About the physical punishment

 

A mother asks another one with the horror in the cloakroom of the kindergarten who having just slapped her daughter’s head for the fact that delves for a long time: “What are you doing? You cannot either!”

“And you, what, don’t you punish your own daughter” – she answers with the surprise.

It turns out that this is unacceptable for some parents, but it is in the order of the things for others.

In some families where the physical punishment is the most popular method of the upbringing, the children find the different ways of the adaptation to such the severe conditions. For example, they start taking out a grudge to those who are weaker that is the youngest children, the animals and sometimes the toys.

Another variant of the adaptation is described in the book “The crane and the lightning” by the writer Vladislav Krapivin. A boy was taking the analginum before meeting with his father who regularly flogged him that is not to be sicker but in fact that in order not to feel so helpless to create the illusion that he can somehow change this situation.

As a result, one person is left with the fact that he was flogged, who becomes an excuse for beating his children: “I was beaten and I grew up the decent man or the woman!” And the other person, who has retained the bitterness of the resentment after suffering the corporal punishment in the childhood, will never allow the child to be hit under any pretext.

That is what recalls his first meeting with the physical punishment of the writer V. Krapivin: “And I felt soon after that I experience an emetic disgust, when I see the violence that is when somehow will beat a boy or a girl and whip the tired horse, torture a cat, a dog or a bird.”

The reality is that often the physical punishment becomes not so much “an educational measure” as the manifestation of the cruelty in the relation to the children.

Alas, there are often the cases when the behavior of the parents strongly contradicts their role, when they completely neglect the children, confirm their violence and offend them.

In a number of the studies by the foreign psychologists it has been noted that in the United States and Western Europe, abuse with the children occurs with a frequency that is disturbing: from one to two million people are exposed to the violence in childhood or the threat of using of a weapons by their parents (Park and Colmer, nineteen seventy-nine; Park and Slaby, nineteen eighty-three). The majority of the surveyed parents (seventy-three percent) admitted that they resorted to some form of the violence against the children of three to seventeen years of the age, beaten, frightened with the weapon or a knife, punishing the child. The mothers were somewhat more likely than the fathers to slap or beat the children, especially the sons, but the more severe punishment was equally meted out by both the fathers and the mothers. The victims of such the dangerous actions were equally the daughters and the sons (Jelly, one thousand nine hundred seventy-nine).

 

THE ATTENTION! If the parents think it possible to inflict the pain to the child as a disciplinary measure, they can easily cross the line and turn to cruelty.

 

The psychologists conducted an experiment in which the relationships between the parents and the children were observed directly in three types of the families:

1. The families where one child was abused at least.

2. The families, in which the parents treated the child indifferently, took a position of the complete neglect, for example, very poorly fed.

3. The families where there were no the cases of the cruelty or the indifference towards the children that is the control group. The educational level and the incomes in these families were equal. A smile, praise, and an emotional contact between the family members were considered the positive signs of the behavior. The negative ones included the criticism, the sarcasm, the disapproval, and the anger. In the families where the cruelty and the indifference were accepted, the parents showed more the negative behavior towards the children than the parents in the control group. The children in the families where the parents held the position of the exclusion were more likely to conflict with their parents, their brothers and their sisters than the children in the control group; the children who were abused did not listen to their parents, and they were more likely to have the aggressive behavior in relation to other children (Burgess and Conger, one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eighth).

Some researchers believe that the beating of the child follows a conflict between a husband and wife, when the anger against the spouse is poured out on the relatively defenseless child. (Park and Slaby, one thousand nine hundred and eighty-third).

In addition, if we analyze the situation when the parents resort to the physical punishment, in the most cases, the plausible purpose of “the education” hides the inability of an adult to manage their emotions, cope with their irritation, their anger and their cruelty.