Absolutely. Taking any action where the sole intent is to inflict pain deliberately on a child is abuse.

If pain is the goal it is much faster, easier and cheaper to just hit them.

Had a friend in grade school whose dad did this to his children. Taught his children to lie better to avoid him. DEFINITELY abusive.

The punishment is one thing, but the fact that it was part of a scheme to get on Dr. Phil takes it up to the creepy stratosphere.

Cruel and unusual.

Whatever. In Mudedes mind assigning chores is abuse too.

3 guesses as to how many kids this moron has.

the message behind corporal punishment is essentially this:

"don't (smack) hit (smack) your brother! hitting (smack) is (smack) WRONG! (smack)"

surely that will teach the lesson. why wouldn't it?

Rinsing MY mouth out with hot sauce equals delicious.

Punishment with hot sauce is particularly insidious because, depending on how hot it is, the pain can go on long after the kid spits the hot sauce out.

@8,

What drives me bonkers is when parents hit their kids to get them to stop crying.

@1, you're on a slippery slope. Is washing a child's mouth out with soap abuse? Is spanking abuse? I don't agree with either of them, but some people in the country do - particularly the latter.

It is stomach-turning that she did it to get on Dr. Phil, and that they indirectly encouraged it. Apparently, her first video she submitted was not bad enough, and so she submitted the hot sauce video.

@8

That wouldn't.

My parents rule, and that of my wife and myself, is never punish a child in anger. My dad or mom used to send us to our bedrooms while he considered the most appropriate reaction to whatever we'd done. (And yes, I'm old enough for the infamous 'wait until your father gets home' which my wife rarely uses, thank God. I mean, you come home from a hard days work wanting to sit down and relax, and first thing in the door you get to be the boogey man. But that's how it was done then, just part of being 'dad'.) With my dad that was occasionally a swat on the rear, in the overwhelming majority of cases it wasn't. I haven't swatted but times change and we change with them.

It has to do with motivation as well as technique. Kids differentiate a reaction of anger or temper from one of love and discipline. But a bunch of folks without kids probably wouldn't understand that.

This happened to me as a kid. It was always a small, small dose -- a little tiny bit of Tobasco sauce -- and it was very, very effective. It might have helped that there were strict conditions were it was deployed (that is, the worst of the worst behavior, not for minor matters like lying or swearing or whatnot) and that we always talked about why it was happening. Didn't seem abusive at the time, doesn't seem abusive now, but I don't think I'd use it on my children, if I have any, any more than I'd spank them -- the culture has changed.

No. Beating a child with a hammer is child abuse. Raping a child is child abuse. Throwing a child off a cliff is child abuse.

Jesus Christ, get a sense of perspective.

What Charlie? You are not turning this into a race issue and complaining that making a child swallow hot sauce (salsa) as a punishment is a racial insult to Hispanics? Knock me over with a feather...

It's been very well demonstrated that punitive measures are counter-productive. Whether you are talking about dogs, children, or an entire society, punishment is not only ineffective but it creates much worse problems than the initial "offense."

If it is abuse, does it rise to the level of making Native Americans pay to ride the bus???

@ 12, i have two, and i never once had to raise a hand to either of them.

hitting as discipline really doesn't work in any form, but i concede that my example was a bit hyperbolic. you may get short term results, but if you have to resort to that, you've already lost control of the situation and the child knows it, and that will come back to haunt you in a number of ways.

don't hit kids. lead by example, and show respect to earn it.

And yes, this is abuse, but so is every measure of physical coercion.

We're talking about this, right?

@20, yes, thanks for the link.

My ma used to force-spoon horseradish into my mouth for cursing when I was a kid. It only worked until I was too big to force-feed. Also, I now love horseradish.

The only thing this is, is helping your child not to grow up to be some mild-salsa-eating Yankee wimp.

