On 19 May 2009 a Christchurch father was found guilty of assaulting his son by flicking his ear and punching him in the face. While there has been a lot said about whether the father would have been prosecuted and found guilty under the old law, or should have been prosecuted at all, there has been no examination of case from a parenting perspective.
Dr Joan Durrant, in her book, Positive Discipline: What it is and how to do it, tells us that positive discipline is a way of thinking that focuses on identifying long term goals for children, providing warmth and structure, understanding how children think and feel and teaching problem solving. Key long term goals include encouraging the development of self-discipline and learning to take responsibility. A parent’s role includes guiding the child’s behaviour and modelling appropriate behaviour.
Were the Christchurch children shown by the father what he expected of them at the park and were safety issues explained and demonstrated to them? We don’t know. When the children behaved in a risky fashion and were “corrected” did they understand why their father was so angry? What did they learn from the experience? Perhaps just that when you are really angry its ok to hurt someone. Were they better informed about how to keep themselves safe in the future? Did they feel secure in their relationship with their father? These are relevant questions to ask ourselves when we think about how to respond to our children’s behaviour.
bFM Wednesday Wire’s Paul Deady talked to Deborah Morris-Travers yesterday, and the result was an unusually thorough discussion of the real issues behind the Christchurch “face punch” trial which has been trivialised by many in the mainstream media and in the odd lobby of people who think it’s OK to hit children.
Deborah also discusses the upcoming referendum, and why your YES Vote is so important.
Key points:
It’s significant that it was a jury ruling
The Police had discretion to prosecution, and police the six-monthly reports issued since the 2007 law change show that they are only prosecuting cases where parents have seriously injured their children
The court sentences being handed down in these cases are usually anger management and parenting education courses – which seems entirely appropriate, and provides additional support to the offenders to do their jobs properly as parents.
Parents are not being criminalised – The public is being seriously misled by groups like Family First and the Kiwi Party who are pro-violence against children. These groups have sought to minimise the significance of the issue by referring to this case as the “ear-flicking” case.
These groups collected enough signatures to force an unnecessary and expensive referendum on a stupidly worded question.
Smacking Children is not good parental correction, and there are 92 international studies that show that positive parenting is better, and that hitting children is harmful.
A YES VOTE promotes positive parenting and supports children.
Independent of the Referendum, the Child Discipline Law is scheduled to undergo a full review by the Ministry of Social Development later this year.
John Key has said repeatedly that the law is working well and National continues to support the law.
Public perception of the law is strong – a recent UMR Research poll showed that 43% of the public support the law, 28% are opposed, and the rest are undecided.
Children attain the best behaviour outcomes when they live in an environment that includes good structure, clear boundaries, warm communication, and love.
In homes where parents use violence against their children to correct their behaviour over four years or more, the violence tends to escalate. In many homes where children are abused, the parents say that it started out as punishment, but the punishment has gone badly wrong.
You can help prevent unacceptable behaviour by making sure you don’t put your child into situations which are likely to trigger it.
Children are naturally curious. If you put a small child into a room full of china ornaments, for example, they won’t be able to resist touching them.
Ways of preventing unacceptable or inappropriate behaviour include:
child-proofing play spaces and removing breakable things
providing several kinds of toys to avoid conflicts
varying the tempo of routines to suit each child’s temperament,
using calming rituals such as stories, songs or rocking,
re-focusing your child’s attention onto interesting , safe and acceptable activities
We need to guide our children’s behaviour so they learn what behaviour is appropriate in the different situations they find themselves in—and what behaviour is not appropriate.
The guilty verdict in the Christchurch case of a father who punched his child in the face is clearly the right outcome.
“This incident was trivialised as a case of ‘ear flicking’ to discredit the 2007 changes to Section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961, which provided parents a defence for physical punishment,” says Deborah Morris-Travers, spokesperson for The Yes Vote coalition of child and family focussed organisations who support the Child Discipline Law (Section 59) reforms and are encouraging the public to show support for the law in the forthcoming referendum.
