know that they are safe with you. You cannot spoil a baby. When your baby cries, try:
feeding her
changing his diaper
holding, cuddling and singing to her
rocking or walking with him
continued below
If your baby cannot stop crying and you are feeling stressed out, put your baby in a safe place. Spend a few minutes alone until you feel calmer. Ask for help from family, friends, a doctor or other community resources.
ReplyDeleteRemember, never shake a baby.
Shaking a baby can cause serious brain injury and death.
Toddlers learn by touching and tasting everything. This is how they get to know the world. They are little explorers who want to know what everything is and how everything works. If a child's hand is slapped for touching things, they will be afraid to explore, so they will learn less.
To keep your toddler safe while he explores:
Put dangerous things out of reach.
Distract her with a safe toy.
Use words like 'hot,' 'sharp,' and 'ouch' over and over to teach him about danger.
Always make sure she is in a safe place where you can watch her closely.
Preschoolers want to do things for themselves and make their own decisions. They cannot express or control their feelings very well. When they get frustrated, they often have tantrums. Their emotions take over and this can scare them. Spanking will only scare them more and make the tantrum worse. Instead, you can:
Stay close and keep your child safe.
Take deep breaths.
Stay calm to help your child gradually calm down.
When your child has calmed down, hold him gently and help put his feelings into words. "You were mad because I cut your apple and you wanted to eat it whole." Show your child how to handle strong feelings without yelling or hitting. Teach her how to think of solutions to her problems. Help him to express his feelings using words. If something gets damaged, help your child learn how to fix it.
#5 Create a loving and respectful home.
Adults are important role models. Children learn from watching how adults treat each other, as well as how they treat children. Talk with your child and explain things so she can learn. Show him and tell him you appreciate his efforts. Respect her need to grow, learn and explore. Teach him about safety and distract him from things that can harm him. Respect her need for sleep and healthy food, which greatly affect her behaviour. Have a daily routine. Last but not least, have fun with your child!
Parents are always learning.
All parents need ideas and support.
#6 Do not be afraid to ask for help.
To find out where to find support in your community, ask:
your family doctor
your local public health department
your family support worker
child care centres
family resource centres
child and family service agencies
parenting programs such as Nobody's Perfect
First Nation, Inuit and Métis organizations and health programs
multicultural or newcomer centres
social media support forums
What the law says:
Most forms of physical punishment are considered crimes in Canada.
The provinces and territories also have laws to protect children.
For more information on the law and parenting visit The Criminal Law and Managing Children's Behaviour at:
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/fv-vf/mcb-cce/index.html
States high court backs denial of foster parent bid
ReplyDeleteBy Martin Finucane and John R. Ellement, BOSTON GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 04, 2016
The state was acting within its rights when it denied an application to become foster parents from a couple who practiced corporal punishment and supported the idea of physical discipline such as spanking or paddling, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled Monday.
In its ruling, the court acknowledged that the Department of Children and Family’s decision to deny the application placed a burden on the couple, Gregory and Melanie Magazu, who had said that physical discipline was an integral aspect of their Christian faith.
But the court said that the “burden on the Magazus’ sincerely held religious beliefs” was “outweighed by the department’s compelling interest in protecting the physical and emotional well-being of foster children.”
The court, upholding a Superior Court ruling, also said that “the department’s decision to deny the Magazus’ application is based on a reasonable interpretation of its enabling legislation and related regulations, is not arbitrary or capricious, and is supported by substantial evidence.”
The unanimous opinion was written by Justice Francis X. Spina.
The department was pleased with the ruling, according to a statement from a spokeswoman, Andrea Grossman. A lawyer for the Magazus did not return a call seeking comment.
Justice Robert Cordy, who wrote a concurring opinion, agreed the department was right to ban the Magazus from working as foster parents because their support of corporal punishment conflicted with the need to assure that children who were physically abused are not re-traumatized by being spanked.
But in the opinion, Cordy suggested the Magazus underwent a more rigorous background check because of their religious beliefs. He noted that the Magazus’ application to be foster parents was reviewed — and rejected — by the same office that approved Kimberly Malpass to be a foster mother in 2014. Last August, a 2-year-old girl died in an Auburn home and a 22-month-old was severely injured because of neglect by Malpass, a state investigation found, Cordy noted.
“The only flaw latched onto by the department was the plaintiffs’ explanation that their deeply held Christian religious beliefs included the use of physical discipline (albeit sparingly applied) in the upbringing of their children,’’ Cordy wrote about the Magazus.
Cordy added that “one is left to wonder . . . whether the real problem in this case was not so much the department’s concern for child safety but rather a disagreement with the plaintiffs’ beliefs regarding the upbringing of their children.’’
Joining the Cordy opinion were justices Margot Botsford and Fernande R.V. Duffly.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/01/04/sjc-rules-that-mass-can-withhold-foster-parenthood-from-couple-who-practiced-corporal-punishment/0JeCNel1W95EE9unjKuB9N/story.html
Senator introduces Bill S-206 to amend Canada Criminal Code section on physical punishment of children
ReplyDeleteOn December 8, 2015, Senator Hervieux-Payette introduced Bill S-206, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children against standard child-rearing violence).
http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&billId=8063354
SUMMARY
This enactment removes the justification in the Criminal Code available to schoolteachers, parents and persons standing in the place of parents of using force as a means of correction toward a pupil or child under their care.
