Should we punish children to discipline them?

Once, a mother came to me with her eight year old son. She complained that her son was so naughty and hardly listened to her. It was quite evident from the marks all over his body that the mother used to beat her son every time he does a mischief. When I asked him why didn’t alter his ways despite his mother beating him so much, the boy replied that he didn’t understand why she was hitting him.

The boy said that his mother’s expressions change when she gets angry and she looks like a fierce character that he has seen in movies. He finds this transformation quite funny. The problem with this type of punishment is that the parent is unable to make the boy realize what is right and what is wrong.

There is nothing wrong in disciplining your children. However, the parent should explain to the child, with calmness, why they have punished him/her. The parents should also make the kid realize that he/she shouldn’t repeat the action that has upset his / her parents.

There are many ways to discipline kids. You could forbid them from watching their favourite TV shows for three days or do not allow their daily half – an – hour leisure session. The parents could resort to psychological methods like these rather than hurting them physically. The punishment or the ways in which you discipline kids should be effective enough to make them understand the difference between the right and the wrong.