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February 6th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) — Adding more fuel to the
controversial topic of children and spanking, two Canadian child
development experts have published a new analysis that warns that physical
punishment poses serious risks to a child’s long-term development.
In the paper, published online Jan. 6 in CMAJ, the Canadian
Medical Association Journal, the authors analyzed two decades of research
and concluded that “virtually without exception, these studies found that
physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression
against parents, siblings, peers and spouses.”
While studies show that spanking has declined in the United States
since the 1970s, many parents still believe it’s an acceptable form of
punishment. A 2010 University of North Carolina study revealed that nearly
80 percent of preschool children in the United States are spanked.
“Our paper is a prompt to medical professionals to apply the compelling
findings of research on physical punishment in their guidance of parents,”
said co-author Joan Durrant, a child clinical psychologist and professor
of family social sciences at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
In addition to the substantial evidence that children who are spanked
are more aggressive, the authors note that physical punishment is linked
to various mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and drug
and alcohol abuse. What’s more, recent neuroimaging studies have shown
that physical punishment may alter parts of the brain that are linked to
performance on IQ tests and increase vulnerability to drug or alcohol
dependence, they write.
Many parents are skeptical of published findings on spanking, and
question whether the aggressive behavior prompts the spanking, rather than
the other way around. But the paper’s co-author says researchers have been
able to tease this relationship apart.
“It is the case that children who are more aggressive do tend to get
hit more, but the punishment does not reduce those children’s aggression;
rather, it exacerbates it,” said Ron Ensom, who worked as a social worker
at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa, when the paper
was written.
“When parents of aggressive children are instructed in how to reduce
their use of spanking, and they do indeed reduce it, the level of their
children’s aggression declines,” Ensom said. “And when children who all
have the same level of aggression when the study begins are followed over
a period of years, those who are spanked tend to get more aggressive over
time, while those who are not spanked tend to get less aggressive.”
The authors urged physicians to help parents learn nonviolent,
effective approaches to discipline, but one child psychologist in the
United States said the paper fell short in providing examples of such
approaches.
“They did a nice job of summarizing all of the research, and it’s
always good to reinforce the message, especially to newer physicians,”
said Mary Alvord, a child clinical psychologist in private practice in
Rockville and Silver Spring, Md. “I just wish they had taken the next step
and given the doctors more tools to show parents what to do, rather than
focusing so much on what they shouldn’t do.”
“Parents often feel helpless in these situations, and they want their
child to get the message that what they did is wrong,” Alvord said. “So I
don’t get preachy with parents, but I try to explain that there are so
many more effective things that parents can do, like timeouts.”
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests effective ways to discipline children.
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