It provides the Government with up to one year between the dates of royal assent and coming into force, which could be used to educate Canadians and to coordinate with the provinces.
Criminal Code - Clause 1: Existing text of section 43:
43. Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=8063357&File=24
Peru establishes total ban on physical and humiliating punishment of children
ReplyDeleteby Simon Wilson | Latin Correspondent December 14, 2015
This week Peru became the ninth country in Latin America to approve a total ban on physical and humiliating punishment used against children and adolescents.
Humiliating punishment is defined as any type of treatment employed with aim of controlling a boy, girl or adolescent that offends, denigrates, devalues, stigmatizes or ridicules the child.
This law significantly modifies the existing penal code which up to this point afforded those exercising parental powers a right to “moderately” punish their children. It also affirms for the first time the right of a child to “good treatment.”
Progress
Although the initiative behind the law did not come from Congress, but rather the NGO Training Institute for Adolescent and Child Workers (INFANT), political approval of the law was resounding with 75 members of congress voting in favor, none voting against and only one abstention.
Marcela Huaita Alegre, the minister for women and vulnerable groups, hailed the law, and highlighted its significance in the context of Peru’s progress in implementing human rights conventions. As the law’s supporters argue, banning physical punishment against children serves to establish equality with adults in enjoying the right to a life free from violence.
Peru follows Venezuela, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil and Nicaragua in implementing such measures.
The representative of UNICEF in Peru, Maria Luisa Fornara, also congratulated Peru’s legislators.
“The Congress’ decision signals that different powers of the Peruvian state are committed to respecting and meeting childrens’ rights, recognized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” stated Fornara.
A good example?
The law’s approval was not without some dissension however most notably from evangelical conservative congressman Julio Rosas who abstained from the vote. “I would vote to sanction all forms of violence but have also asked (it be) taken into account, that you maintain the duty of parents to provide a good example and responsible correction”.
On his Twitter account Rosas continued: “Parents’ good example and the use of responsible correction should not have been derogated in congress.”
Many Peruvians commenting on social media doubted the enforceability of the law particularly in Peru’s mountainous communities.
According to UNICEF, 28.6 percent of Peruvian mothers and 25.6 percent of fathers admit to using physical punishments against their children.
http://latincorrespondent.com/2015/12/peru-establishes-total-ban-on-physical-and-humiliating-punishment-of-children/
Mongolia becomes 49th state to prohibit all corporal punishment
ReplyDeleteGlobal Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children March 2016
Mongolia has enacted new legislation prohibiting all corporal punishment of children, including in the home. In February 2016, the Mongolian Parliament – the State Great Hural – passed the Law on Child Protection 2016 and the Law on the Rights of Children 2016, which confirm children’s right to protection from all corporal punishment, explicitly prohibit the use of corporal punishment by parents, carers and others, and put an obligation on parents and other adults caring for and educating children to use non-violent discipline.
Article 7(1) of the Law on the Rights of Children 2016 states (unofficial translation) states:
Children have the right to be protected from crime, offences or any forms of violence, physical punishment, psychological abuse, neglect and exploitation in all social settings.”
Article 2(6) of the Law on Child Protection 2016 states:
All types of physical and humiliating punishment against children by parents, guardians and third parties who are responsible for care, treatment, guidance and education of children and adolescents, during the upbringing and disciplining faulty behaviours of children are prohibited.”
Article 5(4) states:
During educating, upbringing and caring of children, parents, legal guardians, relatives, and teachers shall follow non-violent disciplinary methods.”
The new laws come into force on 1 September 2016.
With this reform, Mongolia becomes the 49th state to prohibit corporal punishment in all settings, including the home. It is the first state in Eastern and South Eastern Asia to achieve this reform.
http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/news/03/2016/mongolia-becomes-49th-state-to-prohibit-all-corporal-punishment.html
Spanking over nude Snapchat photo leads to assault conviction for parents
ReplyDeleteReligious couple hit 14-year-old daughter on buttocks with mini hockey stick and skipping rope
By Jason Proctor, CBC News January 28, 2016
A religious couple in Salmon Arm, B.C., have been convicted of assault for "spanking" their daughter with a mini hockey stick and a skipping rope after learning she had sent nude photos of herself to her boyfriend on Snapchat.
In a case that tests issues of consent, discipline and parental responsibility, provincial court Judge Edmond de Walle found no excuse for the parents' behaviour.
"In this day and age, any reasonable parent would be concerned about a teenager sending nude pictures of him or herself via a cellphone or any other electronic device. The pitfalls and dangers of such activities are well-reported. Such behaviours can lead to bullying and even suicide," de Walle wrote.
"To suggest that responding to such acts by a teenaged daughter (14 going on 15 years), by spanking her with an object, would be educative or corrective, is simply not believable or acceptable by any measure of current social consensus."
2 options: grounding or spanking
The incident occurred in 2015 on Valentine's Day.
