Children in today’s society seems to be more “out of control” than prior generations. Is this due to lack of discipline? For generations children were spanked, had their mouths smacked when back talking, or other various forms of discipline that today would be viewed as child abuse. With today’s generation, when spanking, if a mark is left on that child for longer than 24 hours, it is considered child abuse. How did society, who once thought spanking was okay, go to not seeing eye to eye? Through many years of research, psychologist are beginning to see that spanking or being aggressive with children has long term effects on those children.
What exactly is considered child discipline? It is the set of rules, rewards and punishments used to teach self-control. It is used to increase desirable behaviors and decrease undesirable behaviors in children. When discipline is used in excess, the desirable behaviors parents are trying to get from their children, turns into undesirable ones. The child learns to become scared of a parent. This fear turns into anxiety which can eventually lead to depression. “The undesirable side effects would include aggression, anti-social behavior, and masochism.” (Marshall 1).
Dr. Marshall, a clinical psychologist, has a new book which summarizes the research findings about the harmful effects of corporal punishment to help make informed decisions about how to raise their children, rather than default to how their parents raised them. “The harmful psychological effects of spanking are the best kept secret in developmental psychology,” says Marshall. (Marshall 2) “I am convinced parents would abandon the use of corporal punishment to discipline their children if they fully understood these research find...
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Pg. 219-224; http://www.nospank.net/hyman2.htm; http://www.temple.edu/temple_times/2-17-05/hyman.html
Marshall, Michael J (2002). Whey spanking doesn’t work; stopping this bad habit and getting the upper hand on effective discipline”. http://stopspanking.com/. Retrieved March 11, 2012 from College Virtual Library database and stopspanking.com
Phelan, Thomas (2004). “1-2-3 Magic”. Retrieved March 11, 2012 from College Virtual Library database.
Wilson, Elaine. “Guiding Young Children Series: Discipline without Punishment”. http://osufacts.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2424/T-2328web.pdf. Retrieved March 11, 2012.
Wyckoff, Jerry (2002). “Discipline without shouting or spanking: practical solutions to the most common preschool behavior problems”. Retrieved March 11, 2012 from College Virtual Library database.
Swat! The entire store tries not to stare at the overwhelmed mother spanking her three-year-old whaling son. As if the screaming tantrum wasn't enough of a side show at the supermarket. This method, or technique perhaps, has been around for decades, even centuries. Generations have sat on grandpa’s lap and listened to the stories of picking their own switch or getting the belt after pulling off a devilish trick. So why then has it become a major controversy in the past few decades? The newest claim is that spanking and other forms of physical punishment can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury and mental health problems for children. Brendan L. Smith uses many case studies and psychologists findings in his article “The Case Against Spanking” to suggest that parents refrain from physically punishing their children due to lasting harmful effects.
Spanking is alive and well today despite the antispanking prohibition. In a poll sponsored by Working Mother and the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World in Florida, 7,225 adults and 2,599 kids were surveyed (Hickey 48). When asked ?When should parents spank their children,? 51 percent replied ?When they think it?s necessary,? 30 percent said ?Only in extreme circumstances,? and only ten percent answered ?Never?(Hickey 48). Twelve percent of young adults, ages 18 to 34, which responded to the poll, said spanking should not occur; in comparison with the seven percent of both the 35-49 and 50-64 age groups which responded ?Never? (Hickey 48). The poll asked ?Which of these is (or was) most often used in your family to control children?s behavior?? As the prevalent choice, 37 percent responded ?Taking away privileges,? 23 percent said ?spanking,? 18 percent replied ?reasoning with the child,? four percent said ?bribes? and three percent answered ?ass...
Holden (2002) reviewed Gershoff’s (2002) meta-analyses of eighty-eight (88) studies and noted that there were both positive and negative outcomes associated with the punishment of spanking. According to Gershoff’s (2002) analysis, the one positive outcome was immediate compliance by the child (Holden, 2002). This result was found to be consistent in five (5) studies. Immediate compliance was defined as the child complying to the parents directive within five (5) seconds. In stark contrast, there were four (4) negative outcomes. The analysis showed a negative effect on the quality of the parent child relationship, the child’s mental health, the child’s perception of being a victim of physical child abuse, and also impacted aggression in adulthood (Holden, 2002).
The type of approach to discipline a child that the parents use have a dramatic impact on their relationship between them and the child’s development to adulthood. Research have found that there are four major types of parenting styles depending on what parents think the child needs from them. These are authoritarian, authoritative, permissive and uninvolved. The purpose is to explain the difference between them and the effect on their child development.
The history of spanking from generation to generation has changed tremendously over the decades. There was a point in time where spanking was considered an integral part of discipline and it was not considered to be abusive in nature. My dad used to tell me stories of when he was a child and was always spanked for misbehaving - then even I grew up in a home where spanking was the normal reprimand for disobedience. For now, we won’t focus so much on my life experience with spanking but rather to point out both the good and the bad - the “pros and cons”, would you, of spanking in the form of discipline. The point that I am attempting to show in this paper is that the use of spanking in...
