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By: BCC Staff

Proverbs 29:15 “The rod and reproof give wisdom”

1. Discipline should be a spiritual encounter with God, not just a physical encounter with you (Proverbs 3:11-12; Hebrews 12:5-11).
2. Rules should be clear and posted for all children. They should include consequences for disobedience and benefits for obedience (Deuteronomy 6: 4-9).
3. Determine beforehand the number of swats for each stated offense and the instrument to be used to administer the swats. Use a neutral object, never the hand, to spank. Tell him beforehand the number of swats he will be receiving (Proverbs 22:15).
4. Deal with the child promptly, but in private; your intention is to discipline your child, not humiliate him (Proverbs 13:24; 19:18).
5. Be sure the child understands and knows that what he did was wrong. He needs to know that the discipline is because he has sinned, not because you are angry. If you are angry, wait until you can administer the discipline in love (James 1:19, 20).
6. Have the child grab his ankles or bend over a bed with arms extended. Be sure his hands stay out of the way. Apply swats to buttocks or the upper area of the legs. Be careful not to hit the child’s tailbone, back or knees (Proverbs 29:15). (Never punch your child with a fist; never kick him; never slap him in the face or on the head. That is abuse and is always unacceptable.)
7. After administering the discipline, take him in your arms and let him know you love him, but that God calls on you to discipline him when he disobeys (Proverbs 19:18).
8. Pray with your child. After you pray aloud, encourage your child to pray and seek God’s forgiveness. Also, encourage your child to seek forgiveness from any other offended parties, including yourself. With younger children, you may have him repeat a prayer after you to teach him how to pray and ask forgiveness. Your consistent modeling will teach the value of genuine prayer about his character development (Ephesians 6:4).
9. Review with your child how he was tempted. Develop a biblical plan of response so he can make a godly choice the next time he is tempted in the same or a similar way (1Corinthians 10:13, 14).

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Reared in discipline

LITTLE ROCK — Throughout history, parents have threatened to tan their misbehaving children’s hides, bend them over their knees, take them to the woodshed or just plain give them a spanking.

Then sometime in the last part of the 20th century the “time out” - a discipline technique that involves placing a child in a quiet place for several minutes after they misbehave - became the socially acceptable punishment.

But not everyone is convinced an old school spanking is a bad thing.

Some maintain that it is a surefire way to stop bad behavior, while others insist it does far more harm than good. Many parents fall somewhere in the middle, using physical punishment on an occasional basis when all else fails.

Heather Wood of Little Rock has spanked her 5-year-old son, Walker, only a few times.

“The very first time I did it was in a parking lot. We had talked to him, even when he was real little, about the dangers of moving cars and paying attention and he just was running away and not listening,” Wood said. “I used it as an attention-getter, really, because it was such a dangerous situation.”

Time out is a more common punishment for Walker and his 2-year-old sister, Campbell, with spankings remaining an option of last resort.

“I would never do it flippantly because then it’s just not effective and it becomes something that it’s not supposed to be. I feel like if you do something a thousand times a day it doesn’t get their attention - they just start ignoring it. They just kind of roll their eyes,” Wood said. “I don’t spank him hard … because I don’t ever want it to hurt. I just want the thought of it to scare him.”

An occasional swat on the bum may quickly stop a child’s misdeeds, but in households where paddling is used regularly on very young children, a 2009 study indicates, the long-term result might be more behavioral and intellectual problems in the child’s future.

A study of 2,573 mothers and toddlers by the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University showed that children who were spanked more at age 1 were not only more aggressive than their peers at age 2, they also had lower early thinking and reasoning skills at age 3 than children who had been spanked less.

Wood, who is the daughter of a longtime teacher and who worked for a while as a substitute teacher, puts a heavy emphasis on good behavior.

“If you have a ringtail tooter in your class that’s just a nightmare to deal with, you’re also not going to go the extra mile to pull them aside in your spare time to help him. ... To me, behavior is so much more important than being the star student because I feel like you’ll get so many other opportunities if you’re a nice person.”