It came to the attention of police when the daughter showed bruises on her buttocks to two of her girlfriends, who in turn reported what they had seen to the school principal.
According to de Walle's ruling, the father had previously confiscated the daughter's cellphone because of her renewed relationship with the boyfriend.
But she was still able to use an iPad.
"On reviewing the text messages on the iPad the father discovered messages that referred to his daughter sending nude photographs of herself," de Walle wrote.
"The daughter believed that the photos only lasted a few seconds after transmission using the Snapchat site."
The father confronted the daughter and told her "she needed to respect herself and not throw herself at boys."
He then discussed what form of punishment would be appropriate. "The daughter subsequently recalled that her father offered her two options: to be grounded for a really long time or to be spanked."
continued below
She opted for the spanking.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the decision, the father struck his daughter two or three times with a plastic mini hockey stick about 45 centimetres in length. He then told his wife what had happened.
"The mother became upset and picked up a skipping rope that was in the garage," the decision says.
"She hit her daughter two or three times on her buttocks with the skipping rope. The mother said she was doing this because she loved her daughter."
The hand is for love, not discipline
On the stand, the father, who had no criminal record, described his family as Christian. His father used to discipline him with an orange plastic spoon.
"He testified that the hand is used for compassion and love, not for discipline," de Walle wrote.
"In other words, the father believes that an object, not the hand, must be used when administering discipline."
Legal arguments in the case centred on a child's ability to consent to an assault from a parent and the consideration that goes into "corrective force" used by parents as discipline.
The judge found that the parents were in a position of authority, and she wasn't offered a choice beyond grounding or assault.
"Although the complainant chose a 'spanking,' it was not a fully informed consent with an appreciation of all the consequences," de Walle wrote.
As far as discipline is concerned, the Supreme Court has set out considerations whereby "corrective force" is deemed reasonable as opposed to assault: It must be intended for educative or corrective purposes, and the force has to be reasonable under the circumstances.
The law generally accepts that those rules don't apply to corporal punishment used on children under two or teenagers.
In the case at hand, de Walle found the father had clearly intended the spanking as punishment for sexting.
"The parents took no educative or corrective steps by seeking out expert help or any other assistance," de Walle wrote.
"Their actions were solely punitive and not corrective. In my view, the actions of the parents were also degrading."
The judge also found the use of weapons — "namely the plastic mini hockey stick and the skipping rope" — was not reasonable under the circumstances and amounted to excessive corporal punishment.
He found both the mother and the father guilty of assault. The couple have yet to be sentenced. Their next court date is in March.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/spanking-over-nude-snapchat-photo-leads-to-assault-conviction-for-parents-1.3424108
Parents guilty of spanking daughter granted conditional discharge
ReplyDeleteB.C. couple assaulted 14-year-old with mini hockey stick and skipping rope after finding nude photos
CBC News May 10, 2016
A judge in Salmon Arm, B.C., has sentenced a couple who were convicted of assault for spanking their 14-year-old daughter to a conditional discharge with no jail time or criminal record.
The father and mother — both from Salmon Arm — were found guilty in January for hitting their daughter with a mini hockey stick and skipping rope after learning she had sent nude photos of herself to her boyfriend on Snapchat.
Provincial court Judge Edmond de Walle said the parents were genuinely remorseful for the incident and have completed counselling since then. He added the couple is not a risk to the community, has no criminal record and is highly regarded in Salmon Arm.
However, the judge also said the parents should have accepted responsibility for their actions and pleaded guilty. The Crown had earlier argued the parents didn't do so because they only felt remorse when they realized what they had done was against the law.
The couple's lawyer argued the trial has been hard on the family, and the teenage daughter felt it difficult to go out in public because of the attention it received.
The defence also argued the parents are volunteers with a local school and in the community and a criminal record would impact their ability to continue their service.
Bruises reported to school
The incident took place on Valentine's Day of last year, and only came to light after the girl showed her bruised buttocks to two of her girlfriends, who in turn reported what they had seen to their school principal.
De Walle found no excuse for the spanking. in his judgment, he said although any parent would be concerned about a teenager sending nude photos of herself, responding to these acts by spanking her with an object "is simply not believable or acceptable by any measure of current social consensus."
According to the decision, the father struck his daughter two or three times with a plastic mini hockey stick about 45 centimetres in length.
When he told his wife what had happened, the decision says, she picked up a skipping rope and hit her daughter two or three times on the buttocks.
The parents argued they had disciplined their daughter this way out of compassion and love.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/spanking-trial-nude-snapchat-photos-1.3576416
Read the Provincial Court judgement
R. v. T.F. and T.A.F., 2016 BCPC 6 (CanLII), http://canlii.ca/t/gn3bk
Spare the rod protect the child
ReplyDeleteWith the Trudeau government on the verge of banning spanking, critics ask: why has it taken Canada so long?
By John Barber, United Church Observer - Ethics May 2016
It was more than a decade ago that the great campaign to abolish corporal punishment in Canada collapsed, stopped dead at the bench of the Supreme Court by a jarring 6-3 decision affirming the right of Canadian parents to strike their children.