In today’s era, there are so many things that can interfere with how a parent is able to discipline their child. Discipline is a very thin line that can be surpassed without even knowing the harm that was done. There are many different ways a child can be disciplined such as by talking to them, taking away their favorite things, not allowing them free time, time outs, and sometimes even spanking. As children, everyone has experienced some type of discipline depending on the way parents decided to raise their children. Depending on what culture children were raised in can take part on the way parents decided to discipline their children. Parents have different beliefs on how their child should be disciplined. As parents, many are faced with
Spanking is an important aspect of a child’s social development and should not be considered an evil form of abuse. In her argument, Debra Saunders says that there is an obvious difference between beating a child and spanking a child, and parents know the boundary. Spanking is the most effective form of discipline when a child knows doing something is wrong, but the child does it anyway. A child who is properly disciplined through spanking is being taught how to control her or his impulses and how to deal with all types of authorities in future environments. Parents can control their child’s future behavior by using spanking in early childhood, because if...
There has been a misconception about how to properly discipline children due to secular views and flawed studies. Many of these so called “studies” have made “many experts believe that corporal punishment will likely lead to increased resistance or aggressive behavior from the child” ("Corporal Punishment." World Book Advanced). One study in particular “suggests that children who experienced harsh spanking (with objects or at a frequency of once a week or more with a hand) had significantly higher levels of mother-reported externalizing behavior at ages 6, 7, and 8 than did children who experienced no spanking or mild spanking at those ages, even controlling for prior externalizing behavior and other possible confounds.” ( Lansford ). However, aggressive behavior should be expected if a parent beats their child out of their own anger instead of a desire to better their child for the future. There are several other “studies” that claim to prove spanking increases negative behavior but they just lump them all together and say that all spanking in every form, regardless of it severity, is the same and creates worse children. “Any form of punishment, physical or otherwise, can have negative consequences if it is abused.”. (Green) If parents don’t discipline their children physically, they will ve...
Raising a child is a challenging life task that is given over to individuals all over the world without an instruction manual. People must learn by experience how to nurture, care for, and provide for miniature versions of themselves for almost two decades in most cultures! Discipline plays a major role in raising a child because most parents truly want what is best for their children and want them to grow up to be responsible, respectable, and successful adults; however, in some unfortunate cases, parents misinterpret the term discipline and in turn end up abusing their children. The question becomes, is there truly a difference between discipline and abuse? And if so, what is it? With education, individuals can learn how to properly distinguish between discipline and abuse and realize that there is a clear black and white difference between the two. The origin of the word discipline stems from the Latin word disciplina, which means “instruction [or] knowledge” (“Definition of discipline”, n.d.). As stated in the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of the word discipline is “the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, [or] using punishment to correct disobedience” (“Definition of discipline”, n.d.). According to WebMD, a website that is visited and seen by millions of people in the United States every day, discipline is “the process of teaching your child what type of behavior is acceptable and what type is not acceptable. In other words, discipline teaches a child to follow rules” (“Child Discipline Methods”, n.d.). It even goes on to state that “it sounds so straightforward, yet every parent becomes frustrated at one time or another with issues surrounding children and discipline” (“Child Discipline Metho...
Many people today are getting arrested for simply disciplining a child. But, in older times disciplining a child set good moral standards and taught that child on what that child was supposed to do and what not to do. There is a fine line between abuse and discipline. So what is child abuse? Child abuse consists of any act of commission or omission that endangers or impairs a child’s physical or emotional health and development. Child abuse includes any damage done to a child which cannot be reasonably explained and which is often represented by an injury or series of injuries appearing to be non-accidental in nature. There are also different kinds of child abuse; which include physical, emotional, and sexual. But, discipline does not involve any of those types of behaviors. So disciplining a child is not going to kill that child, it will simply help that child be more responsible, have more respect, and builds a trusting relationship between the parents and the child (“Child Help”).
How to Use Positive Reinforcement to Address Child Behavior Problems - Ways to Effectively Promote Good Behavior By Amy Morin
Wyckoff, J and Unell, B.C (2010) Discipline without Shouting or Spanking: Practical Solutions to the Most Common Preschool Behaviour Problems. New York: Meadowbrook Press.
Smith, B. L. (2012). The case against spanking. American Psychological Association, 43(4), 60. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx
There is a lot of violence in the world today, but think about this: what if these people were once beaten and physically abused as children? In the article, Parents and Experts Split on Spanking, an expert, Dr. Spock, states that the reason there is a lot of violence in the world could be because of all the spanking that the parents do to their children (1). This statement could possibly be true. As children grow up, they’re always told that it is not nice to hit others. Furthermore, they’re told that if they do, there will be consequences. But if you think about it, how are these children suppose to follow the “no hitting” rule if they are constantly being spanked for their misbehaviors? In the end, it leads me to believe that if children are spanked after misbehaving, they will continue to grow up believing that violence is ultimately the answer.
Any parent who has threatened to spank a child to modify behavior has observed the immediate change in demeanor. Psychologists tell us, however, that corporal punishment has no more of a desired effect on a child in the long term than alternative disciplinary methods such as a timeout or revoking privileges. Sweden proved that corporal punishment is no more effective than alternative methods and law enforcement officers are no more burdened by the laws put in place to protect the physical integrity of children. If in fact opponents and proponents are both right, their methods both work equally as well as the other, which one is the right one? Can they both be right? Unless we are going to make it legal to go around hitting each other for being snarky, rude, disrespectful, not paying attention, or just out of irritation due to undesirable behavior, the right thing to do is protect the most innocent of our kind. The right thing to do is give our children the same rights we give our family, friends, neighbors, and strangers. The moral thing to do is lead by example. The answer is