Tag: SMU Department of Psychology

babble.com: Do Most Parents Spank or Hit Their Kids?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 29, 2011

The AOL Lifestyle news magazine Parentdish, in addition to babble.com and The Washington Post have all covered the corporal punishment research of SMU psychologist George W. Holden, a professor in the SMU Psychology Department, and Paul Williamson, an SMU doctoral student in psychology.

The research provides a unique real-time look at spanking in a way that’s never before been studied. In a study of 37 families, mothers voluntarily recorded their evening interactions with their young children over the course of six days, including incidents of corporal punishment, said Holden.

AOL Lifestyle reporter Tom Henderson on the parentdish blog wrote “Study Attempts Accurate Portrait of Spanking”:

EXCERPT:
By Tom Henderson
AOL Parentdish

Sometimes you have to smack a kid.

Sure, some liberal hippie parents pitch a fit whenever a kid is spanked, but on the front lines of parenthood, you can’t afford to go soft.

Do you want your kid to grow up to some kind of … of … page toucher?

You know the type. They go around touching the pages of books you are trying to read to them. Better a slap on the tuckus now than to let them grow up some kind of social miscreant.

At least one mother — involved in a research project at Southern Methodist University in Dallas — understands that. Some 40 parents were asked to make audio recordings of their daily interactions with their children.

Researchers didn’t exactly come right out and say this (because they wanted parents to act naturally), but they really wanted to find out how parents spank their children and raise their voices.

The tale of the tape says a lot. Take the Curious Case of the Terrible Toucher.

Read the full story

On the award winning online magazine babble.com, psychotherapist and reporter Heather Turgeon reported in the site’s Stroller Derby column “Do Most Parents Spank or Hit Their Kids?”

EXCERPT:
By Heather Turgeon
www.babble.com

Most parents spank their kids — I was truly surprised to hear this statement today, via an article in Time.com’s Healthland. Was I naive in thinking that with all our focus on child-centered parenting philosophies and positive discipline, that spanking was solidly out of style?

Not so, says George Holden, a professor of psychology who is now analyzing data on a new study in which he captured video of parents hitting their children — all voluntary participants who agreed to have their daily lives and interactions taped.

His earlier research found that 70 percent of college educated women spank their kids. That data was from the 1990’s, but writer Bonnie Rochman reports for Time that some studies have shown up to 90 percent of parents use corporal punishment.

Some of the examples from Holden’s current study were shocking: for example a woman hitting her toddler and saying “This is to help you remember not to hit your mother.”

“The irony is just amazing,” said Holden.

Are most parents really hitting their kids? What’s happening here?

According to Holden, parents who spank do it because they think it works. In the short term, sure swatting a child for touching the electrical outlets will probably make that child less likely to do that exact action again in the near future. But in the long run, of course (and I thought we all knew this?) what it really demonstrates is that physical aggression is an acceptable tool for expressing yourself. Why wouldn’t you expect a child to go straight out and use that too herself later on?

Read the full story

The Washington Post’s On Parenting blog wrote:

EXCERPT:
The Washington Post

Small infractions, like turning the page of a book too early, often led parents to hit their children, says research by psychologist George Holden on spanking. Holden, the author of five books on parenting and child development, says spanking works in the short term, but has the long-term consequence of teaching children aggression.

Read the entry

Tags George W. Holden, Paul Williamson, SMU Department of Psychology

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Time: The First Real-Time Study of Parents Spanking Their Kids

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 28, 2011

Time.com covered the corporal punishment research of SMU psychologist George W. Holden, a professor in the Psychology Department, and Paul Williamson, an SMU doctoral student in psychology.

The online magazine’s family and parenting reporter, Bonnie Rochman, interviewed Holden for her June 28 “Healthland” column.

Read the full story

EXCERPT:

By Bonnie Rochman
Time.com
It’s not P.C. to admit you spank your child. But nearly 40 moms have gone a step further, recording themselves hitting and slapping their kids as part of a new study on how parents and children interact.

They didn’t know they were going to be in a study about spanking per se. Researchers have to be careful when presenting their proposed area of study to potential participants — too much information can lead people to alter their normal behavior, which would skew results. So when George Holden, a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University who has published five books on parenting and child development, went to day-care centers in Dallas to recruit parents, he divulged only that he wanted to collect data about naturally occurring parent-child interaction.

