Physical punishment is often considered a viable option for controlling a child’s behavior. There’s a certain demographic of people who believe that punishing a child physically is the most efficient way to reduce bad behavior. This essay will argue that physical punishment against children for behavior modification is entirely unfruitful despite some short-lived success.
Children are naturally energetic, curious and free-spirited, that often leads to cases where children do not listen or behave. Some parents think that children who act out in public or are too difficult to handle are easier to control through smacking as opposed to calmly talking to them. Parents believe a strong authority helps grooming good behavior in children. Many often resort to physical punishment as a means of establishing authority. Indeed, there are cases, where punishing a child for doing something wrong has reduced those behaviors. These few instances bolstered belief in some parents that punishing a child through spanking or other means is the most proven method in helping the child control his emotions.
Despite a few negligible upsides, believing that hitting a child is necessary for their own benefit is preposterous. Inflicting pain on a child for simply acting as a child, does more damage to their overall mental growth and well-being than one can imagine. Physical punishments and fear of it, greatly reduces a child’s spontaneous actions, which are related to their creative growth. Higher frequency of punishments can cause long term trauma, often leading to many underlying traits in a child that causes self-harm or worse. It has been well documented by child therapist around the world that, one of the most leading cause of mental breakdown among young adults stems from deep-rooted childhood trauma. Overall, the sentiment that parents need to physically punish their child for their own benefit is outright wrong and could potentially lead to far worse outcome for the children.
This essay argued that people who are for smacking children as a means of establishing good manner have flawed understanding. In my opinion, parenting is a balance of nurturing and discipline for the highest benefit of the child, and inflicting physical punishment as a means of behavior modification is wrong .