Discipline debate: Spanking gets a timeout

Still, some parents do spank. Julie Lawrence-Edsell, an actress and mother of 17-month-old and 5-year-old boys in Montclair, N.J., has mixed feelings about the practice. “I was spanked when I was young and it certainly made an impression,” she says. "I don’t know if it should be outlawed but I do know we prefer to talk instead of resorting to physical punishment with our kids.”

Lawrence-Edsell admits her older son has been spanked “maybe once” but she and her husband tend to take privileges away instead to discipline. “When he was younger we would take away his favorite stuffed animal if he wasn’t listening. Nowadays we take away treats, desserts or play dates. It seems to work pretty well,” she says.

10 push-ups for smart-mouthing
So is all physical punishment necessarily wrong? Some parents have developed other inventive ways to make discipline a physical experience as their children got older.

“I tried timeouts, taking away privileges, groundings from TV, computer, games, etc...nothing seemed to bother my sons too terribly much,” says Jackie Joens, a family therapist and mother of two grown boys in Des Moines, Iowa. Joens says she finally discovered a punishment her kids wanted to avoid at all costs: cleaning.

Joens made up a "discipline cleaning list." On the list were jobs that no one ever had enough time to get to: washing the garden furniture; cleaning out drawers, closets and cupboards; polishing silver and scrubbing the deck. “As the boys grew older, the discipline chores advanced with age appropriateness. It worked wonders.”

Deborah and Terry Pope of Richardson, Texas, picked up tricks from their 7-year-old daughter’s martial arts class. “We're always looking for new ways to discipline our daughter, as not much seems to have an effect,” says Deborah. “Lately, we're taking the military route! Since she's enrolled in a martial arts class, we're linking class to home and giving her push-ups — 10 for smart-mouthing or 20 for lying.”

Frick says that whatever you do, consistency is more the point with discipline. But he doesn’t mean that if you hit your kids once you should always hit.

“Usually hitting is done when parents...have lost it and often the punishment doesn’t even fit the final crime,” says Frick. He notes that there are many other discipline options — from timeouts to taking away privileges or any of the ideas above — that can be done calmly and consistently.

Victoria Clayton is a freelance writer based in California and co-author of "Fearless Pregnancy: Wisdom and Reassurance from a Doctor, a Midwife and a Mom," published by Fair Winds Press.

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