With that, a powerful social movement backed by more than 400 organizations, including The United Church of Canada, disappeared like a wisp of smoke. Canada seemed destined forever to remain a pariah among the nations that have outlawed physical punishment of children. And despite the court’s attempt to narrow the scope of Section 43 of the Criminal Code, the so-called spanking law, Canadian courts continued to acquit parents of assaults for no reason other than the fact that the victims were their children.
Hope for reform was close to zero when something astonishing happened last year: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, established to redress the harms done to Aboriginal children by residential schools, demanded repeal of Section 43 as the sixth item in a list of 94 “calls to action” in its final report. Corporal punishment, the report declared, “is a relic of a discredited past and has no place in Canadian schools or homes.”
Backed by the unimpeachable moral authority of a commission exploring grave crimes against the most vulnerable families and children, the lost cause suddenly sprang from its court-mandated grave to re-occupy a central place in the national debate. When the new Liberal government promised to enact all 94 of the TRC’s recommendations, it almost seemed as if the debate was over.
“This is a change that will not only benefit Aboriginal children, but every single child in Canada,” says veteran anti-spanking campaigner Kathy Lynn of Vancouver. “It’s time to just get real and acknowledge that children are citizens of this country and deserve the same protection from assault that everybody else gets.”
But this is not the first time that repeal seemed assured. As the public reaction to the contentious 2004 Supreme Court decision revealed, spanking is no relic in many homes. Research suggests that at least half of Canadian parents use corporal punishment, which jibes with other surveys that show about half of Canadians oppose repealing the Criminal Code clause that allows parents who are spankers to defend themselves if charged with assault. The Senate has debated a number of bills to repeal Section 43 since 1996, but none has succeeded.
Like retired Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie, supporters of the law are less convinced about the merits of spanking than they are with keeping the heavy hand of the law out of the home. And there’s no way around it: repealing Section 43 will instantly criminalize behaviour that many still consider normal and even praiseworthy. Judges and ordinary Canadians alike raise the fear of government agents dragging parents into court and ruining families over trivial domestic disputes.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is one of the oldest, most deeply rooted memes of human civilization, said by scholars to have originated with an adviser to the king of Assyria in the seventh century BC, and subsequently collected into the biblical Book of Proverbs. There, it appears in no fewer than six different iterations of varying militancy.
“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,” Proverbs 22:15 instructs, “but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” And if you don’t beat children, Proverbs 23:14 says, they will go to hell.
continued below
The result of such ancient belief is a hardened discrimination that no still-airy political promise will easily overthrow. To understand how hard, it is worth considering that Parliament finally banned the beating of prisoners in 1972. But that same right to basic physical security still eludes our most vulnerable and emphatically innocent citizens. Twenty-first century Canada is more scrupulous about protecting murderers.
ReplyDelete“Children are the only group of citizens in this country we can permissibly assault,” Lynn notes. That fact, she adds, is “outrageous and appalling.” But as every reformer knows, resistance to changing it remains fierce.
Scientific research continues to be the reformers’ best ally. “It’s crazy how much research there is showing what a risk corporal punishment is, even mild and infrequent punishment,” says Associate Professor Joan Durrant of the University of Manitoba, a leading child development researcher and advocate for the repeal of Section 43. “The controversy is in the public,” she adds. “It’s not in the research anymore.”
The earliest scientific studies of spanking showed that it is not especially effective at “correcting” children, and it is more likely to increase their own aggression and promote antisocial behaviour. More recent studies have extended the concern. “Physical punishment is associated with a range of mental health problems in children, youth and adults, including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, use of drugs and alcohol, and general psychological maladjustment,” Durrant and Ron Ensom wrote in a 2012 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “Researchers are also finding that physical punishment is linked to slower cognitive development and adversely affects academic achievement,” they added.
Responding to overwhelming evidence that hitting children does far more harm than good — that spanking children to punish bad behaviour is tantamount to rewarding them with cigarettes for good behaviour — 49 countries worldwide have now banned the practice (See sidebar, opposite page).
“Forty-nine!” Durrant exclaims. “It’s really hard to understand what’s taking us so long. We’re so ready, and it’s just a strange thing to be lagging so far behind other countries.”
The biggest hurdle facing repeal is a commonly held belief in a strong distinction between salutary spanking and harmful abuse. “Parents know the difference between spanking as a disciplinary measure and child abuse,” the conservative Institute of Marriage and Family Canada declared in an op-ed in 2007. “In the first, a loving parent uses some small, symbolic level of force as an incremental measure among others when a child misbehaves; in the latter, a child is subjected to violent force for no reason, or to vicious verbal assaults, or neglect. Even parents who would never spank their own children understand that difference.”
The problem is defining that theoretical bright line in real life. A study on child abuse rates and characteristics of welfare children in Canada, conducted in 1998, found that three-quarters of all substantiated cases of child abuse in the country escalated from physical punishment. “Another large Canadian study found that children who were spanked by their parents were seven times more likely to be severely assaulted by their parents (e.g., punched or kicked) than children who were not spanked,” write Durrant and Ensom in the CMAJ.
