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Emotional effects of spanking on children
Emotional effects of spanking on children
Spanking and its effect on young children
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I believe that physically disciplining children is not an effective form of punishment. I was spanked when I was little and it only instilled fear and loathing in my developing mind. According to AAP, “spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to conflict and has been associated with increased aggression in preschool and school children”. Although most parents believe that spanking is an appropriate form of discipline, it has been thoroughly proven that there are much more effective and less destructive ways to punish children.
The dictionary defines child abuse as the mistreatment of a child by a parent or guardian, including neglect and beating. The concept of physical discipline has been so normalized, that the already thin line between discipline and abuse is now blurred. When a child makes a mistake and the result is receiving spankings, they are taught that mistakes equals violence.
It has been proven that children who are physically disciplined are more likely to develop psychological and emotional issues as they mature. Statistics show that three year-olds who were spanked more than twice a month were 50% more likely to exhibit hostile tendencies by age five. Dr. Kazden from the
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Most parents believe that spanking their children is the most effective way to punish them because it was the standard method of discipline when they were young. However, Michael J. Mackenzie of Columbia School of Social Work states that “[spanking] gives the immediate feedback that it’s working. But the goal is to have kids regulate themselves over time. And in that, spanking fails”. I believe parents hit their children in the heat of the moment, and there are far more constructive methods of teaching children the difference between right and wrong, such as rewarding them for good behavior and making sure they know when they’ve made a
Generally speaking there Is a difference between spanking aka discipline and child abuse. If a child is told after every mistake what was wrong and why they're being punished it does not damage their mental health. The child will no longer look at their parents with the eyes of distrust. Comparatively spanking is not a positive action so it will not held positive results unless it is accompanied by an explanation as to why one was punished. In fact ,I have four siblings, the eldest boy was spanked for his actions. He ended up being engaged in dishonest activities, and has anger issues. Whereas the youngest boy was barley spanked and he never was involved in any crimes and similarly has a very calm demeanor. Also spanking is just one action
Spanking could also teach children that it's all right to hit, and that it's all right to be hit and that could have a negative long term effect on the children. I
Spanking, a fictitious form of child abuse, is an appropriate action toward unruly children. It is a popular practice used to instill discipline and values in children, and is more effective than talking to or yelling at the child or placing the child in “time out” sessions. In the long run, spanking causes no damage to the child’s mental or physical health. Instead, it creates a basis for good behavior.
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).
Many authorities and psychologists believe that spanking breaks a child's spirit and only leads to violence. They think that it causes the child to become depressed, angry or hostile and they have conducted many studies to prove these things. This type of harsh punishment occurs often, but it is called child abuse. There is a great difference between abusing a child and properly disciplining a child. "One is an act of love; the other is an act of hostility, and they are as different as night and day" (Dobson 35).
Physical abuse is any non-accidental physical injury to a child. Physical abuse is an injury that results from physical aggression. Types of physical abuse can consist of beating, whipping, hitting, pinching, biting, or spanking.
Smith states in his introduction “many studies have shown physical punishment — including spanking, hitting and other means of causing pain — can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury and mental health problems for children.” Throughout the article, many studies show that children do become more aggressive however, there were also studies mentioned that support the use of physical punishment on children between the ages of two and six years old. This does show that his research is thorough however, it still leads to room for error in his broad statement of physical punishment causing harmful effects to
Tulane University has researched 2,500 three year olds who were spanked while growing up. Evidence proved that the more frequent the spanking, the higher percentage that the child would show aggression by five years old . Hitting is frowned upon for a reason. Sparking fear in a child doesn’t even teach them what they shouldn’t do, without an explanation. Parents should lead by example by explaining the issue, rather than escalating it.