LESSONS LEARNED

Corporal punishment is allowed in Arkansas’ public schools, but several of the state’s largest school districts - including Little Rock, North Little Rock, Pulaski County Special, Fayetteville and Springdale - opt not to spank students.

Hartzell Jones, deputy superintendent in the Springdale School District, said that district started discouraging paddling in the mid-1990s.

“At one time it was used pretty often,” said Jones.

Discipline records showed that paddlings did little to curb bad behavior, Jones said.

“If it was the same kids over and over again, it must not be working.”

In the districts that don’t allow spanking, students are often kept in from recess, given in-school or out of school suspension or assigned to alternative classes for discipline infractions.

Jones was paddled a few times when he was in school, and he said, “It worked on me.”

But he still thinks the district is doing the right thing.

“I think not paddling is the way to go,” he said. “Now, that’s me personally and that’s our philosophy in school but if parents think that works with their child - if they believe that - then I think that’s a personal decision. I don’t think the state should outlaw that for everybody because I think some people should have the right to discipline their child in a legal way as they see fit.”

It’s not unusual for parents to disagree with a district’s no-spanking policy.

“Even today some parents would prefer that we do and they ask us or tell us, ‘I give you permission to spank my child,’ but we don’t do it even with parent permission,” Jones said. “Some parents think it’s effective and they ask us to [spank their child], but we politely refuse.”

PICKING THE PUNISHMENT

Nick Long, director of pediatric psychology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences department of pediatrics and Arkansas Children’s Hospital, laments the fact that parents too often think of spanking when children misbehave, confusing spanking with the more generic term “ discipline. ”

“Spanking is just one form of punishment,” said Long, who is also director of the Center for Effective Parenting, a collaborative project of the Jones Center for Families, the UAMS department of pediatrics and Children’s Hospital. “In fact, discipline really comes from the root word, ‘disciple.’ It means ‘to teach.’ ... When we think about teaching our children almost anything in life other than their behavior, we don’t think about spanking or relying just on punishment.”

A mother or father teaching a child to ride a bicycle, for example, would hold the handlebars, gradually letting go and letting praise fly when the little one pedals away on his own.

“Every time they fell off the bicycle we wouldn’t spank them, put them back on the bike and say, ‘Don’t fall off next time.’ That would be ludicrous,” Long said.

“We’re going to use a lot of positive approaches, we’re going to use a lot of encouragement, guidance, kind of holding the handlebars and gradually letting them go, providing a lot of praise to our kids as they hold their balance. ”

There is reason to using those same kinds of approaches to guide children’s behavior, Long said.

‘I TURNED OUT FINE’

“Many parents are going to say, ‘Well, I was spanked and I turned out fine,’” Long said. “The way I talk to parents about that is that there is a link between spanking and later aggression, just as there is a link between smoking and lung cancer,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that everyone who smokes is going to get lung cancer, nor does it mean that everyone who is spanked will become aggressive later on. But there is an association there and we can’t really tell which kids who are spanked are going to end up being aggressive later on just like we can’t tell which adults who smoked are going to get lung cancer for sure.”

He also cautions that the fine line between spanking and abuse can be blurred.

“The issue is that most parents who abuse their children don’t set out to abuse their children,” he explains. “What happens is that they start spanking, and spanking loses its effectiveness somewhat after time, so parents have to spank harder and more frequently for it to work and so it ends up snowballing out of control sometimes and that becomes abusive. ”

Janna Huie of Little Rock, who employs spanking to discipline her children, said parents have to decide what works best for their children.

“I would hope that you would know the difference between a spanking and a beating,” she said.

Huie was spanked as a child and thinks it made her a better person.

“It’s hard as a parent, because I hated to get spanked, but I was a very pushy child. I pushed every possible limit that my mother would give me,” she said. “My sisters were not that way but I was the defiant one.”

She said her son, 5-year old Peyton, shares some of her personality traits.

“He’s very stubborn and bullheaded like I am,” she said.

If three time-out cycles fail to improve his behavior, Huie spanks Peyton.

“I tell him if you do this again, you choose to get a spanking,” she said.