“There is no bright line, and we’ve got a lot of empirical evidence that shows why that’s the case,” adds Anne McGillivray, a retired law professor at the University of Manitoba who played a key role in advancing the ultimately failed 2004 Supreme Court case.
As if the mounting evidence weren’t itself enough to fatally blur any lingering confusion between spanking and abuse, Canadians are facing a far more direct challenge to traditional beliefs.
continued below
Few tragedies in human history could better demonstrate how easily well-intentioned physical discipline slides into horrendous abuse than the story of Canada’s residential schools for Aboriginal children. And nothing could lend greater moral force to the campaign to repeal Section 43 than “Call to Action No. 6” of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
ReplyDelete“If there are any children who suffered from the fact that this was considered legal to do, absolutely those children did,” McGillivray observes.
Official rules governing corporal punishment at residential schools were actually very strict, according to McGillivray, who studied the records of several schools in western Canada as part of her research. Those records showed that official “spankings” occurred precisely two times a year at every school. In truth, of course, outright abuse was rampant.
Parents who spank their children might well resent being lumped together with the sort of predator that too frequently stalked residential schools. But as the Supreme Court demonstrated in its own attempt to draw the distinction, the two figures can be hard to separate legally. Far from clearing up controversy, its landmark 2004 decision instead complicated the interpretation of Section 43, sowing fresh doubt among parents, teachers and child protection agencies about the crucial difference between permitted spanking and criminal assault.
Recognizing that there was no consistency in how the law was being applied — notorious abusers were dodging conviction through Section 43 — the court did its best to plug the loophole. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin employed ingenious logic to read modern restrictions into the ancient statute, concluding that Section 43 in fact does not justify the battery of infants under two as well as children over 12; that it does not permit beating any child on the head, nor the use of an implement other than hands when hitting children. “Generally, s. 43 exempts from criminal sanction only minor corrective force of a transitory and trifling nature,” she wrote.
Contrary to decades of lower court understanding, she added, Section 43 does not condone punishment — only “correction.” Therefore, parents who hit their children in moments of frustration and anger are guilty of assault, according to the court, whereas those who spank deliberately and in cold blood are protected.
Critics have accused the decision of being confusing at best. “It’s incoherent,” says McGillivray. “It makes no legal sense whatsoever.” More importantly, according to McGillivray’s research, court-sanctioned child abuse continues to occur in its aftermath.
Although the top court did restrict the overly free use of Section 43, critics say its continued existence has sent a mixed message to lower courts, parents and child protection workers, making it difficult to obtain convictions even in cases severe assault. “It hasn’t solved anything,” McGillivray says.
But the biggest disappointment to critics — as well as the three judges who dissented from the majority decision — is that the ruling ignored the constitutional rights of children. “Section 43 sends the message that a child’s physical security is less worthy of protection, even though it is seen as a fundamental right for all others,” Madam Justice Marie Deschamps wrote in her dissent from the majority opinion. Deschamps denounced the law as “a throwback to old notions of children as property [that] reinforces and compounds children’s vulnerability and disadvantage by withdrawing the protection of the criminal law.”
Deschamps went further, saying Section 43 “perpetuates the notion of children as property rather than human beings,” she wrote, “and sends the message that their bodily integrity and physical security is to be sacrificed to the will of their parents, however misguided.”
continued below
For Durrant the actual motive underlying all arguments in favour of spanking is parental fear of losing an absolute power held with little accountability. “We are always saying children have to take responsibility for their actions, we have to make sure they face consequences, and so on,” Durrant says. “And yet when it comes to us hurting children, we don’t want to have to face any consequences. I find that pretty disturbing.”
ReplyDeleteIt was just such thinking that inspired Sweden to begin to repeal its own version of Section 43 almost six decades ago. “The Swedes did it because they believed it was the right thing to do,” says Durrant. “They didn’t wait for research, they didn’t wait for attitude change. They considered it a human rights issue.”
Sweden’s effort to promote rights-based parenting seems to have worked. “They have a very low crime rate and a very low youth delinquency rate,” says Durrant, who has studied Swedish child welfare policies extensively. “Youth are less involved in crime after the ban than before the ban. . . . Compared to Canada and most other industrialized countries, they have very positive outcomes.”
And although reports of abuse have increased in Sweden since its final ban on corporal punishment in 1979, as they have in many other Western countries, the prosecution rates have not gone up. The feared tsunami of frivolous, potentially home-wrecking prosecutions of trivial breaches never materialized.
The key to Sweden’s success is “not punishment or jailing or anything like that,” according to Durrant. Rather it is a whole network of child welfare and education measures more comprehensive “than anything we’ve ever dreamed of here.”
Working with colleagues in Sweden, Durrant has developed a training program for parents that outlines the harms of spanking and teaches new techniques of positive discipline. It is now used around the world, including Durrant’s hometown of Winnipeg, where Somali-Canadian parents seeking non-violent strategies for reining in troublesome children are particularly receptive. According to Abdikheir Ahmed, a student turned instructor, the program is regularly oversubscribed.
