Spanking has always been a controversial topic when talking about how to raise your kids. Everyone has a different opinion on what they think is right. Is it appropriate to spank them at a certain age? What about the amount of times the child is spanked in a given incident? How often is it okay to spank a child before it comes something we frown upon? Is it okay to use a belt, or a paddle? Many questions arise when we talk about how to discipline our children.
While I think that whether or not spanking is a good way to discipline a child should be left up to the individual parent, it is shown that spanking really isn’t as effective as we all may assume.
An article on Parenting.com gives insight on the method of spanking. While it was much more popular in earlier generations, we now have research to suggest that not only is spanking ineffective, but also has the ability to hinder parent-child relationships. Spanking causes the child to not respect the rules or the authority figure, but rather teaches them to fear them. Instilling fear within children is not something that anyone wants to do, especially if you’re a parent.
So if spanking is so bad, then why do so many parents do it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because it’s what we know, and we’re just trying to raise kids the best way we know how. Maybe we find it to be the quick solution to a disobedient child. Whatever the reason, spanking is still pretty prevalent within our society. Will that ever change? Guess time will tell.
Source:http://www.parenting.com/article/is-it-okay-to-spank
I have never understood why a parent would want to hit a child. And while I understand that it was ‘how things were done’ decades ago, I absolutely do not get how people continue to do so today, when they actually have knowledge of how detrimental it can be to a child’s psyche. And while I understand that sometimes frustration can lead to a loss of control, I still believe that it’s a decision that a parent has to make. Additionally, I would think that momentary pain and unpleasantness as punishment would not be nearly as effective as say taking away a privilege for an extended period of time so that the consequences of an action can be impressed upon the child. Either way, I think corporal punishment in this day and age is more abuse than ‘teaching’.
So I looked up a psychological article on spanking your child and there are a lot of negative effects. They say it weakens the bond of the parent and the child, and the child begins to lose trust and respect within the parent. What I found interesting was a way to reprimand your child without spanking them. They mentioned in the article that children learn through modeling behavior. If your simply punish your child even without spanking them, they still won’t really know what they did wrong or how to behave the next time. However the right thing to do as a parent is to model the proper behavior and set a good example for the child to learn. This is one way to not only reduce the spanking but the unnecessary punishments. Parents should be more of role models, not aggressive punishers. How do you personally feel you should reprimand your child?
check out this article
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201309/research-spanking-it-s-bad-all-kids
This is a great topic to discuss! My mom works in the psychology field and has told me situations she has encountered that showed these problems. She had a mother who was spanking her child consistently because “that’s how she was raised”. He had some disorders regarding aggressiveness and to a child with those problems, being hit only caused him to react that it’s appropriate and he started to consistently hit his mother back. Whether it’s good or bad there is still definitely a distinct mark on punishing and going too far. If you’re interested, here’s a website that talks about other disciplinary mistakes parents always make with their kids.
http://www.parenting.com/article/8-discipline-mistakes-parents-make?page=0,1
I was spanked maybe once or twice as a child. The majority of any punishments I received were time-outs, which were effective in their own right.
And yeah, a lot of studies have come out that show physical punishment is detrimental to a child’s mental health. Here’s a good article about it:
http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/tenreasons.html
There have been a few studies performed, including here at Penn State, that has proven that physical punishment is detrimental to the psyche of the child. Not only is physical punishment not a viable way to discipline a child, but it can have residual effects, and even lead to resentment as the child grows older. One can assume that the reason why one spanks is because it is ‘cathartic’, but physical/emotional release are just as sketchy.