Some misdeeds, though, might warrant a spanking right away - like going outside the house without permission, darting into the street or wandering away from her in a store.

“If he hits his sister or kicks the dog or something vindictive or hurtful I will smack his hand or pop his butt,” she said.

Her 21-month-old daughter, Paige, gets spanked lightly on the hand for some offenses, such as hitting her brother or throwing something out of anger.

“We’ve done ‘no, no, no’ so many times that she just looks at me, like ‘Whatever,’” said Huie. “The popping of the hand works for her. And it doesn’t hurt; it’s more of a shot to [her] ego.”

Still, Huie said she would rather not spank.

“Sometimes that’s the only way I can get him to understand,” she said. “It’s not for everybody. I get that. But it works for him, and it worked for me growing up. I don’t think I would have been as well-rounded a child if I wasn’t spanked.I was not abused in any sense, I was not excessively spanked, like some parents will just keep hitting and hitting and hitting.

“I think you need to be calm when you spank. You need to send him to his room or take a breather, or you count and then spank, because you will - you’ll hurt them. ”

Since becoming a mother, she has had to take timeout herself, to think about the pros and cons of spanking and to explain them to her son.

“I backed off on spanking when my 4-year-old son started telling me, ‘Mommy, you’re hitting me. You’re telling me, “No hit,” and you’re hitting me,’” she said. “I said, ‘No, Mommy doesn’t hit you - Mommy spanks you. There’s a difference.’”

Huie and longtime friend Sherri Foster, who moved away from Arkansas about seven years ago, have debated the issue of spanking.

Foster, who now lives in Kansas City, Mo., said spanking is a quick and easy response - one that she cannot support.

“I was raised in a home where spanking and hitting were OK, like knock-you-out-of-your-chair-if-you-hold-your-fork-the-wrong way kind of thing,” said Foster. “I felt like it was unnecessary and I remember thinking when I would go to my room after that, not, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ but ‘I hate them.’”

Foster puts her two youngest children - Lexi, 7, and Rachel, 4 - in timeout and takes away privileges when they act up. Instead of spanking, she talks to them about resolving conflicts with words and about making choices that are more acceptable.

“I believe you can raise your kids on two different methods: One is fear and the other is reasoning,” said Foster. “I don’t want my children to fear me; I want them to respect me. And I believe even an 18-month old can be reasoned with when they’re going after the [electrical] outlet, if you’re patient enough to tell them that ‘No, that will hurt you’ enough times.”

She believes her way of doing things equips them to make better decisions in the future.

Case in point: Instead of taking her oldest child Taylor (now 18) into the bathroom and spanking him when he misbehaved at a school carnival in kindergarten, she informed him that if he couldn’t act properly they would leave, and then she promptly took him home.

“He still remembers that,” she said. “He was upset. And the next year, he said, ‘I won’t do that again, Mommy, because I want to stay at the carnival. ’”

Huie said she has changed some of her disciplinary strategies because of techniques she has picked up from Foster, but that she won’t stop spanking.

“I don’t think any parent has any intention of spanking - I don’t think any parent wants to spank. But if you’ve tried everything else and nothing works, that’s it,” she said. “Some of it does work and I use that for my children. But for my kids, some of it just does not work. Spanking works.”

Stop, impotence: how to stop taking it out on children

28,528

For parents Relationship crisis

To categorically call slaps and slaps violence and say that it’s impossible is to add even more guilt and pain to a difficult situation. How to be?

STOP, impotence! It can be otherwise!

There is something important behind every parental breakdown. And most often spanking and swearing - from impotence. This is impotence in relation to one's own childhood, to the norms and rules learned in the parental family, to life in the totalitarian Soviet system. From your own emotions, fatigue, congestion, unresolved problems at work and with loved ones.

And of course, this impotence in educational measures. Parents speak directly about this: “We have no examples of how to raise a worthy person without a belt and flip flops.”

At the moment of a breakdown, a powerful emotional wave covers the mother or father.

The simplest and strongest patterns of behavior wake up in the parent, for example, an aggressive reaction. It gives some relaxation, and thus the pattern is fixed. With each breakdown, he gains more and more power over the person.

