Is it cruel and abusive, or beneficial and wise?

The issue of spanking has divided educators, medical professionals, clergy and parents for years. Although they know many other parents who do spank, Mike and Aimee Kollmansberger of Lexington have tried it, and ultimately found another way.

The couple, whose five children are range from 6 month to 11 years old, prefer a more individualized, proactive style of discipline.

“We have spanked, but found it was not only ineffective with our children, it also contradicted what we were trying to teach them about how to treat others,” Aimee Kollmansberger said. “Spanking tended to set up an adversarial relationship instead of one in which I am living as their advocate and ally.”

Dr. John Rosemond, a North Carolina-based family psychologist and author of “The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really Works!” said fixating on corporal punishment misses the point of effective parenting.

“We make too big a deal of this issue,” he said. “It should not occupy a position of prominence in the discussion. There’s a time and a place for it, but it’s very rare. More often than not, it accomplishes nothing, and can make matters worse.”

Isabel Blanco, deputy state director for human services with the S.C. Department of Social Services, said many people would agree that parents have a responsibility to rear their children in a safe environment so that they thrive, and to provide guidance regarding what is right and what is wrong according to family values.

“Incorporating culturally informed practices of guidance and punishments is essential when considering various forms of discipline, including corporal punishment,” Blanco said.

Dr. Lloyd Kapp of Palmetto Pediatrics said some studies have suggested that spanking is not as effective as once thought, and may have the potential to promote aggression. That said, he allowed that spanking has been practiced for a long time, and not everyone who is spanked as a child grows up to be a bully.

“Over the years it’s become a gray area,” Kapp said. “It’s hard to know where to draw the line between spanking and abuse.”

Although his practice follows American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, which do not support corporal punishment, he does have patients who spank their children.

“For those parents, our advice is to be sure you’re calm and the child understands you’re doing it for a reason,” Kapp said. “You never want to do it when you’re angry. As with any form of discipline, you want to be sure they understand that their behavioral choice was bad. You never want to tell the child they are bad.”

Kapp said he generally recommends parents start by using a time-out period as a disciplinary tool, and as it becomes less successful, beginning to restrict privileges. He recalled a mom whose son was having trouble getting through his bedtime and morning routines until she took away his privilege to play a certain video game.

“Every child is different, even within the same family,” Kapp said. “Sometimes for one child all it takes is saying ‘no’ and they start to cry. Others are more challenging. But this can be very effective if you take away something meaningful.”

Rosemond doesn’t necessarily agree. He recommends parents skip the time-out step, calling the technique “the stupidest advice ever given to American parents by people with capital letters after their names.”

“Why would a child do what you ask him to if he suffers no consequence other than five minutes of time out?” he asked.

In general, parents rely too heavily on punishment and rewards, Rosemond said, when what is needed in child rearing is leadership.

“Behavior modification works very well on dogs and rats, but inconsistently, if at all, on humans,” he said. “Leadership is a display of decisiveness and purpose. People used to understand that intuitively, but we’ve lost that.”

Parents convey indecisiveness and confusion when they attempt to persuade a child to do something, or explain why it must be done, he said. If asked to pick up his toys, the reason a child needs to obey is because the parent said so, Rosemond explained.

“We all have to submit to legitimate authority,” he said. “There’s no reason children cannot learn the same principle early on. It makes life a lot simpler.”

If the child doesn’t pick up the toys, Rosemond suggested the parent pick them up, then calmly set a meaningful consequence, such as two weeks of going to bed right after dinner.

“I’d make it very clear I wasn’t going to tolerate disobedience,” Rosemond said. “The next time you tell him to pick up his toys, he’ll do it.”

Consequences in the Kollmansberger household range from natural ones — the car damaging the skateboard left in the driveway created its own consequence — to choosing an extra chore from the job jar if responsibilities are left undone. Additional reminders from Mom cost 10 cents each.

When they offend another sibling, Aimee Kollmansberger has her children say something nice about the sibling and then help with chores.

“Instead of removing them from the relationship, I try to encourage healing,” she said. “Instead of jail — a time-out — I like to use a community service model. They need to see how their actions have affected others and work to make it right.”

Whenever possible, Aimee Kollmansberger said she tries to empower her children to make choices for themselves instead of trying to control them.

“There is no one-size-fits-every-child discipline technique, and formulaic parenting denies the uniqueness of each child,” she said. “We each need to figure out the varying discipline keys that will unlock good choices in each child.” 

What does DSS say?

Isabel Blanco, deputy state director for human services with the S.C. Department of Social Services, said the state of South Carolina has not framed its position regarding corporal punishment in a statute.

She said federal law requires that states, at a minimum, define child abuse as “any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act of or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.”

There is great ambivalence about intervening in family life, Blanco said, citing the need to balance family privacy against a child’s right to be protected from harm.

“When punishment is deemed to be cruel and excessive, posing a significant safety risk, the child’s right to be protected from harm must be enforced,” she said.