I personally do not advocate spanking. I could not imagine losing my temper to a point where I thought I needed to spank my child. While I do anticipate that having children will be a real test of patience, I do not expect that I will lose my patience so much that I will spank my children. I find spanking to be a real contradiction to what most parents tell their children. Most parents do not allow their children to hit, whether they are angry or not. Even when kids think another kid did something wrong, or bad, they are still not allowed to hit. If a parent tells a kid this, and then turns around and spanks the kid when they do something wrong, how will the kid ever learn that hitting is wrong? In my opinion, there has to be a better way to discipline children. I think that sending a child to a room where they cannot interact with anyone else, and then taking away a privilege would be a better way of handling discipline. Also, when I was a child, I can remember that when I was angry, my dad would come in to my room after I had time to cool down and talk to me about why I was angry. I can remember these as really fond times with my dad. It helped me identify why I was so angry, and most of the time it was at my mom for not letting me have my way. When I could identify why I was angry, my dad and I could come up with a solution to solve the problem. I think that rather than spanking, this is a good way to discipline children.
First, spanking is not an efficient discipline method to be used on kids, unlike many parent’s belief. The negative effects of spanking on kids are unknown by the parent. According to the psychologist Laura Markham, “... spanking will not correct the problems that the child has, but only make them worse by increasing the child’s aggression and by making him less emotionally healthy.” In addition, spanking does not teach kids to manage themselves. Instead, it teaches them to be sneaky so they won't get caught doing something wrong.
Several forms of emotional damage have been associated with physical punishment in children such as confusion, aggressive behaviors, and mental illnesses. These are all signs of abuse or to be more specific a parent that did not fully understand the limitations of the biblical approach. On the other hand, are these factual claims? Not even research can back these claims up. Afifi, T. O., Monta, N. P., Dasiewicz, P., MacMillan, H. L., & Sareen, J. (2012) authors of a journal called Physical Punishment and Mental Disorders: Results From a Nationally Representative US Sample clearly state that research is flawed and no findings can be proven to show a link between physical punishment and mental disorders. Parents may have heard “spare the rod, spoil the child” but there is more behind that saying. The Bible does not say to use excessive force it tells a parent to use their love and words of knowledge to correct a child.
In my point of view, I believe that children shouldn’t be spanked at any circumstance, even though; they deserve to be punished in that form. I agree with a text I found in Moral Development in Chapter 10, saying in a pictures caption, “it is better for parents to explain what the misbehavior was”. Many reasons are in favor as to why explaining your children their bad behavior rather than hitting them, such as one can injure the kid physically, your boy or girl will always remember your aggression towards him/her leaving them a hard feeling, hurting other kids the same way, and reflecting violence plus be a bad person in the future. Spanking leads to a major effect on children as they age including at that moment by hurting them. For instance,
Some people believe spanking a child is child abuse, and that it causes the child to grow up aggressive and violent. This would mean that every child that is spanked during their developmental stages will grow up to be an example of bad behavior. However, there is no actual data or information that can confirm that spanking a child will cause a child to grow up to be violent or too aggressive. Children have been trained to obey rules or a set code of behavior for centuries. It is the best way to mold a child into a respectable adult, and they can pass on the behavior to their future children.
When I was growing up, my parents believed in punishing a child who had severely disobeyed with spanking. Learning quickly at a young age that I did not like this, I was only spanked two or three times after which I built up the determination never to do anything deserving of spanking again. It scared me half to death and I despised it as a child. I have seen my older sisters, as they are currently raising their children, use spanking as a mode of punishment – sometimes it works, other times it seem to have little affect. I decided to ask my roommates and friends how their parents had disciplined them and what they thought they would do with their future children.
Even though most people are split on the issue, the fact still stands that spanking and child abuse tends to go hand-in-hand with violence in the future. When you hear of someone disciplining a child, you typically assume the child got a spanking. It’s actually really sad that we, as humans, assume that. Think about it though - if it actually came down to it that there were real laws set in place against spanking, what would come next? There are no true ways to put a halt to spanking as a form of punishment considering it would be too difficult to actually enforce such laws. In conclusion, spanking may or may not have a direct correlation to violent futures, but it can definitely be a huge factor to it.