Just forbidding yourself to scream, spank, hit is not enough. The reaction grows from the depths, and there it needs to be changed. To do this, it is important to build a strategy and implement it step by step.

Strategy for transitioning to a safer relationship with your child:

• Work with your own feelings and attitudes;
• Make a secure contact;
• Teach your child to obey.

Work with your own feelings and attitudes

To become aware of your emotions that led to a breakdown and learn to live them more environmentally is the main task of working on yourself for parents. Essentially, it’s about learning to think about emotions right at the point they arise.

The following questions will help:

• How did you feel at the moment of the breakdown? Anger? Rage? Resentment? Impotence?
• How did these feelings manifest themselves on the bodily level - did you feel like stomping, waving your arms, clenched your fists, your heartbeat quickened?
• What are these feelings like? In what other situations in the present or in the past have you encountered a similar reaction - in yourself or in other people?

It is best to keep a diary and answer these questions in writing

At first, these will be recordings of the relapse, but over time, you will learn to "catch" your feelings right at the moment of their occurrence. This skill greatly reduces the degree of reaction.

Most often, a combination of fatigue and internal factors (traumatic situations from the past, childhood experience, dissatisfaction with life) is behind parental impotence in a breakdown. Rest more, take care of yourself - the most common advice given by friends and colleagues. Yes, it's important, but that's not all.

Parents who have problems with their children can benefit from exercises

Psychologists have an obligation to receive personal therapy. This is necessary in order not to confuse client stories with your own, in order to expand your view of problems, to maintain internal balance when meeting with strong emotions of other people. What do we have to do?

1. Emotionally close unpleasant and traumatic stories from one's own life, including from childhood

There are different methods of how to do this, but the result is the same - the memory of a difficult event will no longer "cling", cause tears and difficult conditions. You can tell the story to a close, supportive person over and over again. Or write down your thoughts and feelings in a diary, draw. There are many professional approaches to healing trauma, you can turn to a specialist.

2. Learn to look at the situation from the outside

There is a special exercise for this. For example, in a store where you are usually a little annoyed by a line or a saleswoman, try to imagine that all this is happening on TV. You are just watching a news story. Try not to get involved, find a "magic wand" - count the dots on the wallpaper, consider the pattern on the floor.

Having practiced on simple situations, you can try more complex ones. Imagine whining "Mom, I want ice cream!" Also a TV show. Do not turn on, find a distraction for your emotions.

3. To be able to withstand the strong feelings of children

I will give an example. The child scratched his knee and cries, he is very upset, it hurts. Mom is also upset and scared, wants to calm the child as soon as possible and says: “Don't cry, it's all over! Here's some candy for you!" As a result, the child eats candy, everyone calmed down.

However, both the child and the mother safely avoided contact with their feelings

And another example. The same child, the same knee. Mom gets in touch with the feelings of the child: “Yes, you are in pain and you are upset, but this is how it happened - let me help you calm down, and then we will buy a band-aid and treat your knee.” Mom endures the pain and resentment of the child and helps him cope with his feelings, naming and accepting them.

By following these recommendations, you will be able to deal more calmly with moments of disobedience, whims, tantrums, whining, learn to maintain your inner state, despite fatigue, and help your child more effectively in solving his needs. It is quite possible to do something on your own by picking up books and articles. Especially difficult problems are best solved together with a family psychologist.

Create a safe contact

Attachment theory proves that a child needs consistent parental behavior, this creates internal security, and there will be less impotence in his adult life.

Sanctions for disobedience and a pleasant pastime must be deliberate and consistent. For example, parents introduce a rule and a sanction: “If you don’t clean the room, you don’t play the console.” And each time it is necessary to monitor the implementation of the rule - consistently. When you don’t get out once and there is no sanction, this is already inconsistent.

Or, for example, there is a tradition on Saturdays to visit grandmother for a delicious feast. This happens every Saturday, except in exceptional cases - consistently.

