Spanking as a Disciplinary Method for Children
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Spanking as a Disciplinary Method for Children
It is every parent’s dream to create happiness for their children, instill respect in them, ensure that other people respect them, and find their place in the world by being well-behaved adults. No parent would want to raise a spoiled child. As many parents can attest, a disciplinary approach that works for one child may not work for the other one. This is because children have a different way in which they react to disciplinary techniques. Discipline is all about teaching your child the types of behaviors that are acceptable and those which are not. Simply, discipline teaches a child how to follow and adhere to the given rules. Effective discipline may be cultivated most of the time by support and love from family, positive reinforcements, and modeling. Other times, punishments may be used to instill discipline. This does not necessarily mean that good discipline can only be taught through punishments. The technique you choose to discipline your children mainly depends on the type of bad behavior that the child exhibits, the child’s age, the guardian’s parenting style, and the child’s temperament (Sege et al., 2018). This paper will focus on informing parents about some of the appropriate disciplinary methods that can be applied to children. The paper will examine the appropriateness of spanking as a disciplinary method for Latin American parents.
Discipline is all about imparting skills and knowledge to teach your child. Disciplining a child is, therefore, one of the most important responsibilities of a parent as there exist no shortcuts to it. Therefore, effective discipline fosters appropriate and acceptable behaviors in a child and helps raise emotionally mature adults. A disciplined person can be considerate of other people’s needs, is respectful, assertive, has a high tolerance of discomfort in necessary situations, and also they know when to postpone pleasure. Determining the disciplinary technique that will work for your child is a personal choice that largely depends on the child’s temperaments and the parent as well as the parenting style. There is no disciplinary technique known to work for all children the same way; therefore, there is a need to apply an eclectic approach to choosing the type of discipline to use (Sege et al., 2018). However, a lot of controversies exist in the appropriate ways in which parents can discipline their children. This brings about a lot of confusion to the parents on the effective ways they can use to impart self-control and set limits for their children. For instance, there is a great diversity of opinions about the effects of some of the disciplinary methods, such as spanking. It is important to note that respect is the most effective foundation of the discipline. The most effective disciplinary techniques in rewarding good behavior. It is a type of positive discipline. It involves acknowledging good behavior by your child through compliments and encouraging them to continue with the same spirit. Other effective methods of disciplining include timeouts, taking the child’s privileges for some time, logical consequences where you clearly describe to the child the consequences of bad behavior, and also natural consequences where when the child does a bad thing, you let them learn from the results of the mistakes. Consistency in applying discipline to the child is also key to cultivating good behavior in children. Harsh disciplinary methods such as verbal abuse, spanking, and shouting make it hard for children to cultivate respect and good behavior. Therefore, effective and appropriate disciplinary measures are those which are applied with mutual fairness, respect, fair, consistent, and reasonable manner.
Spanking can be defined as openhanded hitting that is non-injurious, which is meant to modify a child’s behavior. It is one of the most common discipline methods that parents tend to use as they believe it is an effective discipline method. Most of the time, you find that parents spank their children out of anger, impulse, or exasperation. This mainly happens when the parents react with frustrations. Parents also result in spanking when they feel like the other disciplining methods are not working. In some cases, cultural factors may also lead to a spanking. For instance, some of the cultural groups believe that spanking is part of the cultural background and an upbringing method. This is also very evident in developing countries and low-income countries. Culture plays a vital role in dictating how Latino’s raise their children and the common practices that the parents apply to instill discipline. For instance, parents are more likely to administer discipline according to their cultural values rather than responding to the psychological strain. Also, some of the habits of corporal punishment, which were a residue of colonialism, have been adopted by many cultures. They still believe that corporal punishment is the only way discipline can be instilled in a child. Evidence on Hispanic families shows that they are more likely to use spanking as a method of disciplining their children. Most studies point out that most African American families tend to use a physical type of punishment, followed by Hispanic families (Barajas et al., 2018). According to a study by Barajas et al. on the prevalence of parental spanking in Latino immigrant families and its relationship with the child internalizing and externalizing problems after one year, the results show that there was no correlation between spanking and the ability of the child to internalize or externalize their behaviors (Barajas et al., 2018). According to the study, Latino parents are regarded as authoritative, controlling. Although parental control can also be exhibited through non-harsh methods, their parental control level consistently involves frequent spanking. Further studies show that Latino parents rely on controlling practices to instill discipline in their children. However, although the parents may be considered controlling, evidence shows they are very nurturing and warm.
While spanking may alter the child’s behavior on a short term basis, studies show that spanking rarely yields positive results on a long-term basis. Studies show that spanking is an inappropriate disciplinary technique as it has detrimental consequences on the development of the child. It also affects the relationship between the child and their parents. Using violence to punish a child is just showing them that when someone makes you mad, you have to hit them. You find that children who are spanked endorse hitting as a means of resolving their conflicts with their peers and their siblings too. Also, parents who experienced spanking while growing up are more likely to believe that it is appropriate for disciplining children. Most of the time, spanking evolves into violence, which affects the safety of the child. Spanking may also yield to aggressive behaviors in the child, it may cause damage psychologically, and during adolescence, it acts as delinquency (Gershoff & Grogan, 2016). Children who are spanked also have a higher risk of experiencing problems in forming relationships; they may suffer depression, anxiety, mental problems, or even stress both as children and as adults. Physical punishment such as spanking can also be viewed as a violation of the child’s right. Most of the countries in the world have even gone ahead to the barn the physical punishment of children in all the settings. You find that physical punishment may not be effective most of the time, and thus the parents keep escalating it. This is so dangerous as it may cause more harm to the child. Research also shows that spanking may be effective in stopping the child’s behavior momentarily for a short period just because they are afraid of being hit again. In the long-term, the method does not work, but instead, it makes the child more aggressive and antisocial.
The negative consequences brought about by spanking outweigh the positive outcomes. Therefore, in my opinion, spanking is an inappropriate method of disciplining children. There is no good reason for a parent to result in physical means of discipline while there are other more effective means to instill discipline such as time-outs, taking away privileges, or even reprimands verbally without shouting. The main goal of discipline is to keep the child from harm’s way, help the child develop a healthy conscience, acquire the quality of self-discipline, and help the child gain internal control and a sense of responsibility. Therefore, spanking should be avoided by all means.
References
Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez, R., Calzada, E., Huang, K. Y., Covas, M., Castillo, C. M., & Brotman, L. M. (2018). Parent spanking and verbal punishment, and young child internalizing and externalizing behaviors in Latino immigrant families: Test of moderation by context and culture. Parenting, 18(4), 219-242.
Gershoff, E. T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of family psychology, 30(4), 453.
Sege, R. D., Siegel, B. S., Abuse, C. O. C., & Committee On Psychosocial Aspects of Child And Family Health. (, 2018). Effective discipline to raise healthy children. Pediatrics, 142(6).