“Everybody tells them, ‘In Canada, you don’t do this, you don’t do that,’ but they have . . . no alternatives to what they knew back home,” says Ahmed. “They’re looking for an alternative, and this fits very well.”
All Canadian parents, not just newcomers, could benefit from similar training. And the information is powerful. A recent study at the University of Ottawa found 38 percent of people surveyed were initially in favour of repealing Section 43. But when presented later with research findings on the effects of spanking and its proven links to abuse, two-thirds of the study participants expressed support for repeal.
Repealing Section 43 will only be a first step on a long road to making Canada a safer place for children, according to Durrant. “There should be a whole campaign around children’s learning and child development. There should be a real focus on children’s well-being and why it matters so much, and a real effort to help parents parent positively and not hurt their children.”
But none of that will make the difference it should as long as the law justifies assault against children. “All of the anti-violence efforts, all of the parent support and education efforts, all of that gets undermined when the law contradicts them,” says Durrant.
Fewer Canadians spank their children than they did a generation ago. But significant numbers still do. There’s little doubt repealing Section 43 will change the country for the better.
“It would be a clear standard,” Durrant says. “And we as Canadians could hold our heads a little higher, knowing that we had stood up for those who have no political voice and are so completely vulnerable and dependent, and said, ‘We are going to protect these little ones.’”
John Barber is a journalist in Toronto.
http://www.ucobserver.org/ethics/2016/05/corporal_punishment/
Risks of Harm from Spanking Confirmed by Analysis of Five Decades of Research
ReplyDeleteUniversity of Texas News April 25, 2016
AUSTIN, Texas — The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan.
The study, published in this month’s Journal of Family Psychology, looks at five decades of research involving over 160,000 children. The researchers say it is the most complete analysis to date of the outcomes associated with spanking, and more specific to the effects of spanking alone than previous papers, which included other types of physical punishment in their analyses.
“Our analysis focuses on what most Americans would recognize as spanking and not on potentially abusive behaviors,” says Elizabeth Gershoff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. “We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents’ intended outcomes when they discipline their children.”
Gershoff and co-author Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, found that spanking (defined as an open-handed hit on the behind or extremities) was significantly linked with 13 of the 17 outcomes they examined, all in the direction of detrimental outcomes.
“The upshot of the study is that spanking increases the likelihood of a wide variety of undesired outcomes for children. Spanking thus does the opposite of what parents usually want it to do,” Grogan-Kaylor says.
Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor tested for some long-term effects among adults who were spanked as children. The more they were spanked, the more likely they were to exhibit anti-social behavior and to experience mental health problems. They were also more likely to support physical punishment for their own children, which highlights one of the key ways that attitudes toward physical punishment are passed from generation to generation.
The researchers looked at a wide range of studies and noted that spanking was associated with negative outcomes consistently and across all types of studies, including those using the strongest methodologies such as longitudinal or experimental designs. As many as 80 percent of parents around the world spank their children, according to a 2014 UNICEF report. Gershoff notes that this persistence of spanking is in spite of the fact that there is no clear evidence of positive effects from spanking and ample evidence that it poses a risk of harm to children’s behavior and development.
Both spanking and physical abuse were associated with the same detrimental child outcomes in the same direction and nearly the same strength.
“We as a society think of spanking and physical abuse as distinct behaviors,” she says. “Yet our research shows that spanking is linked with the same negative child outcomes as abuse, just to a slightly lesser degree.”
Gershoff also noted that the study results are consistent with a report released recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that called for “public engagement and education campaigns and legislative approaches to reduce corporal punishment,” including spanking, as a means of reducing physical child abuse. “We hope that our study can help educate parents about the potential harms of spanking and prompt them to try positive and non-punitive forms of discipline.”
read the numerous links embedded in this article at:
http://news.utexas.edu/2016/04/25/risks-of-harm-from-spanking-confirmed-by-researchers
You got a very wonderful website, Glad I observed it through yahoo.
ReplyDeleteRuby Franke: Parenting advice YouTuber given maximum sentence for child abuse
ReplyDeleteby By Mike Wendling, BBC News February 20, 2024
A Utah mother whose harsh parenting advice made her a YouTube influencer has been sentenced to at least four years in prison for child abuse.
Ruby Franke, 42, tearfully apologised in court as she learned her fate. She previously pleaded guilty to starving and abusing her children.
She appeared along with her former business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, who received an identical sentence.
The judge sentenced them to serve four terms of one to 15 years each.
The sentences will run consecutively and are the maximum for each count under Utah law. How much time each will ultimately serve will be determined by the state's parole board.
Franke will have 30 days to appeal the decision.
In court, Utah prosecutor Eric Clarke said that two of Franke's children, aged nine and 11 at the time, lived in a "concentration camp-like setting" and called her a significant threat to the community.
"The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment," Mr Clarke said.
In court, Franke was in tears following the sentence. She apologised to her children and said: "I was so disoriented that I believed dark was light and right was wrong."
"I was led to believe that this world was an evil place, filled with cops who control, hospitals that injure, government agencies that brainwash, church leaders who lie and lust, husbands who refuse to protect and children who need abuse," she said.
