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Professor has new take on discipline
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An ODU educator and researcher advises parents and teachers to skip punishing children and reinforce the positive.

BY SANDRA YIN
223-5683

August 12 2004

NORFOLK -- After her young daughter pulled on the car steering wheel, Katharine Kersey raised her hand to give her a whack. A second later, her hand stopped in midair as she wondered why it seemed natural to want to smack her child.

Three decades ago that question launched Kersey on a mission to learn how to be an effective parent.

"Most adults make the mistake of giving their eyeballs to the inappropriate behaviors, and that makes them escalate," said Kersey, now a professor of early childhood education and director of the Child Study and Child Development Centers at Old Dominion University.

ODU recently released Kersey's three CD-ROM set called "101's: A Guide to Positive Discipline," which offers 101 tips to help parents and teachers nip misbehavior in the bud and shape children's conduct without resorting to punishment.

One of the 101 tips is to offer alternatives. If a child is running but shouldn't be, offer him a choice. Instead of telling him to stop running, Kersey suggests asking, "Would you rather sneak or hop?" And if he refuses to choose, you can say, "You choose, or I'll choose." The question turns the child's attention away from what he was doing wrong and he gets caught up in the decision.

"You've saved yourself all this upset and anger," said Kersey.

A majority of adults believe that kids act worse now than compared with 10 years ago, according to a survey commissioned by American Demographics magazine and conducted by market research firm E-Poll in 2003.

It's no surprise to Kersey that kids seem to be behaving worse. They learn those bad habits from adults.

"You hit a child, you're modeling hitting," said Kersey. "You're reinforcing the inappropriate."

Yelling, hitting or punishing a child can be counterproductive, Kersey said. It instills fear in children. They retreat, she said, no longer open to learning. A child who is punished or hit, said Kersey, may then get mad and go kick the dog or hit somebody else to get more attention.

Not everyone has been open to Kersey's take on behavior. When she explains why parents should not spank, people in audiences sometimes shake their fists at her and say they were spanked and turned out alright.

Her reaction: "Well, where did you get all that anger from?"

Some spanking advocates argue that violence does not beget violence.

Corporal punishment fosters a respect for authority, said Robert Surgenor, a retired police detective and author of the book, "No Fear: A Police Officer's Perspective." He maintains the only thing that keeps us in check is the fear of the consequences if we get caught doing something wrong. It's a view of society in which the stick motivates good behavior, not the carrot.

"Children who are spanked judiciously as they are growing up, lovingly by a parent, I believe are better behaved as teenagers and young adults," he said.

In the 20 years that he served as a police officer, he collected statistics on the juvenile crime beat. Less than 2 percent of the minors he dealt with received corporal punishment growing up. As probation officers and judges noted, they had no fear.

Kersey was hit, switched and spanked when she was little, but she said she's living proof that parents aren't condemned to repeat their parents' mistakes. Her approach to "positive discipline" involves giving children some control, rather than snatching it away.

Melissa Hecker is an ODU graduate who now teaches Kersey's approach to preschool directors, home day-care providers and teachers in area public schools.

"When I was teaching first grade, I could not imagine trying to teach without" Kersey's ideas, Hecker said.

One day while a principal observed her first-grade class, two girls were messing around, wiggling. Instead of saying anything to them, Hecker complimented a girl who was sitting quietly with her legs criss-crossed and her hands in her lap. As she did, the restless girls calmed down. Hecker later praised them for their good behavior.

Part of Kersey's philosophy is based on getting children to exercise greater self-control.

"We want children to discipline themselves and not be dependent on external discipline," said Kersey. "They need to learn to say 'no' to themselves."

Copyright (c) 2004, Daily Press