Of course, entertainment and gifts can also be spontaneous - for joy. And consistent - for internal security

Joy in relationships is also important. Remember what you most like to do with your child? Fooling around or hugging? Do crafts? Watch educational films together? Read? Do it more often!

Reliance on values ​​helps to consciously build contact. Think about what values ​​are behind your parenthood - family, care or joy? What actions can you broadcast them to children?

For example, caring for each other is a family value for you. How can you teach this care to your children? Of course, by their own example - taking care of themselves, of a partner, of elderly parents, helping charitable organizations. And then the family dinner can become not a formal gathering of the family, but a place where children learn to care.

Teach your child to obey

Often the reason for a breakdown is the disobedience of children. One mother said: “The first few times I calmly told him not to climb on the cabinet, then three more times I shouted it, and then I had to spank!” Mom in this situation simply did not know how to influence her son.

Obedience is as important a skill as speaking or reading. After all, we teach our children various useful things and do not think that they themselves should be able to do this. But often we do not teach them obedience, but immediately demand the result!

How to teach a child to obey?

• Gradually and consistently introduce a system of rules and consequences.
• You can teach obedience in a game or in a fairy tale — use toys or fairy tale characters to show how rules and consequences work.
• You can contact a specialist in the correction of child-parent interaction for professional methods on how to teach a child the skill of obedience.

Sometimes it seems that impotence is inseparable from parenthood. Indeed, there are situations in which we - parents - can not do anything. But this does not apply to our failures, such problems are completely solvable.

Books to help:

• Irvin Yalom Mommy and the Meaning of Life
• Donald Winnicott Talking to Parents
• Irina Mlodik Metamorphoses of Parental Love
• Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence
• Sergey Shabanov and Alena Aleshina Emotional Intelligence. Russian practice»

About the author

Vera Vasilkova — systemic family psychotherapist.

Photo source: Getty Images

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Deviant behavior of children | Child Health Center

home > Symptoms of childhood diseases: section information > Deviation in the behavior of children: aggression in children; the child is lying

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U F X C H W Shch E Yu Ya

Children's behavior reflects their state long before they start talking, and largely depends on the child's temperament and his ability to adapt to the environment. The behavior of the child is influenced by the reaction of parents, the situation in the family, stress and change. Proper upbringing helps him learn to express his emotions and behave correctly.

Usually children adopt the manner of behavior from adults. Parents set a good example if they behave calmly and intelligently with others. But we must remember that children see their parents when they behave aggressively or enjoy watching scenes of sex and violence on television and in the movies.

Behavior that is acceptable at one age is unacceptable at another. For example, a child's emotional outbursts, which are normal at two years of age, should be alarming during the school years. Behavior that can harm a child, family members or others, pets, damage to property is absolutely unacceptable. Unusual demonstrative behavior of the child may indicate a request for help. At the same time, “too good” behavior with unnatural self-control for a child and a desire to please parents should also inspire fear.

The concept of "normal" behavior is largely dependent on family traditions. It is necessary to evaluate the daily, usual behavior of the child, and not isolated situations that may be associated with overexcitation or fatigue. In some families, children are allowed to say whatever they want. Sometimes children behave rudely, because their parents never taught them the norms that exist in society. Children need to be taught to respect the rights and feelings of others. Do not make excessive demands and do not put the child in an awkward position. Do not rush to label him. They can determine the future behavior of the child.

DOCTOR'S CONSULTATION

Contact your pediatrician if:

• your child's behavior makes you anxious
• the child behaves defiantly and does not obey reasonable requests and discipline, reacts too violently to ongoing events and it is difficult to calm him down
• has no sense of self-preservation
• aggressive to other children, cruel to animals, spoils things
• has recently changed for the worse: mood changes dramatically, does poorly at school, uses drugs or alcohol, self-esteem is low

CAUTION!

The sooner behavioral problems are noticed, the more successful the help will be. The child needs help, otherwise bad habits can be fixed.

FOR INFORMATION

Physical punishment: an approach to education

By spanking a child, you will let off steam, but you will not teach the correct behavior. Such punishment humiliates the child and harms him psychologically; besides, it can injure him.

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