I've watched with dismay as Toya Graham is applauded from the highest levels for what, under any other circumstance, would give people cause to call child protective services ("For Baltimore 'hero mom,' video captures only part of her life's struggle," May 12).
I used to teach middle school in the city, and many times I would call parents regarding difficult behavior on the part of their children. Often they would march up to the school where they would smack their kid around in the hall or stairwell while we all listened uncomfortably.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that those punishments never worked over the long term.
Ms. Graham is getting national recognition and all sorts of assistance in the form of job offers and scholarship money for her son, and it is sending the wrong message: That corporal punishment is somehow a solution for a kid's bad behavior.
One of my former students, a single mom who lives in the city, has worked very hard (and taken a lot of flak from family and friends) to raise her son without using physical punishment.
She lost her job almost six months ago and has been working hard every day to find a new one to no avail. Yet she is determined to write a different script for herself and her son than the one that has been played out on national TV in Baltimore and other cities across the country over the last year.
And she continues to run up against innumerable obstacles.
Ms. Graham smacks around her son and gets caught on video and suddenly the job offers are pouring in? That strikes me as patently unfair.
I'm sure Ms. Graham loves her children very much, and she's probably a very nice person. But rewarding physical abuse contradicts everything we know about child raising and sends the absolute wrong message.
Jennifer Hamilton, Sykesville