ADHD, Spanking, And Childhood Traumas

Last week US News & World report had a fascinating Q&A with Larry Diller, clinical professor at UCSF who practices pediatric psychiatry in Walnut Creek, Calif. (oddly enough, the town I was born in). Diller is a semi-controversial figure in child development circles for his book Running on Ritalin and for his harsh criticism of the bipolar child paradigm. This time out the subject was spanking kids and Diller offered some interesting thoughts.

"Q:Spanking is probably the most controversial issue in child rearing. You treat children with ADHD. What on earth compelled you to write that spanking may not be so bad?

"A: I was provoked. About a year ago, a California assemblywoman from the South Bay put out a proposal to make the spanking of children 3 years old and under criminal. I thought, please, please! The reason it gets to me is that in 30 years of practice as a developmental pediatrician, issues of discipline cause 80 percent of the problems that I see. The families that are struggling with children's behavior are also struggling with spanking. Often, they've taken a vow of abstinence. They figure if spanking is bad, then all forms of conflict are bad, and they hesitate to discipline their children. They wait too long before taking effective action. This doesn't have to be spanking; it could be removal of a toy or imposition of a timeout. I am talking about middle-class, upper-middle-class families that love their kids, that have the resources for their kids.

"What gets children into trouble early on are qualities of temperament—qualities of persistence and intensity. These kids have determination, stubbornness—a simple no doesn't work. Even a "Boo!" doesn't faze these guys. The other quality of temperament that comes into play is intensity. When the child is happy they're very happy, but when they're angry they're very angry."

I largely agree with Diller, for what my wee opinion is worth. Since physical discipline has gone out of schools and families over the last 30 years, we've seen an epic rise in the medicating of small children, or "chemical swaddling," as one of my friends at The Icarus Project calls it. Kids are being doped up for behaviors that a generation ago would've gotten them a spanking and a timeout. Now, they get Seroquel and Adderall and researchers at Harvard get rich. And, then the obvious question came out:

"Q: Aren't you worried that parents will say: Larry Diller says if I spank my kid, he won't get ADHD?

"A: That is my big worry. And that's why my friends tell me to keep my mouth shut. To say that all ADHD kids should be spanked is a misreading of my position. But I expect parents and schools to do something before we give out pills. And I give out pills.

"What we overlook is that in mild ADHD, which is the majority of the ADHD that is diagnosed in the community, a more organized and coherent system of discipline can make the difference in whether your kid will be on Ritalin or not. You don't have to spank. But if you're using spanking as one of an array of tools to get control of your kid, you're not hurting them in the long term. Lively, impulsive, spontaneous kids who know when to shut up don't get medicine."

Again, I largely agree with Diller and have written about my own experiences as a kid who, under today's behavioral control systems, would have been medicated into the ground. I'm glad my dad spanked me here and there, I'm glad a few teachers used a firm hand with me as well. I'll leave it at that.

As you might imagine, Diller's views generated some reader responses, so the mag went and chatted up Murray Straus, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, who is apparently a spanking researcher. I also think he is an out-of-touch loon.

"Q: You've been researching the effects of spanking for almost 40 years, and you think that it's unquestionably bad for kids. Yet many people say that science hasn't proved that it's harmful. Why is that?

"A: They take the exceptions. There is 93 percent agreement in the studies that spanking is harmful. It leads to more antisocial behavior in childhood, as well as increased aggression, spousal abuse, and child abuse in adulthood. That's an almost unheard-of consensus in parenting studies.

"I think it's also a human-rights issue. Just as adults have the right to live their life without fear of attack, children should too."

Straus does the usual trick of conflating spanking--by which I mean mild discipline--with beatings. But to frame spanking as a human rights issue is extremism and academic posturing at its finest. He later equates spanking and smoking--smoking has simply become the new bugbear of liberal social criticism--and argues that children spanked by their parents sometimes turn into adults who like to be spanked while having sex, which he views negatively. I'm not sure why that would be offered as a reason to be for or against spanking (I generally think that beyond rape and forced beatings that anyone's choice of sexual behavior is beyond criticism, but maybe not beyond laughter), but he also trots out the argument that former-spankees are basically wife beaters as well.

He doesn't tackle the issue of medicating misbehaving kids, so I haven't the faintest what his views are there. But what bugs me the most about Straus' assertions are that you cannot do surveys of people as adults and peel back the onion of their adult behavior all the way to signal childhood incidents such as daddy spanked me. I know researchers think they can correlate anything with anything and call it peer-reviewed research, but I just don't buy it. Humans are way too complex and human psychology is way too dense to get down to simple causes. In a way, Straus' arguments remind me of the pot causes schizophrenia research that's being tossed about these days--it's typically population-based surveys that cannot correct for all the other environmental and genetic influences that someone later diagnosed with schizophrenia may have had before smoking a joint.

Of course, there are exceptions to all of this. I once knew a woman in San Diego who had seen a kid get run over when she was a child and couldn't ride in a car or drive one without a complete panic attack. As a result, she couldn't drive, her friends refused to drive her anywhere and cab companies wouldn't come pick her up. I have no idea how she had a social life. Once, she got quite ill one evening and needed to get to an ER. She called me. I knew what I was getting into and stuffed her into my car and cranked the stereo. Within moments, she was screaming at me that I was killing people as I drove her--very fast--to the ER. There was sheer terror on her face and it wouldn't have been erased if I'd gone 5 MPH. It was one of the most painful episodes I've ever witnessed with a grown adult. And it all did seem to stem from one brief moment of childhood trauma.

Not that childhood traumas can't have their plus sides. When I was a 10-year-old in the Bay Area, one day I was waiting at the bottom of my neighborhood for a ride to swim practice. It was one of those classic hot-as-blazes July afternoons and some guy came gliding towards me on a Honda 750 SS--yes, I still remember the model--and suddenly some idiot made a left turn in front of him. The motorcyclist tried to brake, but hit the rear of the green Pontiac Bonneville and flew over the trunk. He was wearing only shorts and sandals, not even a helmet, and he slapped against the pavement. I'd never seen anything like this in my life (there was literally blood on the road) and he stood and looked at me--I remember his dark beard and bugged out eyes--and then I looked at his right leg. It was very mangled and there was bone visible and his skin was filleted. He looked down and then looked at me. Before I could run to get help, another driver stopped, got out and wrapped the man's leg in a sweatshirt and stuck him in his car and sped off. Presumably to a hospital. The police arrived. I answered the cop's questions and then my ride showed up. I told my folks about the incident later on, but didn't think about it much even though I recall having weird dreams for a few nights. It was just one of those things you see in life and process somehow.

Ever since that day I have been a hyper-defensive driver, be it of bicycles or motor vehicles. I am always aware that, even if I have the right of way, the other car sitting there, the person standing on the sidewalk, whatever, whomever can screw up and the consequences can be immense. And, so I've never been in an accident. Knock on wood.

And yet I know others like the woman I knew in San Diego would utterly be taken apart by seeing the same thing and need years of counseling.

Maybe the difference was because my father on occasion spanked me. OK, I'm joking about that.