In fact, Holden didn’t even know he’d be studying spanking. He originally set out to study yelling, via voluntary audio recordings of parents conducting life at home — the pedestrian stuff of parenting like meal prep, bath time and lights out.

Not all parents who volunteered were accepted. Researchers eliminated those who reported during a screening interview that they never yelled at home. “There weren’t many,” notes Holden, who presented the research this month in Dallas at the Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline.

Here’s the twist: in the course of analyzing the data collected from 37 families — 36 mothers and one father, all of whom recorded up to 36 hours of audio in six days of study — researchers heard the sharp cracks and dull thuds of spanking, followed in some cases by minutes of crying. They’d inadvertently captured evidence of corporal punishment, as well as the tense moments before and the resolution after, leading researchers to believe they’d amassed the first-ever cache of real-time spanking data.

Read the full story

Tags George W. Holden, Paul Williamson, SMU Department of Psychology

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Corporal punishment: Mothers’ self-recorded audio gives unique real-time view of spanking

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 22, 2011

Mothers’ self-recorded audio gives unique real-time view of spanking within the context of day-to-day activity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISIc_DbHRzk

But occasionally conflict erupts, sometimes followed by corporal punishment.

The data go to the heart of the long-running debate over whether parents should spank their children.

“In the case where the child was slapped for grabbing a book, it was not 10 seconds later he did it again,” said Holden. “The amazing thing is, the mom was reading so nicely to the child and the child was being so normal, reaching for the book or wanting to turn the page or point to something.”

Believed to be first audio data of naturally occurring spanking

With its “event-sampling” approach, the research is a unique opportunity to understand what’s going on in the life of a family before spanking, including whether conflict gradually escalates or instead blows up out of nowhere, Holden said. It also reveals what occurs with spanking, such as verbal reprimands, admonitions, yelling or time-out.

“Despite the fact there have been hundreds of studies on spanking, I think with these audio recordings we have the first data of naturally occurring spanking,” said Holden, who has published five books and more than 55 scientific papers on parenting and child development.

“Virtually all previous studies have relied on verbal reports, either asking parents how often they spank, and a few asking children how they felt about being spanked,” he said. “This study is not affected or biased by memory or attitudes or orientations toward discipline because it’s what’s happening in the home.”

The research, “Investigating Actual Incidents of Spanking in the Home,” was presented June 3-4 at the international conference “Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline” in Dallas.

Holden, a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology, was a conference organizer and is an advocate of positive alternatives to spanking as cited in his psychology textbook “Parenting: A Dynamic Perspective” (Sage Publications Inc., 2010).

Chaotic interactions indicate parents didn’t alter practices

Participants in the study included families of various ethnicities, ranging from affluent to middle income to poor, said Paul Williamson, a researcher on the study. Acts of corporal punishment also varied, from spanking with a belt to admonishing children while hitting, said Williamson, an SMU psychology doctoral student.

“One interaction in particular, a child of 2 or 3 years of age had either been hitting or kicking her mother, and in response the mother either spanks the child or slaps the child on the hand and says, ‘That’ll teach you not to hit your mother,'” Williamson said. “We’ve captured interactions with families that are very chaotic. Some of them are actually quite difficult to listen to. That tells us, at least for some families, they’re not inhibiting or suppressing the kinds of parenting practices they use.”

Spanking and negative unintended consequences

Researchers invited mothers to participate in the study through fliers distributed at day-care centers, said Williamson. Mothers were informed of the study’s purpose to look at parent-child interactions. The mothers agreed to wear the audio recording devices each evening for up to six days. “We’re finding a wide range of reactions to the spanking,” Holden said. “Some children don’t appear to react, whereas the majority react with crying, some tantruming and some whimpering that can go from just a few seconds, to our longest is about 75 seconds.” Parents didn’t shy from talking with the researchers about spanking and their belief that it’s effective and necessary discipline, the researchers said. “So many parents believe in the technique and are not defensive about their use of it,” Holden said. “They erroneously believe it’s a useful technique to raise well-behaved kids.” Spanking widespread globally, despite harm to children From 70 percent to 90 percent of parents spank their children, and it’s practiced in the vast majority of countries worldwide, Holden said. Studies have shown that its single positive effect is immediate compliance. Increasingly, however, the evidence is clear that spanking is associated with many unintended negative consequences, he said.

