Today is the International Day of No Child Beating, about the issue of child beating, scientists have done a lot of tracking statistics quantitative research, I will summarize the main points of these studies: 1.
- infants should never be hit.
- hitting children can cause behavioral problems, including antisocial and developmental delays. 3.
- it is particularly counterproductive for children over the age of five or six.
- The more often and the more severely a child is hit, the angrier the parent is, and the greater the behavioral problems associated with hitting the child.
- Hitting a child is no more effective than non-physical punishment (including reasoning).
- Hitting a child can make the child more aggressive.
The above is from a review of research by Dr. Gwen Dewar: O Web Link
In a word: Don’t hit your child. In many countries, hitting children is prohibited by law.
So why do so many parents think that hitting their children is useful, or even the only way to be useful? The answer is also simple: they themselves have been beaten, they have not learned the scientific concept of parenting, and they do not know that there are more effective ways of rewarding and punishing than the rod.
In a study of 186 culturally diverse societies, psychologists Jennifer Lansford and Kenneth Dodge found that beating children was more common in societies that supported violence and where warfare was common. research by Carol and Melvin Ember reveals a link between corporal punishment and political inequality. They found that corporal punishment was more prevalent in societies that were highly class stratified or less democratic. That is, corporal punishment is more prevalent in more controlled traditional societies.
So, hitting a child is also not just an individual act. By hitting your child, you are also modeling a pattern of violence and teaching him a violent approach to problem solving. The more you hit, the more problems you have, and the more problems you have, the more you hit; it’s a cycle.
Psychologist Arthur Whaley’s research also shows that the negative effects of hitting children vary from culture to culture. In cultures with a rich tradition of child beating, such as among people of African descent, the negative effects of beating on children are not as pronounced. Among Norwegians, on the other hand, where child beating is forbidden, it has an extraordinarily negative effect. Note, however, that this does not suggest that in cultures with a rich tradition of child beating, beating children does not have negative effects, much less that beating children in such a cultural tradition is more effective than not beating children.
In today’s world, the reasoning behind not hitting children is actually known to many parents, but they still cannot control the need to do it. This usually happens in two ways. One, the parents themselves have emotional control problems and cannot control their anger and violent impulses. The second is that the parents themselves have emotional and psychological problems, and they transfer their frustrations, pain and disappointment at work and at home to their children, which is called transference in psychology.
The beating that occurs in these two situations is the worst, most ineffective, and most side effect beating of children, according to the research above.
Finally, if you really want to hit, then is there a relatively good way to hit your child? I’ll give you a choice from my personal experience when I really can’t control it. When I was a kid, my father once got really mad at me and he hit me twice on my back. That’s the only time I can remember my father ever hit me. But what kind of a hand was it? It was more like a light tap than a hit. I was not angry, only a touch of emotion and pity, and an overwhelming thought: I must never make him angry again, or I could not stand the embarrassment.
My father is the most gentle and honest man in the world, and even he has moments when he loses control of his hands, which means that hitting children may be really difficult to avoid completely. However, in that moment, it is also important to keep in mind the scientific concept of child beating. In fact, the father’s two gentle swats are inadvertently matching exactly what scientists are studying today. In my opening link, Robert Larzelere and Brett Kuhn propose a “conditioned child beating” scenario, which is
When the child’s fault has just occurred.
After other non-physical punishments have failed.
After a verbal warning.
Out of sight.
After you have restrained your emotions.
Gently slap the child twice.
This is the only correct way to hit a child scientifically.
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