“Now that all the evidence has been heard in a court, this case can be seen for what it is – a serious assault on a child and not the “poster-boy” cause for opponents of the law that was widely portrayed. Arguably, this case never had anything to do with Section 59, given it involved a simple assault.
“However, the Christchurch case demonstrates why it remains so important that New Zealand law clearly opposes violent parenting practices as not only unnecessary and ultimately ineffective, but also damaging for children and family relationships.”
The guilty verdict in the Christchurch child assault case was always likely. Why would the bystanders have called the police and why would the police have taken a prosecution unless there had been a serious assault? The ear flicking label was given by the father and taken up by the media and the child-beating lobby. It was always an unlikely story.
The trouble is that this has supported the father in his self-justification instead of helping him to find a way of dealing with the violence in his relationship with his children.
Sections of the media seem determined to trivialise this issue. They have run with the ‘anti-smacking bill’ headline for four years. Why did they take at face value the father’s ear-flicking story when witnesses were saying it was a punch in the face? There is a difference.
I’m glad the judge has signalled that he intends to impose a supportive sentence – perhaps an anger management course. I don’t want to join the punishers. A man who has the kind of relationship with his children where he erupts in anger and loses control, in broad daylight, in a busy city precinct needs some help.
This case is not primarily about Section 59. A punch in the face wouldn’t have been seen as ‘reasonable force’ under the old law. Even the child-beating lobby admit it’s going too far.
The case does underline the point though, that the high-sounding phrase, ‘reasonable force by way of correction’ is often just an excuse for lashing out after having lost your temper. The problem is not so much losing your temper – most of us have done that with our children – as believing this entitles you to strike them. In 2007, the new Child Discipline Law removed this excuse.
A Yes Vote supports this law, and sends a clear message to parents that there are better ways of disciplining children.
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Ian Hassall is a paediatrician and children’s advocate. He was New Zealand’s first Commissioner for Children and before that Medical Director for the Plunket Society. He is Senior Research Fellow for the Institute of Public Policy at AUT, and part of the Every Child Counts campaign to place children’s interests at the centre of government. He teaches the undergraduate paper, Children and Public Policy.
The Families Commission will run an all-day research seminar series on 16 June at the Wellington Convention Centre.
The programme includes presentation of the results of recently completed projects and progress reports on studies underway. This is an opportunity for researchers, practitioners, policymakers and other interested groups to come together and discuss issues of significance for families.
Of particular interest to followers of Child Discipline issues is the presentation on “Family Discipline in Context” at 4.00pm. The abstract reads:
Family discipline in context – Julie Lawrence and Anne Smith
Family discipline is a controversial topic which has been debated for centuries, and which is known to have a lifelong effect on the well being of children. This report provides a snapshot of the views, experiences and practices of a sample of 100 New Zealand families, in relation to the discipline of their preschool children.
Parents/caregivers were asked about what they believed about discipline, how they disciplined their children, and the type of support and stress that they experienced with parenting. The study also looked at the effect of child and family characteristics and context over time, on discipline. The study used a multi-method approach, involving semi-structured parent interviews, parent diaries of disciplinary events over three days in a two week period, and a standardised tool, the Parenting Daily Hassles scale. One hundred and seventeen caregivers comprised the national sample – 99 mothers, 18 fathers, one grandfather and two grandmothers. The findings include the following headings: beliefs about discipline; disciplinary practices; the influence of child and family characteristics, stresses, context and support. The findings suggest a more favourable picture of New Zealand parents’ disciplinary practice than previous research has, showing that the majority of parents took an authoritative (firm but warm) approach, and suggests that professionals who work with families could benefit from professional development programmes focusing on effective approaches to discipline.
The United Nations committee monitoring compliance with the “United Nations Convention on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” released a report on New Zealand’s compliance with the Convention on 14 May 2009.
In a section entitled “Positive Aspects” the Committee had this to say:
The Committee notes with appreciation:
The enactment of the Crimes Amendment Act 2007 which repeals the legal defence for the use of reasonable force “by way of correction” in section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961 and prohibits corporal punishment.
The report is a timely reminded that the 2007 child discipline law addressed recommendations made by both the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Committee on Torture.
