Spanking is a form of corporal punishment that is commonly used to discipline children all around the world. This form of punishment typically consists of an adult striking the child’s bottom or hand as a reaction to unwanted behavior. There are many arguments that are made on whether a child should be spanked or not, many people tend to believe it’s fair while other believe it’s simply wrong. Those who do not believe in spanking say spanking is a form of child abuse. That it shows children the idea of violence at a young age.
So the question is whether spanking will cause the child to be a violent individual, if spanking will harm children mentally and physically, and if it’s a harm to their health and development later on in life. Children who are spanked aren’t necessarily going to grow up to be violent individuals, sometimes/most times they will grow up to be very non-violent individuals. But the point being when the kids are at a younger age and they get spanked what are they going to automatically assume is okay? To hit of course!
By then you’re trying to teach them that hitting is a bad thing to do, but you go back on your word by “hitting” or “punishing” them when they do something bad. How is that going to help them in any way from knowing right from wrong? Spanking has been around for quite some time; Thousands of years at least. In 1965 spanking was alive and well. Some children were not spanked much, but they contend that each one was memorable. So maybe going back and remembering that when they got spanked it wasn’t for something they did well, they’ll understand that hitting is a bad thing to do.
Although at the ripe age of two years, there’s no way to be certain that the kid will understand exactly what you’re trying to teach when you say hitting is bad but yet you go back and spank their bottom the moment that get into something that the parent doesn’t allow. Although spanking is said to have some benefits, the negative consequences seem to far outweigh the bad; especially when having to do with their mental and physical health. According to Dr. Wilson and Dr.
Lyon “Physical punishment delivered in anger with the intent to cause pain is unacceptable and dangerous to the health and well-being of the child. ” (Guidance for Effective Discipline. ) it is important for spanking to stop because is it ineffective, and it causes more problems because there are no other options to consider. The child is going to remember the older he/she gets when the parents spanked them and they’ll start contemplating just why their parents did that to them.
This in a sense hurts their mental health and understanding of how the world really works. There are plenty of other ways to show discipline to a child when they’re doing something that’s considered misbehaving. The timeout method is a very effective way to show the child that they are doing wrong and shows them self-discipline in a way that they need to sit there till they know what they did wrong. Sure, the child might cry the entire time they’re in time out but isn’t that cry just a little better than hearing your child cry because of inflicting pain on them?
Although we understand that a lesson learned are sometimes through great difficulty, some parents result to the spanking method as a good source of discipline. Have you ever thought of the humiliation it causes for a child? If you were ever spanked as a child you can remember that you were ashamed that you had done something bad, and in return, yes, you might of never done that specific thing again. But the memory will forever be in the back of your head. We need to think twice about the mental and physical well being of our children.
According to Castelloes article “How Spanking harms the Brain” (The me in We) “Spanking may reduce brains grey matter, the connective tissue between brain cells. Gray matter is an integral part of the central nervous system and influences intelligence, testing, and learning abilities… ” Let just move on to if it’s a harm to their health later on in life. The corporal punishment of children and the incarceration of adults are forms of violence, and both children and adults who have been subjected to these harsh punishments tend to respond by themselves becoming more violent to others. Does spanking make children unstable? ” (Neal Halfon) Not only does punishment fail to accomplish the goals of correcting or deterring the offender from committing further offences, it actually tends to foster, in both groups more antisocial behavior. Scientific studies on the effects of punishment both child and adult offenders demonstrate that punishment tends to be very counterproductive.
So in all punishment does not correct or prevent violence; punishment causes violence. Time out seems to be more of an acceptable way to punish children as they do something bad. Time out is more acceptable than spanking.. ” (Child Rearing in America) Onto the opposition side of the idea of spanking. Some people do believe since spanking has been around for thousands of years that it is a very effective way to punish children all around the world. Some people swear by the idea that spanking teaches lessons and teaches them to not come back and do the same thing again. According to ABC News “Sixty-five percent of Americans approve of spanking children, a rate that has been steady since 1990.
But just 26 percent say grade-school teachers should be allowed to spank kids at school; 72 percent say it shouldn’t be permitted, including eight in 10 parents of gradeschoolers. ” People belive that this is a form of the kid will respect the parent and then they’ll stop doing whatever it is that the parent doesn’t like. Whether you agree or disagree with spanking I believe that it simply needs to be stopped. The only definition experts and parents do seem to agree on is that spanking entails hitting of some kind, and that abuse is never acceptable.
Those of you who believe spanking is abuse no matter how it’s defined) Meanwhile, for decades a long and distinguished list of experts has denounced spanking as ineffective, even dangerous. Ineffective, they say, because it only teaches a child to fear his parents, not to respect them, and dangerous because using force can injure a child and warp his understanding of how to interact with others: namely, that it’s okay to hit someone to get your own way. Spanking is not the way to go if you’re really wanting to help your child learn the true idea of respect and how to know not to ever do whatever it is again.