Naive me. Hot sauce in mouth acceptable punishment among some fundamentalists.

[madfloridian]

This just stunned me. I had no idea. Looks like it is promoted by Today's Christian Women magazine, and also by James Dobson's Focus on the Family.

"Hot Saucing" A traditional method for punishing children

What it is:
"Hot Saucing" (a.k.a. "Hot Tongue") involves burning a child's tongue with Tabasco or a similar hot sauce as a punishment for unacceptable behavior. It is generally used when the child's misbehavior is related to the use of their mouth: talking back to adults, lying, biting someone, swearing, spitting, refusing to eat, etc. Variations on the punishment include the use of acetic acid (vinegar), lemon juice, soap or some other highly noxious substance.

According to the Washington Post, " 'Hot saucing,' or 'hot tongue,' has roots in Southern culture, according to some advocates of the controversial disciplinary method, but it has spread throughout the country. Nobody keeps track of how many parents do it, but most experts...including pediatricians, psychologists and child welfare professionals, ... familiar with it." 1

"Hot Saucing" has been promoted on some Internet sites, in Today's Christian Woman magazine and in a Focus on the Family book, described below. Focus on the Family is a Fundamentalist Christian agency located in Colorado Springs, CO.

More about it.

Medical contraindications:

Carleton Kendrick, a family therapist from Boston, MA, recommends against the use of hot saucing. He said that it can burn the child's esophagus and cause their tongue to swell. This can create a potential choking hazard. He said: "There are many different kinds of hot sauce on the market, and parents who say they know the dilution to use so it won't sting, or say they only use one drop, are wrong. It's done because it hurts. It stings. It burns. It makes you nauseous." Giorgio Kulp, a pediatrician in Montgomery County, VA, says that the use of hot sauce on children is dangerous because of the risk of swelling and the possibility of triggering unknown allergies. He notes that "Every child's reaction, physically, is different." So it might be safe for one child but not another.

An associated method of inflicting pain on children is the force feeding of hot-peppers. Two child psychologists reported that this "can result in anaphylaxis or cause significant burns and damage to developing tissues in the mouth, esophagus, intestinal walls, stomach, and colon."

As I said, I must be naive. Not long ago I posted about the day care center in Florida which is in trouble because one of the teachers used this method.

Florida licensed day care teacher taped mouths, locked in closets, put hot sauce in mouths to punish

This is one of the licensed day care that gets state money to run pre-kindergarten classes. I believe they lost that privilege.

A Lakeland day care faces sanctions for failing to report suspicions that a teacher was taping the mouths of children in her care, locking them in a closet and dispensing hot sauce to cure ill behavior. The issue came to light June 1 after the department received a complaint about the abuse going on at Colors R Us, which is licensed for 89 children and has been in business since 2004. The person filing the complaint told DCF that staff were failing to notify the state's abuse hotline, as the law requires.

That is stunning to me to see that method advocated by some Christian groups.