A Yes Vote supports New Zealand’s obligations to these important United Nations conventions.
In Support of the ‘Yes Vote’ for the NZ Referendum on Child Discipline 2009
Lauren Porter
The intention of most parents who use physical discipline is to correct behaviour and help their children become people who will make good choices, manage their actions, relate well to others and refrain from harming, destroying or upsetting the environment and people around them. In other words, their intentions are based in caring about their children.
The smacking issue, then, is not one of good versus bad parents. Nor is it one of ‘good’ use of physical discipline versus ‘harmful’ use of physical discipline. As with most issues affecting child development, this issue must be seen through the eyes of the child, and with a critical look at how smacking can interfere with the creation of healthy parent-child relationships and the adult relationships in that child’s future.
Many decades of research in the fields of attachment theory, neuroscience, child development and infant mental health have taught us that a healthy parent-child relationship is built on sensitivity and responsiveness, a foundation that allows the parent to come to know the child for who she really is and for the child to come to know herself – and her parent – within a safe and loving environment. A cornerstone of this process is called regulation. Basically, regulation is the ability for us to recognise our feelings, make sense of them and manage them. This is not only a key to the parent-child relationship, but to all mental health.
Children learn to regulate their feelings through interaction with their parents and other caregivers. These ‘co-created states’ allow a calm and loving adult to help the child learn the regulation ropes. For example, when a loud noise startles an infant and he begins to cry, most parents reflexively pick up the baby and give him a cuddle, usually speaking in soft soothing tones. This demonstrates how parents who have never heard of the word ‘regulation’ simply know that a young baby is unable to regulate himself. He needs help to calm down and when he is very young we must do the bulk of the work for him.
Imagine teaching a child to dance. At first they may stand on your feet, holding your hands and getting the feel of how their body moves. Later, as they get more comfortable, they can stand beside you on the floor, watching your feet but doing the steps themselves. Finally, after many lessons and much time, they will dance on their own whether or not you are in the room. But if the music changes they may again need a lesson to learn new steps and increase their repertoire. Eventually they will have dancing in their bones, knowing how to move with each piece of music they hear.
Teaching a child regulation is the same process. At first we do it for them, then with them, then they learn to do it on their own. But this takes a few years at least and even then when the going gets tough they need our help. We are no different – when adults go through crises we need loved ones to lean on to help us manage and get through.
A healthy attachment relationship teaches regulation with each step. When a baby succumbs to frustration or fear, when a toddler veers toward a meltdown, when an exhausted child reaches tears, the parent is there to comfort and teach. The teaching isn’t explicit. It comes from within the trusting relationship, from within the unspoken knowledge that the parent knows how to be calm and can model this for the child.
When a parent – regardless of how well intentioned – adds the ingredient of physical discipline to the relationship they unintentionally add fear to the equation. Fear is the key feature of disorganised attachment. In this most-worrying attachment style, the relationship is overshadowed by the child’s association of fear with the parent. This puts the child in an impossible situation: the person they love most is also a person to be feared. This impedes the ability to fully trust, to be vulnerable, to be emotionally present.
As you can imagine, this means that learning regulation is near-impossible. Not only can the child not feel safety and trust that allows this emotional learning, but the parent is regularly demonstrating that they do not have the regulation skills to teach. A parent who is angry or hitting is not a model of healthy regulation.
It is no surprise that attachment and psychological research show that children who experience physical discipline have higher levels of aggression, disobedience, anxiety, depression and addiction, as well as insecure attachment. Their ability to learn to manage their feelings and their ability to form a consistently warm and loving relationship with their parent has been impaired.
It is critical to remember that the rewards-and-punishments paradigm of behaviour management was invented by psychologist BF Skinner and his colleagues in the 1930’s and 1940’s. They learned – through work with rats and pigeons – that by rewarding certain behaviours and punishing others you could create ‘operant conditioning.’ In other words, you could train an animal (or child) to do certain things and not do other things via this method. Skinner became quite famous and this methodology, which still lingers in our culture today, was embraced by many. Behaviourism was not and is not concerned with anything other than training a being toward particular ways of acting. It omits deeper concerns like the effects on relationships, on mental health, on the development of compassion and empathy.
