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It's 5:30 p.m., and Larkin and I are in a restaurant, having a scene. I'm tired and hungry and trying to eat... but she won't let it happen. She pushes her plate of chicken fingers away. She lies down in the booth, dives under the table. I plead: Can you please behave? But things get worse.

She spills her lemonade. Sends the salt and pepper caddy crashing to the floor. Whines and wails for ice cream. The scene ends with me tossing a few bills on the table and hustling her out -- clamped beneath my arm and kicking furiously. On the sidewalk I rant, "Can't we just eat dinner for 15 minutes in peace? You said you wanted to go here, right?"

Is this scenario painfully familiar? An article in the New York Times, "Shouting is the New Spanking," describes the epidemic of "losing it" among American parents. Once we stopped spanking our children, the article argues, we had trouble controlling them.  And so we yell. It doesn't work very well, and we feel guilty about it afterward, but we still do it. "My name is Francesca," posts one mom on a website, "and I am a screamer."

For the record, I am, of course, against spanking. In Molly's and my circle, being for corporal punishment is about as popular as cheerleading for Guantanamo. But sometimes I despair at how weak a tool language provides for modifying Larkin's behavior. Especially when it comes to the toddler pastimes of hitting, kicking, pinching and biting. Sure, you can say "Don't do that!" you can enforce time-outs and explain why "we don't hit in this family," why pinching isn't nice, why civilization as we know it will implode if we don't all restrain our aggression, and on and on. But it really doesn't do much. So I ask Molly: How about just....  pinching back? "Not enough to hurt. Just enough to send a signal."
 She gives me a horrified look. She's just absolutely, categorically opposed to spanking, she says.
 "But I'm not advocating spanking," I say. "I'm advocating pinching and biting."

OK, not really. I guess I just think opponents of spanking shouldn't be so smug. It's not as if they have the answers, after all. Is making a child feel guilty, the whole "I'm really disappointed in you" approach, really all that more humane? Think about the tactical withdrawal of affection, the yo-yoing ups and downs of approval and disapproval; the time-outs, the bootless threats and lectures; the yelling. Don't all these methods have their downside?

Molly and I used to put Larkin in a special place for a time-out, a dimly-lit alcove between the TV room and guest room. One day over lunch with an acquaintance, a retired therapist, I mentioned the time-out place. "Don't do that," she said, frowning. "Not in a dark corner. It's too degrading." 
I felt chagrined. Suddenly it did seem degrading - Larkin crouched on the floor in that dark alcove as I stood over her, lecturing her.

But what to do? For the sake of argument, I put the notion to Molly: If your child pinches you, and you immediately pinch back, isn't she liable to get it? Isn't the lesson direct, immediate, and meaningful? Might it not furthermore be a helpful introduction to the real world? Pinch, and you get pinched!

Or what if Larkin runs out into the road and almost gets killed? Might not augmenting her scolding with a swat on the butt bring home the message just that much more firmly, and lessen the chance of her getting killed next time? And if so, if you acknowledge you might spank in that case, then where's your absolute prohibition?

Molly gives me a glum look. There's no way she's going to reconsider, no matter what argument I make. She tells me that a colleague of hers, a horsewoman, had a friend who believed in biting her horse whenever her horse bit her.
"What's your point?" I ask.
"That if you do that to your child, you're treating her like an animal." We're trying to form a person, she reminds me, not a pet. "If it takes a thousand time-outs and lectures for Larkin to learn not to hit us or not to kick Bert, it's not only worth it - it's what we have to do. We can't teach her that hitting is bad by hitting her."

 And yet... From early in her teaching years Molly recalls a particularly troublesome student, a boy who was continually nasty and sarcastic in class. Finally one day, in frustration, she let him have it -- blasting back at him with angry, cutting sarcasm. "He was astonished. And after that I literally never had another problem with him. He became a dream kid."

Hmmm. An aggressive verbal attack launched on a child by an adult? You're not supposed to do that. Yet as one of the responders to the Times article put it, "We would all prefer to make our points to our children in a calm, measured tone all the time, but we are only human, and sometimes the situation calls for more."

So here's a thought experiment for my fellow parents: Can you imagine curbing your progressivism and doling out a pinch every now and then? Just when you're, you know, in a pinch? 
OK, I put it out there. Now go ahead, let me have it!