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It is true that a child’s social and
emotional development is built on ongoing and regular deposits of
parental love, support, understanding and communication; it is also
true that parents should provide clear limits concerning the
consequences of misbehavior.
Ineffective Methods of Discipline in Children
Many parents would have tried spanking,
lecturing, disapproving, nagging, criticizing, arguing, shouting or
reasoning with their misbehaving children but unfortunately these are
ineffective methods of children discipline. These reactions from the
parents actually form a parental attention that reinforces the
particular misbehavior and results in children learning to shout,
criticize and argue in response to their parents.
Disadvantages of Spanking of Misbehaving Children
Spanking is quick and most likely will
stop the children from misbehaving in the short term. Yet, there are
long-term disadvantages associated with it:
1. Parents model an aggressive response to misbehavior and so their
children learn to use an aggressive response when they are frustrated.
2. Parents often lose control when they are spanking, this is
frightening for their children and creates feelings of guilt in the
parents once they calm down. They may then respond either by
overcompensating with gifts or by avoiding the use of discipline in the
future. The other hidden danger that lies here is sometimes, a child
may force himself to withstand spanks in order to get the “rewards”.
3. Spanking tends to “wipe the slate clean” for misbehaving children,
leaving them with no ongoing sense of remorse for misbehavior. These
children will then be more conforming in the parents’ presence but are
more likely to behave inappropriately elsewhere.
4. Older children will learn to hide or lie about problems in order to
avoid being hit.
The more hurtful the discipline is, whether it is degrading criticisms
or physical punishment, the more devious and resisting children become.
Timeout for Children Discipline Control
The task for parents is to provide an
ethical approach to discipline that teaches children which behaviors
are inappropriate. Meantime, it is important to give them the positive
expectation that they will be able to do better next time and that they
are deeply loved. Apart from methods such as ignoring, using logical
consequences, loss of privileges and problem-solving, “timeout” is
especially useful for high intensity problems, such as fighting,
defiance, hitting and destructive behavior.
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