THE WAR OF McILENNY THUMB:

Feeling the Heat: Some Parents Apply Hot Sauce to a Child's Tongue as Punishment. The Practice Has Some Experts Burning (Alison Buckholtz, August 10, 2004, Washington Post)

Hot sauce adds a kick to salsa, barbeque, falafel and hundreds of other foods. But some parents use it in a different recipe, one they think will yield better-behaved children: They put a drop of the fiery liquid on a child's tongue as punishment for lying, biting, hitting or other offenses.

"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 contacted for this story, including pediatricians, psychologists and child welfare professionals, were familiar with it.

The use of hot sauce has been advocated in a popular book, in a magazine for Christian women and on Internet sites. Web-based discussions on parenting carry intense, often emotional exchanges on the topic.

But parents aren't the only ones asking "to sauce or not to sauce?" Several state governments have gotten involved in the debate. In Michigan in 2002, a child care center was sanctioned for using hot sauce to discipline a child. The mother of the 18-month-old boy reportedly gave the child care workers permission to use the sauce to help dissuade her son from biting other children.

Virginia's child protective services agency lists hot saucing among disciplinary tactics it calls "bizarre behaviors."

After one treatment of the offending digit, just the threat of another is enough to get our daughter to stop sucking her thumb...at least temporarily.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 15, 2004 3:35 PM