WASHINGTON—I do not know what the “system” will do with Mary Francis Bergamsco, but I have a suggestion: Teach her a little about psycology and child-rearing, and send her home with her children.

Bergamasco is in trouble, and in danger of losing her seven-year-old son, because she forced him to wear a fake pig’s snout and sit, hands tied and face painted blue, in front of their apartment, where neighbors could see him.

The 28-year-old mother says it was a desparate attempt to stop her son from stealing and lying.

The Almeda County, Calif., authorities say it was child abuse. They’ve taken temporary custody of the boy and his year-old sister, and will soon decide whether they will be allowed to live with their mother again.

The authorities will get a lot of support for their view that the public humiliation of the kid amounts to child abuse. Just the other night, on ABC-TV’s “Nightline,” a child psychologist who has never seen mother or child was predicting all manner of permanent psychic damage from the June 28 incident. Melvin Belli, the famous trial lawyer who is representing Bergamasco without charge, argued that these things have to be taken on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the overall relation between parent and child.

Knowing only what I’ve learned from press reports, I have to agree with Belli.

I don’t say that Bergamasco was right. It seems fairly obvious that she wasn’t. But watching her on TV, I had no doubt that she had been on her wit’s end on that June day. And like many desparate parents, she made a mistake.

The boy, ordinarily well-behaved, had, during one aberrant two-week period, stolen $25 worth of baseball cards, $6 in cash, an earring, a belt buckle and another child’s toy. She talked with him about what he had done after each incident and gave him a chance to say why he had done it. His only response, she said, was to deny everything.

So she fashioned a pig’s snout from an egg carton and made a sign that read: “I’m dumb pig (sic). Ugly is what you will become every time you lie and steal. Look at me squeel (sic). My hands are tied because I can not be trusted. This is a lesson to be learned. Look. Laugh. Thief. Stealing. Bad boy.”

As she explained to police investigators, summoned by neighbors, she wanted the yongster to understand, “if only for 30 minutes, that lying and stealing make you ugly like Pinocchio.”

To repeat the obvious, her desperate method was wrong. But was it criminal abuse?

I don’t think so. The child psychologist on “Nightline” said she should have sought counseling. But Bergamasco, separated from the boy’s father and living on subsidised housing, said the family budget wouldn’t allow it. The psychologist also said that spanking is also wrong; that the boy’s thefts were a “cry for help” and that the mother should have tried to discipline the boy by establishing rules for his behavior. He didn’t say how she should have enforced the rules.

My sympathies are with the boy, of course, but also with his desperate young mother. I know that some parents manage to discipline their children without either humiliating or striking them; who think that resorting to physical punishment teaches children that violence is an acceptable way of solving problems. But I also know countless parents, older ones, and Southerners in particular, who spanked their children—as mine did—without either teaching violence or doing psychic damage.

Tell me that the more modern methods are better, and you get no arguement from me. Tell me that the older methods amount to child abuse, and I’ll argue plenty.

My own feeling is that children, not nearly so fragile as some psychologists contend, are capable of enduring any number of child-rearing errors, so long as they know their parents love them. You could not watch Mary Francis Bergamasco and doubt that she loves her son, and was concerned to nip a discipline problem on the bud.

It may well be that the Bergamasco’s unorthadox punishment will leave its marks on her son. But the greater long-term damage, to the boy and to his mother, is being inflicted by the authorities.