Neuroscience and attachment offer a solution. Empathy is learned through loving regulating relationships beginning in infancy and lasting through childhood and beyond. If we as a society want to develop something more – something that includes the ability to teach and learn empathy – we must forgive ourselves for our mistakes, let go of outdated ways of thinking, and embrace a new way of being with our children.
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Lauren Porter is a principal at the Centre for Attachment. She is a member of the External Advisory Group for the NZ Government Taskforce on Child Maltreatment, a member of the Attachment Parenting International Research Group (API-RG) and an Infant Mental Health Association Aotearoa New Zealand (IMHAANZ) Executive Committee. She is the mother of two children.
Like many other religions rooted in nationhood, Judaism is not simply a treasure trove of ritual holidays and life cycle events. Judaism is a way of life. Our sacred texts inform our way of being in the world, not only our gestalt (world view) but also our daily conduct. The relationship between parent and child is no exception.
The Talmud, our largest compendium of case law, instructs (Kiddushin 29a):
What are a parent’s obligations regarding a child?
They must bring them into the faith community, teach them values and appropriate conduct, lead them to learn a trade and start families of their own. And there are those who say parents are also required to teach their children to swim in the river.
It is not all that difficult for us to accept this set of parenting guidelines. It is indeed the role of parents in our society to prepare our kids to be self-reliant and accountable for their choices in life. The challenges arise when our children present their own developmentally appropriate obstacles to our parenting…
Some Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible) commentators suggest that the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden illustrates human development from childhood into adulthood. At first we are happy that the garden (our home of origin) provides what we seem to need when we need it. When we’re hungry, there’s something in the pantry. When we’re tired, there’s a bed or a cushion to ease our rest. Despite having what we need, moments arise in which we want more or we want something different. And so, Eve tastes from the forbidden fruit of the tree in the centre of the Garden of Eden. Challenging authority is part of our process of development into fully functioning capable adults. Breaking free from the spoon that feeds is essential, albeit often disruptive and even painful.
The Talmud tells a story about one particular sage’s challenging teen son (Kiddushin 32a):
Rav Hunah considered tearing up his son’s favourite silk shirt in that son’s presence saying: “He does not honour his father and mother, therefore I will go and see if he flies into a temper or not.” The other sages counsel him: “But perhaps you will cause him to fly into a temper. If he does, you will have violated the precept – You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.”
While we are responsible for our children’s welfare and self-sufficiency in adulthood, we are also warned by Jewish literary tradition not to exploit developmental blindspots. Using force because we can justify it in our role as the ones in charge is simply not acceptable. Provoking our children in a way that teaches abuse of power is akin to placing a stumbling block before the blind.
Part of growing up is learning how to manage anger and rage. Anger and rage help us differentiate from our caregivers and make strides out on our own. At the same time, when we are children we don’t know how to cope with the power of that anger and rage. Parents have the responsibility of “teaching their children how to swim in the river.” Swimming in the river of life requires skill, self-control, and instinctual knowing of when to fight and when to redirect our activities. Everything we do matters because our kids are watching, listening, and learning.
As our children transition into adolescence and adulthood we celebrate a ceremony in which grandparents and parents pass a Torah scroll down through the generations to the child who is ready to accept it. It is important for us to remember each time we engage in that “passing down” that our children learn from our conduct moreso than our words that are not reflected in the manner we behave. The real Torah, or legacy, we hand our children is the example of how we are with them in the daily to and fro of life.
I support the new law regarding child discipline – it is an important step in the way forward for a more peaceful and positive New Zealand.
I am the Principal of Childspace, a group of five private child-care centres and a mother of two children who have never been smacked. I am a member of Amnesty International Children’s Rights network and also a passionate anti-smacker.
I believe the upcoming referendum on the Child Discipline Law is absolutely ridiculous, expensive, and unnecessary.
Shifting societal attitudes no longer condone smacking as a socially acceptable form of punishment for our children. The more we learn and understand about young children the less acceptable smacking becomes. This can very easily be illustrated by the opinions of our own country’s top experts on early childhood, education, and children’s rights. I would challenge anyone to find a leader in any of these fields who condones smacking.