The two women were arrested in August 2023 after Franke's malnourished 12-year-old son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt's house in Ivins, Utah. Police said the child then ran to a neighbour's house and asked for food and water. He had lacerations from being tied up with rope, according to police records.
The arrests marked the end of a long and controversial YouTube career. Franke racked up more than two million subscribers to her channel 8 Passengers, which she started in 2015.
continued below
It was a boom time for parenting vloggers, and she told a local news outlet that filming with her family helped her "live in the present and just enjoy the kids".
ReplyDeleteHer videos showed a typical Mormon suburban family home-schooling, cooking, eating and chatting together.
But fans started to become suspicious in 2020, when one of her sons mentioned that he had been forced to sleep on a bean bag for seven months.
YouTube viewers combed through her archives and pointed out other disturbing and controversial methods used by Franke - such as withholding food, threatening to chop the head off a toy stuffed animal and "cancelling" Christmas as a punishment.
A petition started by one demanding an investigation brought in thousands of signatures and Utah's child protection agency was called, although no legal action was taken at the time. Franke and her husband initially dismissed the criticism and said that some of their clips had been taken out of context.
But the channel began to decline in popularity and was deleted in 2022, the same year Franke and her husband separated.
Franke then began appearing in YouTube videos posted by Ms Hildebrandt - a counsellor and life coach - on her site, ConneXions Classroom.
Away from the camera, however, Franke's children were being subjected to even harsher abuse.
This included tying them up, beating and kicking them, neglecting to feed them and forcing them to work outdoors in the summer without sunscreen, resulting in serious sunburn, according to police records.
In a plea agreement, Hildebrandt stated that she either tortured the children or was aware of the abuse and that she forced one of Franke's daughters to "jump into a cactus multiple times".
Franke told her children that they were "evil and possessed" and needed to "repent".
Through his lawyer, Franke's ex-husband Kevin Franke asked prior to the hearing for the maximum sentence to be imposed and called the abuse suffered by his children "horrific and inhumane".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68353302
YouTuber Ruby Franke’s chilling story shows us that internet culture has given child abuse a new place to hide
ReplyDeleteby Zoe Williams, The Guardian February 21, 2024
When I first started working in the mid-90s, there was a big furore when a US evangelical church produced a leaflet about child-rearing that included detail on the right size of cane to use to punish a six-month-old baby. The story was enough of a scandal that it travelled across the Atlantic – in the old-fashioned way, from a US newspaper to a British one – but it didn’t merit comment, we decided in the end, because it was just a sad story about a bad person. Child abuse exists, and sometimes hides itself under religion: there are wider conversations about whether or not religions could do more at an institutional level to stamp it out, but those, if they’re in good faith, shouldn’t be started by professed atheists, to whom such institutions would be unreceptive. It was also felt at the time that, just because a person says a thing, even goes so far as to print it on a leaflet, one needn’t necessarily react as if they’ve created a movement.
Thirty years on, child abuse still exists, and still sometimes disguises itself as faith: Ruby Franke, a Utah mother of six, was convicted yesterday of aggravated child abuse, on charges so grave that her consequential sentences could amount to up to 60 years in prison. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was a prolific parenting YouTuber until her 8 Passengers channel was taken down by the platform last year. She proselytised harsh discipline, such as withholding food as punishment; but she omitted to mention in the vlogs that she created what a prosecutor called “concentration camp-like conditions” for her children, that she made them do physical tasks in extreme heat without shoes, socks or water, and forced them to stand on hot concrete for hours, sometimes even days, at a time. Her malnourished 12-year-old son, who was bound with duct tape, escaped and asked for help from a neighbour. Police later found his sister in a similarly malnourished state.
It’s a sickening story that fills you with that familiar, arid sadness. To hear of children coming to harm provokes disgust and despair because it should; that’s how we survive, by protecting the young and the small.
But if that much is timeless, the movement-building potential of the online influencer is not. Franke in her pomp had more than two million subscribers, and her videos had been seen 1bn times. She was peddling cruelty across the world, in plain sight, and it is chilling to think of the extent to which she normalised it.
continued below
Meanwhile, over on X, people were reacting to a blogger on Wordpress who was touting a biblical justification for marital rape. Given that it was published in 2018, did it matter any more? Should the platform have done more about it? Was it legitimate even to want to silence him? Did 13m views for the blog in total count as a dangerous new constituency, in which people who would once have been outliers had found their tribe and now furiously justify non-consensual sex to one another? Or is it just the internet, the price for the convenience of which is that someone, probably multiple people, will be publishing some antisocial, as likely as not misogynistic, thing every millisecond of the day?
ReplyDeleteAs all norms around what can and can’t be said have broken down, a notion of parenting has built up, as a general verb, that we should all do the same way if we could only agree what that way was. Part of that is driven by the wild west of social media; if adults don’t know what to make of all this flourishing fundamentalism, or understand what threat, if any, it poses to social harmony and justice, how are kids supposed to grow up around it? So we have quite feverish debates about whether children should have phones, and how much screen time they should get, which ironically creates the space for hyper-authoritarian parenting gurus: if the liberal order is so great, why can’t it make a decision? And why does it make us so anxious?
