Punishments Do Not Require Spanking
Frustrations when parenting one’s child can lead parents to resort to one of the easiest and oldest solutions, spanking. While this seems like a good idea at the moment, it is actually more a reflection of parental lack of control than anything. Spanking can lead to violence of their own, but it can also be hurtful from a physical perspective. There are plenty of ways of punishing your child more effectively than spanking them; punishments that are going to help the child learn a lesson and not just make them feel less loved.
Punishing Children Without Physicality
At our Albuquerque preschool locations, employees are never allowed to spank a child. Giving your child any kind of physical punishment is not recommended. As soon as parents become enraged, it is often their first instinct to spank their child as punishment when this is really just the frustration and an excuse to throw a temper tantrum of their own. Even calm adults do this in the moment when they are very upset or embarrassed, but controlling your emotions is one of the most important tasks any parent can have.
Instead of using this physical response to a problem, try to find other solutions. If there is something that your children want to do very badly, you can take away their privileges in other aspects of their life. This is a far more pre-meditated type of punishment style that children fear and thus respond to. Discipline can be difficult to provide when you are not disciplined to avoid physical violence when angry. Still, it is worthwhile to make the effort and try to change your various methods.
No matter what you do, never cave in to your children’s demands when it comes to punishment. If you feel like it is okay after a certain period of time to let them off the hook, you are reinforcing bad behavior as there are no consequences to what they do.
Understand Children’s Logic
Sometimes, punishing kids is not only unhelpful, but it is unnecessary as well. In order to understand why children make some of the discipline mistakes that they do, it is important to recognize their flawed logic. Thinking about the world through the perspective of a child allows parents to see that many discipline issues are flawed logic rather than bad behavior. When you realize that your child is fundamentally lacking control of the way they act in public or with others, you will have a better time disciplining them. Simply educate them about proper etiquette and why things must be done in a certain way.
When you understand the logic of a child and you perform punishments that are meaningful for learning rather than your own temper, it is a much better situation for everyone involved. Spanking children rarely helps anyone and in many cases, it only acts as a very real psychological problem. Avoid spanking them at all costs and you’ll have a much better disciplining them to do as you’d like.
