Corporal Punishment: Helping or Hurting Your Child?

Corporal Punishment: Helping or Hurting Your Child?

Child abuse! Spankings! Discipline! Beating! People have different thoughts when they hear the words corporal punishment. There is a fine line between corporal punishment, disciplining your child out of love, and child abuse, beating your child out of anger. I believe that physical discipline is needed when children continuously misbehave, as long as parents and authorities don’t cross the line. Three reasons I believe corporal punishment is an important factor in parenting are the child learning that there are consequences when they misbehave, schools continuing that concept in the school system and parents supporting it, and parents preparing their child for the real world.

Talking on the phone, playing on the computer, watching TV, and going outside to play, are a few things that all children love to do. Taking these things away when a child misbehaves, works for some children, but not for all of them. A physical spanking, with a paddle or flyswatter, always worked for my brother and me. We knew that if we did something we were not suppose to, we would get a spanking, and it hurt. Therefore, we didn’t do the things we knew would get us in trouble because we didn’t want to hurt. However, the problem today is that not all parents believe in this type of punishment and that makes it hard.

In most schools, the parents are required to sign a waiver in order for their child to be spanked by the principal or superintendent. If they don’t sign the waiver, the child will be punished by expulsion or in school suspension, which doesn’t work as well. Sometimes this punishment isn’t enough to do the job. The parent will always be notified, but the problem is that some parents who refuse to let their child get disciplined at school, also won’t discipline their child at home. We need parents to be supportive in the disciplinary system. If you don’t agree with the principal spanking your child, then at least do it yourself, instead of letting them get by with it. They never