That's because if we spank them in public anymore someone calls DFCS and gets them taken away for "abuse"
Truer words were never spoken. Here in Massachusetts, parents live in quaking terror of the 21st Century version of the witch-hunt spearheaded by DSS and its legion of "mandated reporters." You always have to be extremely careful whenever you speak to a teacher, nurse, day care worker, etc. lest one of these self-appointed judge/jury/executioners takes it upon herself to report something they don't like to the state.
My brush with DSS came out of a tantrum my daughter threw in the car on the way to day care one morning. When we arrived at the preschool, I mentioned it to the teacher in the hope of redirecting her inappropriate behavior, and left because the tantrum had already made me late for work. Nothing was said to me when I picked my daughter up later that day to indicate anything was wrong, nor anything the following school day. However, when we came home from the school, a notice was plastered on my door that DSS had been to our home and would be returning the following day for an inspection. The staff at the school pretended they knew nothing about the notice, so I thought perhaps a neighbor (see below) or someone else had called DSS. I was completely in the dark as to how such a thing could have happened.
As soon as I found the notice, my employers retained their attorney on my behalf, and I spent the whole night online researching what to do in such a situation. Upon the attorney's advice, I let DSS into my home and allowed them to conduct a full investigation. The DSS caseworker isn't supposed to tell you who filed the report against you, but she seemed to have an immediate sense that nothing was wrong in our home. She left her casefile upside down in front of me in such a way that I could read the teacher's name without her having to say anything. Boy, was I stunned! When all was said and done, the matter was dropped because the allegations were completely unfounded. Still, it took two weeks before they cleared me, and it was hell waiting for their decision to come.
The teacher could have taken any number of different approaches instead of immediately calling DSS on the morning of my daughter's tantrum. She could have first consulted with the director of the school about how to handle the situation, but she didn't. She could have requested a parent-teacher conference with me if she felt my parenting skills were lacking. She could have documented the episode with a memo in my daughter's file at the school. Instead she decided it was her responsibility as a "mandated reporter" to hit the panic button and permanently tarnish my reputation by involving DSS. The director of the school, oddly enough, couldn't understand why I pulled my daughter out of the place the minute I had been cleared. I had been bringing my daughter to that school five days a week for over two years, and there were just no words that I could find to describe my level of shock and anger at such a consummate betrayal of trust. Since my daughter was transferred to another preschool, there has never been one single episode where the school has been concerned over her behavior. It was just one "mandated reporter" going over the line at the expense of my reputation as a parent.
I just had to share my experience, because it's situations like this which really do thwart effective parenting and discipline. You see, I've also got another "mandated reporter" to worry about. My next door neighbor is a kindergarten teacher at the school where my daughter will be enrolled this year. She sits on her deck day and night with a beer in her hand and watches everyone's comings and goings. She's the type who calls the cops at the first sign of anything she doesn't like, so I can just imagine how quickly she'd phone DSS if she ever heard a tantrum coming from our house. I just keep the shades drawn and count the days until we move from here, but not many parents have the luxury of eluding the "mandated reporters" so easily.
OK, end of rant ... :-)
Now if you'd hauled off and smacked her a$$ in the middle of the parking lot like the good Lord intended, I can see where the school would've called somebody. I don't get it.