Friday Report Cards

Friday report cards linked to increased incidence of child abuse
By Susan Perry | 12/19/2018
Article

“Many families were raised with spanking, slapping, switching, or ‘whooping’ as a way of life,” Laskey writes. “Helping parents to see a new way of doing things that is actually helpful to a child’s development and to understand what we now know about the harm that comes from corporal punishment is important to ending this behavior.”

Although parents do not usually intend to cause physical abuse when they administer corporal punishment, “it should also be recognized that rarely are people calm and deliberative in the moment of anger when they are hitting their child,” she says.

As I reported in Second Opinion last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents about 67,000 pediatricians across the United States, recently issued an updated policy statement, which states unequivocally that parents should not use spanking or any other form of corporal punishment — defined as “noninjurious, open-handed hitting with the intention of modifying child behavior” — on their children.

The pediatricians also warn parents to avoid verbal abuse — language that “belittles, humiliates, denigrates, scapegoats, threatens, scares, or ridicules the child.”