Mom Liza Martinez went viral this month. But not for her heartfelt words, for giving her son a beating in public.
She claims that her resorting to violence is a part of good parenting that helps her children to obey.
“I feel that I have a debt to society, and my debt to society is to make sure my children are productive law-abiding citizens,” Martinez told KFOX.
Her son, however, is currently stealing cars.
Her 14-year-old called his mother at work to say that the internet was down at their home.
“As soon as he said that, literally, I got a message instantly that my Wifi was down,” Martinez explained.
“At that point, it blocks out my cameras, my home security. I don’t see when the doors are being opened or closed.”
Martinez then received a phone call saying that Aaron had picked up a friend.
This set another alarm off in Martinez’s head.
She immediately called her daughter, Liza Campero, who lives next door to see if her new BMW was in the driveway.
“That’s when she told me to grab the belt, and I really just ran into the closet and grabbed the first belt I saw,” Campero said.
Martinez and Campero then set out to find Martinez’s son.
Campero decided to record the whole ordeal and post it on Twitter.
“Honestly, I post about my brothers all of the time because they’re always in trouble. It just kept going, and it was getting funnier,” Campero said.
Martinez found her sun and pulled up next to him in traffic.
She then yelled at him to pull over.
“Pull over nnnnoooowwwwwwww,” she screams at him.
“It’s a scream we’ve all heard from our moms at least once in our lives. She then proceeded to beat her son with the belt.
https://twitter.com/LilaaBites/status/1050843628585738240
The video of her beating her son was liked more than 33,000 times and was retweeted more than 13,000 times.
“It’s my son’s well being, his livelihood, his best friend’s well being, not to mention all of the people on the roadways,” Martinez said.
Her son is also grounded until 2019 and has had his phone and internet access cut off.
Martinez even took the door off of his room to make sure he complies.
Newscasters and social media users are praising this mom for using spanking as a form of discipline.
However, researchers will probably tell you that spanking has its consequences.
There are many studies that show that physical punishment leads to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury, and mental health problems the American Psychological Association says.
“It’s a very controversial area even though the research is extremely telling and very clear and consistent about the negative effects on children,” says Dr. Sandra Graham-Berman says. “People get frustrated and hit their kids. Maybe they don’t see there are other options.”
Not only is spanking harmful, but it also isn’t effective in changing behavior.
“You cannot punish out these behaviors that you do not want,” Yale psychology professor Dr. Alan Kazdin says. “There is no need for corporal punishment based on the research. We are not giving up an effective technique. We are saying this is a horrible thing that does not work.”
Since physical punishment doesn’t get children to comply, parents think that they have to keep escalating it which can get dangerous.
Psychology Today reports that spanking can serve as a temporary fix or relief for an angry parent.
Rather than speaking to their children and try to understand why they are reacting the way they are and finding a different means of discipline, spanking puts a temporary end to the situation.
“Spanking lasts also because it is a quick and readily available tool for most any parent. Spanking is the equivalent of taking a pill to quickly numb your knee pain rather than engage the long tedious process of figuring out what the pain is trying to tell you about the way you’re mistreating your knees,” Psychology Today reports.
Spanking is still used by some parents today because humans are resistant to change.
It’s rare for one who wasn’t spanked to begin spanking their children.
But a generation who was spanked is likely to spank their own children.
“Research has shown that, particularly when we are under duress, we tend to fall back on our primary responses—those that are well learned; those we grew up with,” Psychology Today says. “And so spanking persists, even though it can neither be defended on the basis of the available empirical data nor on the basis of sound psychological theorizing.”
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