Children outsmart law on smacking

Photo / Bay of Plenty Times

Parents are telling truancy officers that they don't know how to make their children go to school because they can no longer smack them.

Manukau truancy officer Therese Luxton yesterday told a forum on next month's smacking referendum that there were not enough education programmes to teach parents alternative disciplinary techniques.

"I work with high Maori and Pacific populations in decile 1 [the poorest] communities," she said.

"The majority are incredibly good people. They love their kids dearly. Surprisingly, they are the ones who have taken this anti-smacking law to heart. They all say to me, 'Before I could have hit my kid, now I don't know how to teach them any more."'

Other speakers at the forum, organised by the Manukau City Council's child advocacy group, outlined non-violent ways to guide children.

But Ms Luxton said she could not give any easy answers to parents whose children were wagging school, and could only sympathise with them.

"At the moment there are not enough parenting classes available."

She said "smart kids" were also taking advantage of society's opposition to smacking, avoiding punishment by telling teachers and truancy officers, "Don't tell my mum because I'll get the bash."

The forum was one of the first public meetings about the postal referendum starting on July 31 which will ask the question, "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

Family First lobbyist Bob McCoskrie, who helped to gather more than 300,000 signatures on a petition to force the referendum, attacked the organisers because they included two speakers from the campaign for a "yes" vote and did not invite leaders from the "no" campaign.

But Clendon Anglican vicar Mark Beale did argue against the law, saying it was like banning speeding but not defining the speed limits.

"When I asked parents what the law said, no one actually knew," hesaid.

"Certain things can never be created by a process of law or referendum. For example, there can't be a law that forces people to love."

He said afterwards that he would not vote in the referendum. He could not vote "yes" because he supported a light smack to teach a toddler not to put its hand in an electric socket, but nor could he vote "no" because that would "condone smacking as the best form of discipline".

Mangere Labour MP Su'a William Sio said he would vote "yes". He said his father disciplined him not by hitting but by lecturing, quoting a Samoan proverb: "The children of birds are fed with leaves and the fruits of trees, the children of men are fed with words."

Archdeacon Hone Kaa of the anti-child-abuse group Te Kahui Mana Ririki urged parents to use non-violent techniques such as distracting their children away from what was wrong and praising good behaviour.

Piripi McLean, who runs a "Dads for Dads" parent education programme for the Ohomairangi Trust in Mangere, said free programmes like his offered alternatives to smacking.

* On the web

www.ohomairangi.co.nz

www.familyservices.govt.nz/info-for-families