Why beating children is bad

They found that children who had been spanked had a higher activity response in the areas of their brain that regulate these emotional responses and detect threats — even to facial expressions that most would consider non-threatening. There are only 62 countries — not including the United States — with a ban on corporal punishment, Cuartas points out.

Additionally, nearly one-third of parents in the United States report spanking their children every week, often to detrimental effects and implications. Cuartas offers three steps educators and caregivers can take toward eradicating spanking in schools and homes:.

Skip to main content. Research Stories. Spanking found to impact children's brain response, leading to lasting consequences. By: Jill Anderson. Posted: April 13, Paying attention silently while you are actively ignoring it. Developing a poker face, a relaxed body, and straight, and an unimpressed.

Certainly, never ignore anything dangerous or harmful to the child. As a parent, you should know what to ignore and when to ignore. Kids often try out annoying behaviour patterns, and, the more attention they get, the worse the patterns get.

Ignoring is gentle, and it works. It is based on the premise that, for your child, negative attention getting a rise out of you will give him more satisfaction than getting no attention. Are kids squabbling over an object? Take it away. If you separate a child from an object, make sure you replace the activity with something productive.

Two rules: a. Separation and replacement should never be done with glee b. Your kid starts acting out, and the first thing you do is warn her. In many cases, it means the end of misbehaviour!

Warnings are not the same as threats. Threats are threatening; warnings simply put the child on alert that the behaviour needs to stop, now, or there will be consequences. The best warnings clearly state the limit and related consequence. Warnings only work if your child believes that you will follow through. The parents who are the most successful with warnings are the ones who are not afraid to follow through on each and every warning. Be consistent — it provides security for your child and ensures that you will be listened to.

Maybe the most convincing exercise from the research is that nobody has discovered proof that beating children is useful for kids. Hence, we should concentrate our endeavours to comprehend and utilize these options. Introduction: Disciplining your child is one of the most difficult things to do after the initial days of parenthood.

Article Contents Why do parents opt to beat children? One group studied parents in their home and found most parents did give kids a verbal warning before physically striking out.

But they did not wait long. Parents who hit their children often have serious problems of their own. Time outs work very well for younger children, the group said. Pediatricians will almost always recommend discipline that does not include hitting children, or forcing them to eat spices, washing their mouths out with soap or other abusive punishments. Being an authority figure means you are trusted and respected, but not feared.

Lasting authority cannot be based on fear. Parents or other caregivers who repeatedly use spanking to control children enter into a lose-lose situation. Not only does the child lose respect for the parent, but the parents also lose out because they develop a spanking mindset and have fewer alternatives to spanking.

The parent has fewer preplanned, experience-tested strategies to divert potential behavior, so the child misbehaves more, which calls for more spanking. This child is not being taught to develop inner control. Hitting devalues the parent-child relationship. Corporal punishment puts a distance between the spanker and the spankee. This distance is especially troubling in home situations where the parent-child relationship may already be strained, such as single-parent homes or blended families.

Punishment escalates. A toddler reaches for a forbidden glass. You tap the hand as a reminder not to touch. He reaches again, you swat the hand. You hit the hand harder. What do you do now? The danger of beginning corporal punishment in the first place is that you may feel you have to bring out bigger guns: your hand becomes a fist, the switch becomes a belt, the folded newspaper becomes a wooden spoon, and now what began as seemingly innocent escalates into child abuse.

Punishment sets the stage for child abuse. Parents who are programmed to punish set themselves up for punishing harder, mainly because they have not learned alternatives and click immediately into the punishment mode when their child misbehaves. Remember the basis for promoting desirable behavior: The child who feels right acts right. Spanking undermines this principle. A child who is hit feels wrong inside and this shows up in his behavior. The more he misbehaves, the more he gets spanked and the worse he feels.

The cycle continues. We want the child to know that he did wrong, and to feel remorse, but to still believe that he is a person who has value. One of the goals of disciplinary action is to stop the misbehavior immediately, and spanking may do that. Alternatives to spanking can be much more thought-and-conscience-provoking for a child, but they may take more time and energy from the parent.

There is confusion in the ranks of people of Judeo-Christian heritage who, seeking help from the Bible in their effort to raise godly children, believe that God commands them to spank. In our counseling experience, we find that these people are devoted parents who love God and love their children, but they misunderstand the concept of the rod. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.

At first glance, these verses may sound pro-spanking.