Parenting Mistakes- Corporal Punishments

7/23/2019 Parenting Mistakes- Corporal Punishments

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Parenting Mistakes #8 Abusing your child (physical, verbal/emotional)

#8.1 Corporal Punishment

Young adults often test their parents limits and send their parents off the cliff with

their behavior.

Normally, assuming that you were not under the category of a mentally depressed

mother or a drunken father, when parents feel like their childrens behavior is out of

control, and as a means of disciplining their kids, when no sensible approach is

working anymore (a warning, taking away privileges, whatever deemed sensible by

parents) they will often go with the last resort the famous corporal punishment.

Nevertheless, the act of hitting your children rarely comes out without any emotions

engaged to it. When there is a negative emotion attached to it, the actions magnified.

Most of the time it would be out of temper. Sometimes it could be purely out of stress

that you received on a daily basis (Youre exhausted, just came back from work, and

your teen has an attitudethat sends you off the roof).

From my personal experiences of growing up, Id dare to say hitting on young adult

will produce unintended grave consequences, both short & long-term harm than the

intended results. In fact, there have been lots of studies out there confirming to what I

believe & experienced basically.

Research shows that corporal punishment carries multiple risks of harms and has no

benefits. In fact, the evidence is more than overwhelming more than 150 studies


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shows associations between physical punishment with a wide range of negative

outcomes while no studies have found evidence of any slightest benefits1.

Most of the parents out there beat, slap, and smack their children with a good

intention in their heart to disciplined them, but sadly your method isnt working.

Whats more, its ineffective in the long run. Not to mention that it will backfire too.

Heres why.

Say that you hit her today for whatever mistakes that she has done. In this situation,

when a strong, superior adult exert a physical force towards the defenseless young

adult, her limbic system, part of the brain that deal with emotions (anger, happiness,

fear, as well as memories) goes into an alarm mode. Her brain automatically perceives

physical punishment as a hostile situation, thus responds accordingly.

For the grown child herself, it is an experience of her being small, weak, powerless

and unable to control external overwhelming force Under this state of mind, she can

learn nothing. Her prefrontal cortex part of the brain that is responsible for

information processing, reasoning, and judgment, shuts down. Therefore, how she

reacts during & after corporal punishment is not a thoughtful behavior. Its a reactive

behavior.

If there is anything your teen would remember after you beat her, its never going to

be the lesson that you want her to learned. Unfortunately, you dont get to choose the

1Summary of research on the effects of corporal punishment. Global Initiative to end

all corporal punishment of children. April 2013. http: //nmd.bg/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Summary-of-research-on-the-effects-of-corporal-

punishment-April-2013.pdf. (Accessed on Oct 24th, 2015)


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thing that goes through her head and heart. The hurt, not the learning opportunity,

becomes the message.

Physical punishment delivers other messagesthe strongest one being fear. It teaches

her to fear you, not to respect or listen to you. A sense of distrust start to develop in

her once she feels that she can never trust her parents, it will erode and disrupt any

sort of bonding chances between young adult & parents. It will also lead to her feeling

angry, resentful and retaliate in anger by being uncooperative or talking back mean

words, which causes her parents to lose again, beating her harder than before. (Does

this situation seems familiar to you?).

All the physical punishment in the world will not teach your young adult any

responsibility or obedience, as mom and dad would like to think. If ever, it would

only teach us two things:

How to lie (No dad I didnt do it)

How to avoid getting caught.

The truth is physical punishment works only as a temporary solution. It results in an

immediate complianceit works because it is a form of external control, but in no way

it helps with internal decision-making. While it results with immediate compliance,

13 out of 15 studies shows that physical punishment does not contribute to the childs

long-term compliance to the desired behavior.

Whats more, isnt it strange to think that parents keep justifying their act of

punishing as a way to get their children listen, and yet they keep doing it over and

over because their children wouldnt listen! This simple logic clearly shows that


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physical punishment is ineffective to curb undesirable behavior in children for the

long run.

It is interesting to note that certain adult came up with their own series of argument to

justify their actions towards their kid. I was spanked as a kid because of XY reason

and I grow up perfectly fine. one would claim.

One way to look at this is children learn through parental modelingphysical

punishment gives the message that hitting is an acceptable way to solve problems.

This is how children are wired to learn they learn attitude and behavior through

observation and imitation of their parents, for good or bad. If a child does not observe

a parent solving problems in a creative & humane way, it can be difficult for him to

learn himself. For this very reason, unskilled parenting often continues into the next

generation.

If he was perfectly fine as he would claim, he wouldnt continue the vicious cycle,

by continuing it, it just proves how bad it is to me.

And as for me personally, I receive corporal punishment as a young adult, teenager

and as a kid, but it is nowhere near fine for me. Even when I was a small kid, I feel

strong that it is morally wrong to hit a defenseless kid. I feel so weird as to why adults

need to opt out for a destructive mechanism when clearly there are other options

available without physically and emotionally hurting us. (Unlike parents, we

teenagers know what method works on us and what doesnt, because we are at the

receiving end of it).


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What corporal punishment does to your child

Studies show that corporal punishment is emotionally and physically painful to the

receiver. It also links to poor mental health, including behavior disorders, anxiety

disorders, depression, and hopelessness. In fact, the effect may continue into

adulthood one study found that adults who had experience corporal punishment

while growing up are more likely to develop alcohol-related problems.

Another research made in 2009 shows a strong correlation between corporal

punishment and less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex

2,3

. Less grey matter in the

prefrontal cortex has been linked with less ability to evaluate rewards and

consequences in people.

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Parenting Mistakes- Corporal Punishments