To beat or not to beat is the question

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

There are no parents in the world who would never punish their child. If such existed, their names would have long been entered in the Guinness Book of Records, and royalties from publications would put this family on the list of the richest people on the planet, somewhere between Bill Gates and the oil sheikhs.

Pangs of conscience

Actually, the opposite is also true: there are no children in the world who would not be punished for anything. It is unlikely that the most patient parent will remain Olympic calm at the sight of his child trying for the tenth time to poke a plug in an electrical outlet.

Perhaps, the crux of the issue of punishing children is not whether it should be done, but why (or why) we do it. Parents' forums on the Internet are full of such discussions and outbursts of emotions of young and not very experienced parents: "I hit my child!", "Am I a bad mother?", "I can not restrain myself", etc. Several years ago, when my son was not yet a year old, a friend called me, whose daughter was several months younger. Clever, intellectual, very gentle person, it was difficult to suspect that she could raise her voice at all. She was in a panic: "I screamed at my daughter! She was crying in the morning, and I … I couldn't hear it anymore! I grabbed her, shook her and started screaming! My daughter was scared, she cried even more, and now I feel like a bastard." … By that time, I myself had gone through a similar experience, and Eda Le Shan's famous book When Your Child Drives You Crazy helped me a lot. My friend also read this book and more or less came to her senses.

However, even the wisest books are not a panacea for the problems of "fathers and children", which often end in punishment. Parents are not at all relieved to think that their problems are as old as the world. For them, every such incident is a huge stress. What can we say about the children themselves!

In fact, for the first time, most parents unwittingly face the problem of punishment, when their baby begins to bite, scratch, grab his hair and show such cute signs of attention. Even if before that they solemnly vowed to bring up the child in the spirit of the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun, without saying the word "no" to him until the age of 5, they are unlikely to have the strength to enjoy life at the moment when the child removes the scalp from them.

Are punishments necessary as such? The question is very difficult. However, one should not discount the fact that any society lives according to the "crime - punishment" scheme. The inevitability of punishment is the basis of the judiciary. Ignorance of the laws, as you know, does not absolve from responsibility. Ignorance of moral and ethical standards will not lead to anything good either. A child brought up in permissiveness will face problems already in kindergarten. Then at school. Even if the "sword of Damocles" does not hang over him;

The dark room and its inhabitants

I knew one family that could not have children. They have been waiting for the opportunity to adopt a child for a long time, and, finally, a beautiful one-year-old strong man appeared in their house.

When he was about two years old, the baby (like, in general, all his peers) did not always have time to report a delicate problem in time. The parents decided that it should not be so, and chose a method of punishment in which wet tights were put on the child's head …

At the same time, the parents were absolutely sure that they were right. Another of their "inventions" was to deprive the child of food - the son had an enviable appetite.

A textbook example of punishment is a corner. Each of us stood in the corner, be it at home, in kindergarten, or somewhere else. "Wait and think about your behavior / deed" is a familiar phrase, isn't it? It was spoken by our parents, we pronounce it … It is doubtful that children a la "little robber" are really tormented by remorse being in such a place. The son of my friend, who was told something like "when you realize that you are to blame, you come up and ask for forgiveness," stood somehow in the corner for an hour and a half before my mother noticed that he was muttering to himself: "and not I will apologize and will not force you."

It is difficult to say whether parents have become more humane towards their children today, but it is good that some "world inventions" have disappeared without a trace. As a child, my grandmother told me about the "knee-on-pea" method of punishment. It always seemed to me that there was some kind of catch here - well, is this a punishment? And somehow I decided to try. After about five minutes it seemed to me that the peas were covered with thorns. Ten years later - that he forever rooted to my knees. After that, I respected my grandmother very much for her stoicism in a difficult childhood.

I must say that quite a few parents do not see anything special in corporal punishment, quoting the Eastern sages: "The child's ear is on his back." Other parents, rightly denying spanking as a solution to their problems, do not find anything reprehensible in the "dark room" for their children. In either case, the child will be alone with fear. Sometimes wild. It is unlikely that parents at this moment realize that the desire to inflict fear and pain on a creature is obviously weaker - not the lot of the mighty of this world …

How can you punish children if you can't do without it? Most parents, without further ado, prohibit their child's favorite activities: playing the computer (an extremely effective solution today), watching TV, walking with friends. Sometimes the prohibitions reach the point of absurdity. My school friend was punished for deuces by the fact that … she was forbidden to read.

Once our teacher of geography, an extraordinary and shocking personality, gave her a "stake" for an unlearned lesson. In the next lesson, he asked how the parents reacted to the "one". Hearing the answer, he silently took the diary and wrote on half a sheet: "Let the child read!"

Take a look inside yourself

Psychologists believe that those parents who were punished in childhood are more prone to punishment. For some, this is not unnatural, because they themselves have grown up as normal people, despite the periodic flogging. Others, on the other hand, swear to themselves, "My child will never know what it is." That is why they are ashamed when they still could not restrain themselves - after all, they perfectly understand the child's feelings at this moment!

Naturally, physical punishment is not welcome in any society. Almost all countries criminalize harm to a child. The child's testimony is paramount in this case (unfortunately, only not in Russia). There are even known cases of blackmail of parents by children (more likely, however, already teenagers) who threaten to contact the police if their parents do not indulge some of their whims. However, this is the flip side of the same permissiveness.

Both courts and religious communities are debating the possibility of corporal punishment - for example, last winter, the Court of Appeals of the Canadian province of Ontario ruled that parents and teachers have the right to use corporal punishment to children using "reasonable force" … Naturally, this decision caused a stormy protest from a number human rights bodies that appealed against this decision. But a precedent was set …

At the very least, it would seem strange in this article an attempt to find universal recipes for raising children. Everything is purely individual, and depends on many factors.

I would only like to once again draw attention to the banal truth that the child is not the property of the parents. This is a person with his own views, even if they are directly opposite to yours. After all, no one believes that it is normal to solve problems with a spouse with fists! At least I want to believe it …

In general, the practice of living under pain of punishment is vicious. This will not relieve the parents of the problem, for example, lying - rather, the child will learn to lie so masterly that the parents will not be able to distinguish between the truth and the lie. But the fact that a child who is often punished will never build a real, trusting relationship with his parents is absolutely certain.