DISCIPLINE OR ABUSE... Parents badly needed

[kvj888]

hi and peace to all,

i’m just curious , when a parent spank or pinch (without leaving a mark) a child below ten years old because the child is misbehaving and doing something wrong … of course before doing that a parent explains to the child that he or she will spank or pinch the child because he had done something wrong… is it discipline or abuse? i mean even if a parent or relative out of love did that to correct the child…

thank you in advance for your comments…

 

[Hokomai]

In most cases it is neither. It is simply ineffective parenting with the potential to teach that violence against weaker people is ok, and a reasonable solution to problems. It also has the potential to escalate into abuse. If it is physical and causes pain you would not do it to an employee or colleague or a police officer, don’t do it to a family member.

 

[Sam_777]

It is simply ineffective parenting with the potential to teach that violence against weaker people is ok

Interesting philosophy…

So I think it’s better to punish that child through different methods, such as stop speaking, stop giving money, or stop letting that child playing with his/her friends…

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Kind of depends.

Sometimes, kids are just full of energy. Punishment not called for.

But kids do need to be taught self-control. That is an essential element of parenting.

Correction does not require physical punishment.

Personally, I prefer to use cash incentives for good behavior.

For very specific things.

For example, give the kid a written exam, which they can look up the answers to. And they get money for each correct answer. And the exam can be repeated weekly or daily, depending on how much money you want the kid to have.

Could be filling in a blank map with the names of the states, countries, oceans. There are 200 countries.

You could expand it to doing book reports. Whatever seems to be the good kind of behavior. Not just sitting still, which is too much like punishment. But rewards for good behavior.

No yelling or scolding. Just add up the good stuff and give them the money.

They will be so busy, they won’t have time to misbehave.

And they can be given monetary rewards for things like cleaning their room, making their bed, cleaning pet cages, feeding the animals, cleaning dog stuff out of the yard, cutting the grass, weeding the flower beds, helping with laundry and vacuuming and dusting. Whatever is appropriate for the age.

Every Saturday, they can prepare and “invoice” with a little spread sheet showing what they did each day and the amount for each chore or task and the totals.

They will be very busy focusing on doing good stuff.

It really works. I kept our kids’ “invoices” … done in crayon.

And they are always looking for opportunities to make money.

So, it is an extremely effective way to do some behavior modification.

 

[Holly3278]

I tend to think that it is abuse. However, I received a lot of corporal punishment as a child and in my case, it was abuse. Therefore, I am not exactly qualified to give a good answer to this.

 

[andrewstx]

Psycology tells us that POSITIVE reinforcement is much more effective than negative reinforcement.

In other words we should focus on the positive and extinct the negative behaivour by ignoring it as much as possible, having regard for the health and safety of the child.

I was serioiusly abused as a child and adolescent, to the point of broken bones. I have ADD which was ignored or unknown to my parents. So, I got bad grades in the subjects I could not concentrate on.

With every report card I got a corresponding beating, no spankings for me.

Since I know that child abuse is generational, I have chosen to remain celibate and childless.

 

[AHapka]

A proper spank is really meant to cause the child’s brain to stop all of the other things it is doing and focus on the parent. It’s kind of like a physical “jolt” to re-set their attention focus. Done properly, they shouldn’t even feel the pain 30 seconds later. It’s more to cause them to stop all else they are doing and restart their thinking process.