Should the child be punished? And is the punishment right?

For some par­ents, the word “pun­ish­ment” is asso­ci­at­ed with kneel­ing in buck­wheat or with a large offi­cer’s belt. It is dif­fi­cult to deny this: the old­er gen­er­a­tion was brought up dif­fer­ent­ly, and ear­li­er there was a time when phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment of chil­dren was not con­sid­ered any­thing bad. “If you spare the rod, you will spoil the child,” they said then.

Mod­ern par­ents belong to a new gen­er­a­tion, and now spank­ing with net­tles seems to be a real sadism, and not a sophis­ti­cat­ed way of edu­ca­tion. The same applies to any kind of flip flops and cuffs.

Ques­tions arise: it turns out that it is not worth pun­ish­ing chil­dren at all? What and who will then grow out of them? Is it pos­si­ble to raise a wor­thy per­son with­out pun­ish­ment? What to do if the child is seri­ous­ly at fault?
Let’s fig­ure it out togeth­er.

Necessity and inevitability of punishments

In fact, there is noth­ing wrong with the word “pun­ish­ment”. Nowa­days, it is often asso­ci­at­ed exclu­sive­ly with phys­i­cal strength, but this is not at all the case. If you look in the explana­to­ry dic­tio­nary, you can see the fol­low­ing def­i­n­i­tion:The mea­sure of influ­ence on the one who com­mit­ted the offense”.

Why pun­ish chil­dren?

The lead­ing task of pun­ish­ment is to help the child under­stand his wrong deeds and actions, real­ize their con­se­quences and find a way to cor­rect mis­takes.

In oth­er words, the pun­ish­ment should actu­al­ly make life eas­i­er for the baby. To make him smarter, more expe­ri­enced, more tol­er­ant, more respon­si­ble, more seri­ous, kinder. If the child under­stands the con­nec­tion between mis­con­duct and pun­ish­ment, then he will devel­op the abil­i­ty to estab­lish cause-and-effect rela­tion­ships, ana­lyze, and make pre­dic­tions. This will guide him along an eth­i­cal path and even (espe­cial­ly in ado­les­cence, when a rebel­lious spir­it wakes up in many), will help to absorb not only moral, but also legal norms.

How not to punish

Before talk­ing about the cor­rect pun­ish­ments, it is worth talk­ing about what is absolute­ly impos­si­ble to do. Pun­ish­ing chil­dren is not a way to relieve stress by throw­ing out the accu­mu­lat­ed neg­a­tiv­i­ty. That’s why pro­hib­it­ed:

1. Com­mit phys­i­cal vio­lence, which includes such meth­ods as dous­ing with ice water, beat­ing, pulling hair, using a belt, etc., and sim­ple spank­ing;
2. Deprive chil­dren of vital things (sleep, food, warm clothes, com­mu­ni­ca­tion);
3. Com­mit psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence (shout­ing, intim­i­da­tion, wav­ing, insults, humil­i­a­tion);
4. Pun­ish for igno­rance. If a child first saw a cat and pulled it by the tail, you should not scold the baby — the infor­ma­tion that the ani­mal is in pain is not known to him. Anoth­er thing is when an explana­to­ry con­ver­sa­tion has already been held with a son or daugh­ter, per­haps even more than once;
5. Pun­ish in a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount. If a child demon­stra­tive­ly tore a book, then it is not worth pun­ish­ing him with a ban on walks for all three sum­mer months;
6. Pun­ish for rest­less­ness, exces­sive activ­i­ty, curios­i­ty, or, on the con­trary, for slow­ness, low moti­va­tion;
7. Pun­ish for neg­li­gence (bro­ken vase, soiled trousers, etc.).

What can be punished and when to start doing it

Psy­chol­o­gists say that the intro­duc­tion of pun­ish­ments should begin at the age of three, when the child begins to devel­op the abil­i­ty to estab­lish causal rela­tion­ships. Up to this point, it is rec­om­mend­ed only to talk with the baby, explain­ing what is bad and what is good.

From the point of view of spe­cial­ists, it is per­mis­si­ble to pun­ish chil­dren for:

• insult­ing oth­er peo­ple;
• the use of force against ani­mals and peo­ple, if the force was not used for pro­tec­tion;
• lying for per­son­al gain;
• vio­la­tion of the agreed rules of con­duct (for exam­ple, the school char­ter);
• theft.

How to properly punish children

Being able to pun­ish cor­rect­ly means being a strict par­ent, but inspir­ing con­fi­dence in the child. As part of a com­pe­tent pun­ish­ment, it is per­mis­si­ble:

⟩ deprive the child of enter­tain­ment (cin­e­ma, going to the water park — but only if this was not pre­vi­ous­ly agreed) or pock­et mon­ey for a cer­tain peri­od;

⟩ put the baby on a “pun­ish­ment chair” or put it in a cor­ner for a while — so the child will be alone with his thoughts, calm down, think;

⟩ to pun­ish jok­ing­ly: ask to sit down 15 times, clean the clos­et, vac­u­um, read a poem with expres­sion on the top­ic of your mis­con­duct, com­pose a the­mat­ic fable;

⟩ to ask the child to think about his mis­con­duct and talk about the con­clu­sions that he made — this is rather not a pun­ish­ment, but an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss togeth­er the con­se­quences of what was done and main­tain con­tact with the child;

Yes — do not for­get about edu­ca­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions (why you can’t do this) and cor­rect­ing mis­takes.
Dis­cuss with the child what hap­pened and ask him how he him­self thinks — how you can cor­rect your mis­takes and how to pre­vent the rep­e­ti­tion of an unpleas­ant sto­ry. Some­times a sin­cere apol­o­gy is enough, and some­times more seri­ous steps come into play. It is impor­tant that the con­ver­sa­tion be in a calm and respect­ful tone.

Pun­ish­ment is not the death penal­ty. This is an excel­lent edu­ca­tion­al method, espe­cial­ly when it is car­ried out accord­ing to the rules. The main thing that moms and dads need to remem­ber is that it is impor­tant to love a child no mat­ter what. His behav­ior may be defi­ant, con­tro­ver­sial, unac­cept­able, or requir­ing a strict revi­sion of edu­ca­tion­al mea­sures. How­ev­er, the child should know that even after his mis­deeds he is loved and accept­ed.