I was listening to an old podcast from LBC with Alison Bell. She was talking about the issue of smacking children as a form of discipline or not. She said that she had been smacked as a child and it didn’t do her any harm, and many callers said the same. I think there was a higher percentage being pro smacking than against, but one that was against really said it well;
“I wouldn’t smack my wife, why on earth would I smack my children?”
Another caller was a woman who has been working with children for 20 odd years and her views were very interesting. One thing she pointed out was that when you smack, that is because you have lost your temper, and how can you guarantee that you aren’t hitting the child too hard if you’ve lost your temper? You shouldn’t lose your temper with children full stop, but as we all know they can be a bit of a handful sometimes. However, it doesn’t matter how unruly they are, don’t lose your temper. Discipline them, yes, absolutely, but don’t smack them.
Children do as we do, not as we say. By smacking your child you are saying that it is ok to hit others. The child is too young to understand parent child relationship and that whilst mum will smack me if I do something wrong she will not smack the next person on the street if they do something wrong. They learn to see smacking and violence as something that is ok.
Children needs boundaries and they need to be disciplined. They don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong unless you tell them. That is the whole point, you need to clarify with words what is right behaviour and what is not acceptable.
If your child is fiddling with the dvd-player and you tell them off and explain why they are not allowed to play with the dvd-player they will eventually understand and also apply that on other electrical goods such as the tv or stereo. You might have to tell them ten times, but they will get intelligent knowledge from it and they understand WHY they cannot fiddle with it.
If you smack them when they fiddle with the dvd they will quicker learn that dvd = smack, ok, I just won’t fiddle with the dvd. But they will not link the dvd with the tv and they will not understand why they get a smack for fiddling with the tv as well. It will be “stupid” knowledge and you aren’t teaching the child right from wrong. All you are teaching them is dvd = smack = pain = I won’t do it when mum’s watching. They may still do it when you aren’t watching because as said before, they don’t see it as wrong.
Alison was saying her mum used to chase her around the house with a wooden spoon. She very rarely actually got hit by the spoon, but as she HAD been once, she knew the pain and that was enough to make her behave. I like the theory behind that, it is a little bit like SuperNanny’s Naughty Step. It is something we “threat” the child with in order to make it behave and understand what is ok behaviour.
The difference is that Naughty Step is a place for contemplating why you are there and time to understand what it was you did wrong so you don’t do it again. The wooden spoon just instils fear and does not make you think about why you are being punished. You may even resent your parents for punishing you if you don’t understand why they are doing it and you lose the respect for them.
It was a very interesting podcast and it certainly got me thinking. Child upbringing is not an easy subject.