Ultimately, it wouldn’t have made any difference if YouTube had closed down Franke’s channel sooner: as we’ve seen from Andrew Tate, who was permanently banned from it in 2022, that does nothing to limit a person’s reach. Tate’s content just gets shared by his followers. Besides, Franke didn’t need a vlogger following to abuse her children, and the question of whether or not it intensified her behaviour would be impossible to resolve.
There is no objective measure of proportionality when it comes to the crazy, extreme, inhumane things people say online. Should Franke’s much-vocalised attitudes have been red flags for the authorities sooner? Plainly they should; it shouldn’t have taken her 12-year-old son to escape to a neighbour for this to come to light. But what if she’d actually been a sound parent, self-dramatising and overstating for effect, the way YouTubers usually do? And does the impossibility of distinguishing, remotely, between a drama queen and an abuser in fact create that plain sight for the abuser to hide in?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/21/child-abuse-internet-culture-youtube-ruby-franke
Decolonizing Discipline: Children, Corporal Punishment, Christian Theologies, and Reconciliation
ReplyDeleteby Valerie E. Michaelson (Editor), Joan E. Durrant (Editor) University of Manitoba Press – Sept. 4 2020
In June 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 Calls to Action that urged reform of policies and programs to repair the harms caused by the Indian Residential Schools. Decolonizing Discipline is a response to Call to Action 6––the call to repeal Section 43 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which justifies the corporal punishment of children.
Editors Valerie Michaelson and Joan Durrant have brought together diverse voices to respond to this call and to consider the ways that colonial Western interpretations of Christian theologies have been used over centuries to normalize violence and rationalize the physical discipline of children. Theologians, clergy, social scientists, and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis leaders and community members explore the risks that corporal punishment poses to children and examine practical, non-violent approaches to discipline. The authors invite readers to participate in shaping this country into one that does not sanction violence against children.
The result is a multifaceted exploration of theological debates, scientific evidence, and personal journeys of the violence that permeated Canada’s Residential Schools and continues in Canadian homes today. Together, they compel us to decolonize discipline in Canada.
https://www.amazon.ca/Decolonizing-Discipline-Punishment-Theologies-Reconciliation/dp/0887558658
Violence against children widespread, affecting millions globally
ReplyDelete1.6 billion children (2 in 3) regularly face violent punishment at home; more than two thirds are subjected to both physical punishment and psychological aggression.
UNICEF November 4, 2024
NEW YORK, 4 November 2024 — As world leaders, civil society, advocates, survivors, and young people gather this week for the inaugural Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in Bogotá, Colombia, UNICEF is calling for urgent action to combat violence that devastates the lives of millions of children worldwide.
https://endviolenceagainstchildrenconference.org/
Violence against children – whether physical, emotional, or sexual – is a global crisis happening in homes, schools, communities, and online. Its impacts are severe, leading to injuries, sexually transmitted infections, mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, and death. Early exposure can cause toxic stress, affecting brain development, and lead to aggression, substance abuse, and criminal behaviour. Children who experience violence are also more likely to be affected by cycles of trauma and violence as adults, impacting entire communities.
“We are the first generation to fully grasp the prevalence, causes, and costs of violence against children – and the first to know the solutions that work," said UNICEF Director of Child Protection Sheema SenGupta. “By investing in prevention, education, and support services, we can break the cycle of violence and build a world where children are safe.”
According to the latest available global data:
-- Every 4 minutes, somewhere in the world, a child is killed by an act of violence.
-- About 90 million children alive today have experienced sexual violence.
-- 650 million girls and women (1 in 5) alive today were subjected to sexual violence as children, including over 370 million (1 in 8) who experienced rape or sexual assault.
-- In fragile settings, girls face an even greater risk, with the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in childhood slightly more than 1 in 4.
-- Nearly 50 million adolescent girls aged 15-19 (1 in 6) have been victims of physical or sexual violence by their husbands or partners in the past year.
-- 410 to 530 million boys and men (around 1 in 7) experienced sexual violence in childhood, including 240 to 310 million (around 1 in 11) who were raped or sexually assaulted.
-- 1.6 billion children (2 in 3) regularly face violent punishment at home; more than two thirds are subjected to both physical punishment and psychological aggression.
-- Violence takes the lives of about 130,000 children and adolescents under 20 each year on average.
-- Boys face a higher risk of dying from violence: 3 out of every 4 children and adolescents killed by violence were boys.
-- The risk of dying from violence rises sharply in late adolescence: 7 in 10 children who died from violence were between the ages of 15 and 19, most of them boys.
-- Close to 550 million children (around 1 in 4) live with mothers who are victims of intimate partner violence.
The ministerial conference marks a pivotal opportunity to intensify efforts to end violence and build a future where every child grows up safe. UNICEF is calling for strong political leadership, evidence-based policies and interventions, and adequate finance, urging action in three key areas: 1) universal access to parenting support programmes that promote nurturing care; 2) universal provision of safe and enabling school environments; and 3) targeted response and support services for all children who need them.
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-violence-against-children-widespread-affecting-millions-globally