July 08, 2002 - 9:47 AM
There's a huge debate (again) about the pros and cons of hitting children when disciplining them.
I'm all for it - for hitting them, that is.
And I've been called all kinds of monster because of it in another forum.
For some reason, when the words "hitting" and "children" come up in the same sentence, everyone automatically things "Oh my god! Child abuse!"
It's NOT child abuse to let a child know what it's done wrong. It's NOT child abuse to teach that child that there are consquences for their actions.
I was born into a time where hitting, while not the big thing that it was, certainly wasn't frowned upon as it seems to be today.
When I was in primary school, it was no big thing to cop a whack on the back of the calves (they weren't allowed to go higher though) or the back of the hand. It didn't happen often - because the kids knew that the teachers would take no shit from them. So they behaved. Relatively. There was still the odd occasion where a child would play up and they were sent outside for "time out" or to the corner of the room to watch the other kids having fun (the ones who were behaving themselves that is) or sent to the principals office (and oh my god, in my school, you didn't want to be there ANY time. That woman was scarey!).
Now, I'm 23 years old. This was not that long ago.
I believe that kids should be taught a bloody lesson - not coddled.
They aren't going to be coddled by the boss when they don't want to do something. The boss is not going to turn around and say "Oh, no, that's okay, we'll work on it together and when you're ready."
Fuck NO. It's "Get this done now. I need it yesterday." And you nod your head and get to it. That's what you're paid for. There's no time out when you're working. There's not going to the principals office - unless it's to get either a pay rise or to get fired.
"Positive reinforcement" will only get you so far. I personally think it's stupid, but hey, that's just me. Positive reinforcement works for dogs, not kids. Fair enough, a child does something great, of course you are going to reinforce that positive behaviour with a reward. Lovely. I'm all for that.
But what happens when that same child does something bad. And I'm not taking about spilling a glass of juice over a coffeetable you've just shallaked. I'm talking about misbehaviour. Hitting siblings, pulling of hair, diliberate destruction of personal goods, calling names, so on and so forth.
How can you use positive reinforcement then?
You can't.
Sure, you can pull the child aside and explain why Mummy and Daddy don't like that sort of thing, and hell, if it works, more power to you. You've got an angel.
But, what if it doesn't? Send them to their rooms? Fair enough. That's one way. A good way. It worked for me on most occasions. But what if it doesn't work?
If a child is being particularly bad, a slap on the hand, a slap on the back of the legs or, god forbid, their bottoms, is not going to kill them. It's a good way of getting their attention and letting them know that you mean business. I've done it several times with my young cousins (boys - 4, 6, & 9) who like nothing more than to beat the crap out of each other and ruin everything that doesn't belong to them.
They don't expect it from me, and to tell you the truth, they hurt each other far more than I ever would.
Now please don't take this as me saying I whack kids any time I feel like it. I know exactly what it's like to live with someone that's rather heavy-handed when it comes to dishing out punishments. Hell, I was thrown across a room several times when my dad got angry enough (which wasn't hard, I learned NOT to cross my father, especially when he was already narky) and had to catch a 100kg solid wood table that he threw in the direction of me and Erica.
I'm not a monster, I don't like hitting kids, I don't think anyone truly does. But I think it's also a necessary means to have them understand that bad shit happens when you misbehave.
If a kid badmouths me, fuck time out, it's going to get a slap across the mouth - or be firmly instructed to suck on a bar of soap.