Ian Hassall’s book “Hitting children – unjust, unwise and unnecessary” (1993) is crystal clear. Prior to the law reform in 2007 he stated that “…research evidence is that it [hitting] is a poor way of inducing good behaviour and performance.” He goes on to point out that “…the law does not permit us to inflict pain on anyone other than our children.” Animals are afforded greater protection by law. Trespassers are also afforded better protection by law as section 56 of the Crimes Act allows the use of reasonable force except with a blow or an object. So no wooden spoons or belts for trespassers!
There used to be a commonly held view among New Zealanders that children require the occasional smack to keep them in line. In fact at a party prior to reform I broached the subject with a group of people who didn’t yet have children of their own. Most were emphatic that they would be using smacking as a punishment for their as yet unborn children. Upon further questioning it seemed their rationale for this was that they were smacked and they turned out alright. It is exactly this cultural norm that the law change has challenged. It can only be positive for the children in this country that we are now sending a message to present and future parents that smacking is an inappropriate and illegal reaction for an adult to have towards their child.
Not so long ago society argued that women, slaves and prisoners must be kept in line by the use of physical force. These are now considered part of a barbaric and ignorant past. There are not many things we could be sure of one hundred years from now but one of them is that it will no longer be legal or socially acceptable to bring harm to your own children. This also will be considered part of our barbaric and ignorant past.
I was smacked when I was a child and I can still remember my mother reaching for the hairbrush she used to smack me. I can also remember her placing her hands around my throat and telling me that sometimes she could just strangle me. Is this justified and reasonable force? Or is it out of control parental anger sanctioned by the law? Either way I cannot blame my mother because she was young, poor, and living in a society where her elders, peers, and the law saw physical violence toward children as acceptable. Now we know better and we must help educate parents about how to teach children in non-violent ways.
In the early childhood programmes for which I am responsible we spend a great deal of time and effort modelling and teaching the children appropriate ways of dealing with angry or frustrated feelings. The children pick up our non-violent approach very easily. We do, however have families where we know smacking is the method for dealing with these feelings and the impact on those children is huge. They are quicker to anger, less emotionally stable, have shorter attention spans, more inclined towards bullying and less likely to behave appropriately. These children also tend to come from less educated family backgrounds than their peers. In her 1993 report on physical punishment in the home in New Zealand, Gabrielle Maxwell concludes that “The most highly educated group were more likely to report explaining and discussing matters. They were less likely to report telling off, yelling, or smacking. ”
The 2007 Child Discipline Law was such a positive thing for the future of our country. It would be criminal to amend it in any way now. Children are not parental possessions, they are people with rights of their own. Questioning of the practice of hitting children tends to make people feel uncomfortable. Perhaps they have not questioned the practice themselves? Perhaps they have an idea that it isn’t quite right? Perhaps they now feel some guilt that it was their practice as a parent in the past?
Bringing in the 2007 law has been a consciousness-raising exercise. It would be naïve to suggest that it has eliminated the practice completely, and it is simply scaremongering to suggest that parents will be charged for a light and occasional smack. But it is making parents question their reasons for wanting to smack their children. Just as not all wives are safe from spousal abuse, not all children are safe from smacking, but any law change that reduces the violence in any form has always been a change for the good of society.
New Zealand was one of 193 countries to ratify the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child. Article 19 of the Convention clearly states that legislative measures should be made to ensure children are safe from physical violence while in the care of their parents. Since the 2007 law change, we are complying with our obligations under the convention. Let’s not turn back the clock on this.
Should we be teaching children to rule with force? Could our country become a more peaceful place to live if children were safe from violence inflicted by the people they love most in the place they should feel most safe? Spare the rod and free the child.
If you are going to use or distribute material from our campaign in any way, eg remixed or mashed up, please ensure that your actions are compliant with the relevant legislation, as the Yes Vote Coalition cannot take responsibility for actions beyond our control or knowledge.
The bottom line is that we want to play by the rules. We appreciate your support, but please act ethically, thoughtfully, and within the law.
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