It is very common to talk about human rights and women rights. But what about rights who unable either to protest or protect themselves? When the victims are children, which is the most silent crime, the physical punishment against children. Although the physical punishment is illegal in countries such as Sweden, it is common practice others such as in America. According to a nationally representative survey in 2010, 5 percent of men, and 64 percent of women agreed that a child needs a “good hard spanking.” And there are 94 percent of parents have spanked their child by age three or four, and 50 percent still spanked even if the child was 13 years old. The survey also revealed that African-American and low-income parents were the most likely to use physical punishment.
In my writing I will be focusing on the consequences of the violence against children: “Punishment refers to a decrease in the probability or likelihood or response following the presentation or removal of consequence.” (Kazdin, Alan E. Parent Management Training).
Kazdin definition of punishment differs from the use of the term in everyday; Kazdin says; the focus of punishment now is retribution, retaliation, inflicting pain, or providing consequence that is undesired.
The children usually move spontaneously, doing a lot of mistakes because of their little live experience. Therefor, the parents have to do a nicely punish some time to misbehave, which is to show their love and care, not the negative emotion.
The adults have in mind that teaches children to be responsible for their behavior by serving the punishment. However, when adults teach children to behave to avoid punishment, children sometimes believe that the only reason to behave is to avoid punishment. It means that caused them a lack of responsibility. “ Individuals who are punished will try to escape from and avoid the individuals and situations that are associated with aversive stimuli.” Kazin said.
Moreover, The physical punishment affects children life. In fact, that the child who was always punished, usually have poor self image. It means that they used to see themself through the others’ eyes, because they believe that they deserve to be punished, which is very damaging. Also, the children, who are under punishment, will lose their confidence and motivation, because they some time feel that they cannot do anything right and cannot try.
On the other hand, children punishment are causing more risk in mental heath problem in adulthood, they will be easy to have anxiety disorder and being addicted on drug.
So, how can we deal with children misbehavior with more conscience?
While parent believe that more punishment and intense is better than the less, and seeing their children crying and upset actually is the central of the parent agenda, it is noticed earlier, within the same day 80 percent of the children will repeat a misbehavior for which they were punished for, no matter what the mode of discipline. PMT (Parent Management Training), which is a program to trains parents how to manage their children's behavioral problems at home and at school, have found that the effective punishment need not be upsetting. The goal of PMT is to train parents to interact with children very differently from usual. Also its object is to have positive attitude children. The key element of PMT is to use different techniques with the children as to give the children more attention, praise, and awarding point for positive behavior. On the other hand use some method such as giving time outs, verbal reprimands and loss of privileges such as watching television or playing video games for the negative behavior.
Finally, There is no need to put a child at risk for serious harmful side effects while there are other methods of discipline that more effective in the short run and more effective in the long run.