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GO FIND A MANNEQUIN*
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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*Dr. Kevin Leman ("Have a New Kid by
Friday"), wrote, "If you want a perfect child,
go find a mannequin. Children don't come
in mannequin style."
The newspapers report that a woman in
Cincinnati, OH, took a stranger's toddler
"zun" over her knee and spanked him three
times, inside a Salvation Army store. The
child had said something that annoyed
her. Gloria Ballard was arrested on an
assault charge, entering a NOT GUILTY plea. (The Yiddish word
meaning to assault is "bafaln.") Outside court, Ballard said she gave the
boy a hug and gently patted his backside ("hinten")
because he was upset.
Ballard, 43, faces a charge that carries a
maximum sentence of six months in "turme" (jail) and a $1,000 fine. She
is
a mother and grandmother and she has
"gehakte tsores"
KidsRpeople2 says, "Doesn't it just make sense to keep our hands off of other
people's children?"
In Yiddish, a back-handed slap is called a
"frassk." Dr. Kevin Leman writes about
spanking: "Spanking should never be done
when you, the parent, are angry...A swat
is an open hand on a kid's tush. It's a
onetime shot. That is very different from a
prolonged spanking that whales on the
child."
Leo Rosten ("The New Joys of Yiddish") writes about the word "frask"/"frosk"/
"frassk":
"I gave him a frask in pisk" is a splendid
way of saying, 'I gave him a slap in the
puss.' He continues, 'My father was so mad
yesterday,' said little Morris, 'that five
separate times he wanted to give me a
frask.'
"How do you know it was exactly five times?"
"Because I counted."
"What did you count?"
"The number of times he hit me."
"I thought you said he wanted to hit you."
"I did. Would he have hit me if he hadn't
wanted to?"
Rosten continues: frosk, a slap. The beauty
of its euphony, begiles me--as I hope it will
you. "A slap passes, but a word (i.e., and
insult) remains!"
Sylvia S. Seaman ("How to Be a Jewish
Grandmother") writes, "Dr. Spock, God
bless him, says parents are only human.
Grandparents, too. That means that when
you can't stand it anymore, it's O.K. to give
the child a good whack. Dr. Benjamin
Spock won't object."
All parents want "klug" (smart) children.
A question: "Can spanking lower a child's
I.Q.? A study examined the I.Q. scores of
many children aged two to four, and five
to nine, and compared them with their
I.Q. scores four years later.
Researcher, Murray Straus, found the children who are spared the rod may have
higher IQs than those who are spanked.
He found the younger children who were
spanked scored on an average of five points
lower on their IQs, compared to children
in their age group whose parents did NOT
believe in corporal "shtrof" (punishment).
Among the older group, "der untersheyd"
(the difference) was 2.8 points.
Straus said, "To put it in a nutshell, corporal
punishment slows down the rate of
development of mental ability. All the kids
got smarter because they got older, but
the ones who were spanked, less so."
What is corporal punishment? In this study,
it is defined as hitting a child, usually in the
buttocks ("zudik") at least three times a
week.
Who usually did the spanking? "Di muter"
(the mother).
In another study, it was found that many
"orem" (poor) children are spanked at ages
as "yung" as 1 and that the practice is tied
to more aggressive behavior by age 2 and
delayed social-emotional development by
age 3.
_________________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe agrees with this
statement: "The behavior of some children
suggests that their parents embarked on
the sea of matrimony without a paddle."
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