Chengz

Spare the rod and spoil the child On 18th November, The Straits Times published an article titled, “To cane or not to cane'” focusing on issues like the recent spike in child abuse cases and the most debated topic –Is sparing the rod inevitably spoiling the child' Today, we shall delve into the world of parenting and have our own insights on the topic itself. Parents often claim that spanking is only a method used to control the pandemonium and castigate their children, but how many parents dare declare that they have never abused their authority and used it as a channel to vent their anger on their kids' If you see your one-year-old tearing up your blueprint that you have spent the past three hours laboriously working on, would you not fly into a rage and grab that cane lying within arm’s length' Would you be controlled enough to not leave a mark on your child’s arm and effectively deter abhorrent behaviour as well as teach him the consequences' Now consider this, if you witness your older child hitting your one-year-old for breaking one of the older sibling’s toys, what would you do' Would you spank the child for bullying the one-year-old' Is it wrong to say that the older child was merely imitating his parents to execute punishment on the younger one' All moms and dads get angry at their children. Feeling anger when we are interrupted for the umpteenth time, confronted with serious dawdling when we're in a hurry or find a mess the children made just after we cleaned up is normal. However, for a child to see mommy or daddy lose their cool, it is very terrorizing. Furthermore, children quickly learn to recognize ‘amiable’ and ‘antagonistic’ faces and they turn away from the latter. Similarly, spanking makes the child dislike the parent, perhaps only temporarily but this takes away the best thing parents have in favour for them when it comes to getting kids to behave- the child's loving desire to please the parent they love. Moreover, the young child is also too distraught to understand the connection between punishment and behaviour. As a result, spanking doesn't work. If the undesirable behaviour persists or recurs, in order to maintain the initial effectiveness of the spanking, parents have to increase its severity – which can escalate into abuse. Likewise, spanking gives a child a message that it is reasonable for big people to hit little people especially today, when violence pervades our culture with the Straits Times article as the best evidence. This form of discipline models aggressive behaviour as a method of resolving conflict and is associated with increased aggression in children, who learn by imitating their parents. When spanking becomes a routine, a child’s self-esteem and confidence suffer because he thinks mom and dad do not love him. Knowing that he cannot match up to what his parents want, he becomes aggressive and destructive. As they spank him when he misbehaves he thinks it is fine to brawl. His violence may be a reflection of the way his parents treat him, and because he starts rebelling and firing right back at them, their anger raises a notch and there is no end to this vicious cycle. Although spanking indeed gets the child's attention, parents must remember that discipline has two goals. The first is to stop the child from doing something dangerous, hurtful, or annoying with immediate compliance and to teach the child how human beings behave when the parents are not around, or better defined as self-control. Spanking may result in immediate cessation of behaviour but is not effective as a long-term strategy. Also, repeated spankings may result in agitated and aggressive behaviour in a child, and reliance on spanking often makes other discipline strategies harder to use. Conclusively, spanking is not the only method of discipline that establishes parental authority, acts as a deterrent to undesirable behaviour, or gets a child's attention. There is absolutely a diversity of effective disciplinary strategies that parents can learn to use as an alternative to damaging the flawless impression parents have in their child’s hearts or to mould them into belligerent beings in the future.