For as long as I can remember, people have been at odds over the issue of child discipline. Some insist that spanking is perfectly reasonable, providing kids with direct consequences for their beastly behavior. Yet there's a growing camp of parents and psychologists who claim physical punishment constitutes violence and sets a hypocritical example that leads to abusive behavior later in life.

These people usually recommend a "time out" system by which a child who does wrong is sent to his room and denied all love and stimulation. It's a calculated silent-treatment, an openly aggressive form of passive-aggression. It seems to work, though parents who administer it poorly tend to find their children gleefully smashing vases so they can disappear to their rooms and play Nintendo.

The feature article in this week's Arts & Leisure section offers an alternative solution. Rather than smack your kid or lock him up, why not pre-emptively instill him with a traumatic fear of day-to-day life? Tell him watermelon seeds often sprout inside bad boys' intestines, Coke and aspirin will give you brain cancer, too much TV makes you blind, and Catholic nuns like to abduct unsuspecting children. No need for tales about hell's damnation -- the surreal impending horrors of the natural world ought to get the job done.

The author is only half-joking: apparently his parents used just such a technique, and apparently it worked. I'm convinced, anyway. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run to the doctor, I think I've got ringworm from petting a cat.