(Deliberately inflicting pain on children is wrong, although I am not sure I would consider it abuse. It's a small-minded, uncreative, uncaring, ill-considered parenting strategy. This seems like a pretty arcane way to go about it when you could just spank, though. Waste of good hot sauce too. But abuse? That seems extreme.)

this type of punishment is sadistic precisely because it is so calculating; a pre-planned pain regimen that they know some people are going to write it off as not "real abuse" just adds to it's inherit sickness, imo.

and sending it to Dr Phil. blech.

I'm with @9. I've always loved hot sauce so I am not qualified to answer that question. I would say it's a reward, as would my step-daughter.

Depends on the hot sauce.

@8 Okay, I'm definitely not going to jump on the hot-sauce-is-okay train, but I want to point out that some parents (including my own) can use corporeal punishment sparingly and effectively.

As a child, when words didn't seem to get through to me (e.g. I repeatedly did something wrong that was in some way destructive as well), my parents would sometimes choose to spank me.

However, there was to be NO physical punishment without concurrence from both my parents, *and* it had to be administered later, with cool heads. No repeated smackings out of anger, just calm, deliberate, and (again) sparing reinforcement. The rarity of the action reinforced its seriousness, so on those rare occasions I learned my lesson(s).

I believe that there are a LOT of parents who can't pull this off-- it's too easy to get physical in the heat of the moment, so for them it may be better all around to just say no hitting, period, end of story.

However, I am proof positive that with the right mindset and willpower, some corporeal punishment can be administered effectively and in a way that I would not call abusive. It is possible.

My sister was a "liar" at the age of 4 and my mom used to put Tabasco sauce on her tongue when she was caught lying - after a short (less than a minute?) period of time she could spit it out and then suck on an apple. I never understood the logic - couldn't get my mom to stop doing it - and my sister never stopped lying.

Why does all this weird shit come out of Alaska?

@7 and @ 12 = fucking high-horse. no one without kids can understand ANYTHING about them? as far as I can tell no one is giving you parenting advice...so give us a fucking break. I don't have kids but work with kids and am a mandated reporter of child abuse. I'd like to think I know what constitutes abuse. and I figured it out without actually having a kid...why? cuz I'm a fucking genius.

just cuz you can breed doesn't make you smarter...in fact, it's easier to breed then to not.

Huh. I'd have begged for this treatment as a kid as an alternative to what I did get. I guess it's all in what you're inured to; it seems futile and overly reactive, but abusive? I don't know if I'd go that far. It's useless, I can tell you that. None of the beatings - and they were actual beatings - I and my siblings got for lying, swearing, etc., ever stopped the behavior, they just made us much sneakier about it.

The disgusting part is using it as an audition. The actual discipline is just wrongheaded. There are people on the comments on the various news sites calling for her to be imprisoned for life, executed, prevented from ever being around children, etc. Um. Really? Let me introduce you to my mother...

oh definitely, geni - i would never argue that there aren't degrees of severity, and this is on the lighter end. just as there's a difference between breaking into someone's home and stealing everything they own and shoplifting. but it's still wrong - whether it constitutes abuse or not is debatable for some, but it does without a doubt make a victim out of a child, as does using any kind of physical pain to control or punish, and without any measurable benefit.

(having just watched the video, i would agree that that mother is an abuser, and deserves to get in some trouble. not sure what, but something, and some remedial parenting classes mandated as well).

Who cares?

You know who advocates/advocated this? Remember Lisa Welchel from "Facts of LIfe", the snooty Blair? Devout Christian parent that she was, she even wrote a book espousing using hot sauce in the mouth! She took a lot of (pardon the pun) heat for those remarks!

@32 - had a long debate with my husband about this last night, and he made a point that really made me think. "If you'd be outraged if someone did this to their pets, then it's abusive if they do it to their children."

Now, most people may find it odd that I needed it put in those terms to change my mind, but my husband (who has two sons by his first wife), knows me, and knows I relate better to animals. So I've changed my mind. While this would have been a damned mild punishment compared to what my mother routinely handed out, I've now come around to thinking it's borderline abusive.

The commenters who think she should be locked away for life and have the rest of her kids taken away from her are still full of shit, though. She does need parenting counseling, but she admitted that herself.