“Children who are spanked are more likely to be aggressive toward other children and adults,” Holden said. “Over the long term they tend to be more difficult and noncompliant, have various behavior problems, can develop anxiety disorders or depression, and later develop antisocial behavior. They are more at risk to be involved in intimate partner violence, and they are at risk to become child abusers.”

The discipline also can escalate, Holden said.

“We know that the majority of physical child abuses cases actually begin with a disciplinary encounter that then gets out of control,” he said. “So for that reason alone, it’s not a good idea to use corporal punishment.”

The researchers hope their study ultimately will help parents use positive discipline and less punishment, he said. “It’s not the once or twice a year that a child may be swatted, but it’s the kids who are exposed to frequent corporal punishment — that is the concern,” Holden said. “Kids need discipline, but centered on mutual respect and love, without potentially harming the child with corporal punishment.” Besides Holden and Williamson, other researchers included Grant Holland, SMU psychology graduate student, and Rose Dunn, an SMU psychology department graduate. The study was funded by Timberlawn Psychiatric Research Foundation in Dallas.

The “Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline” was sponsored by Southern Methodist University, the Center for Effective Discipline, the Center for Children and Families, the Child Rights Information Network, the Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment of Children, the Family Violence & Sexual Assault Institute, and the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma.

Tags George W. Holden, Paul Williamson, SMU Department of Psychology

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DMN: Why Texas should ban corporal punishment in schools

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 6, 2011

The Dallas Morning News invited SMU Psychology Professor and parenting expert George Holden to participate in its opinion page face-off on corporal punishment. Holden, an advocate of positive parenting strategies, is opposed to corporal punishment in either the home or at school.

His opinion piece “Why Texas should ban corporal punishment in schools” appeared in the May 29, 2011, edition of The Dallas Morning News.

Holden, who’s published five books and more than 55 scientific papers on parenting and child development, says hundreds of studies on spanking have revealed the negative long-term impacts of corporal punishment. Holden was an organizer of the June 3-4 international conference “Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline” in Dallas.

Read the full op-ed piece.

EXCERPT:

By George Holden
Professor of Psychology at SMU
She had been struck 10 years earlier, but the student in my college psychology course remembered every detail vividly. As a fifth-grader attending public school in a town near Houston, she was falsely accused of writing in a textbook and sent to the principal’s office. The student’s denial enraged the principal, who, while yelling, hit her three times with a ruler.

The student’s parents had not given permission to the school to use corporal punishment, but school officials mistakenly found the permission form of a student with the same surname. My student reported feeling traumatized by the incident and becoming withdrawn, with a lingering fear of teachers and distrust of authority figures.

The physical punishment inflicted upon this student is by no means rare. Nineteen states in this country, primarily in the South and West, have not yet banned corporal punishment in public schools. Reported incidents have declined in the past 30 years, but not enough. According to the most recent analysis by the Department of Education’s civil rights office, more than 220,000 students nationwide were subjected to corporal punishment in 2006.

Texas schools have the dubious distinction of leading the nation in that analysis, accounting for more than 49,000 cases. Only about 40 of the state’s school districts prohibit corporal punishment, including large urban districts such as Dallas and Fort Worth, while more than 1,000 districts permit it. Their school boards have created a hodgepodge of policies, some of which specify the instrument, method and administrator of punishment, as well as whether parents must be notified.

Read the full op-ed piece.

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SMU Experts Discuss Anxiety Disorders April 12 & 19 as part of Godbey Lecture Series

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 8, 2011

Stress and anxiety are the norm for an estimated one in three adults suffering from a serious anxiety disorder. But a number of effective treatments are available, according to researchers in the SMU Department of Psychology.

SMU Anxiety Research & Treatment Program researchers Jasper Smits and Mark Powers will explain how new science is affecting the treatment of such common disorders as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia, at the Godbey Lecture Series “lunch-and-learn” sessions April 12 and April 19 at 11 a.m. at Maggiano’s, NorthPark Center.

Tickets are $45 per event for Godbey Lecture Series members; $65 for non-members. Advanced registration is required; contact 214/768-2532 or gls@smu.edu.

For more details on the Anxiety Research & Treatment Program, click here. And for more information about the Godbey Lecture Series, click here.

Tags Dedman College, Jasper A. J. Smits, Mark Powers, SMU Department of Psychology

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