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Discipline for children has always been a decision left to parents, until recent years when children had begun to accuse parents of child abuse when they were hit or spanked by their parents. Spanking children seems to be a tool that is on its way out, while many parents still do it, it has become quite a controversial issue and it has been questioned as to if it is really even effective at all.
The plain and simple truth is, spanking is a form of violence. Any time one human being uses force or inflicts pain on another, it is violence. In our society, violence is illegal and it really sends a mixed message to our children when we hypocritically do something to them that is wrong for them to do to others. Corporal punishment has even been linked to anti-social behavior later in life. When a parent spanks a child, emotions are usually running high, often, a parent can become so enraged that they will hit the child harder to release their anger. Sometimes a punishment can turn into something more severe and parents really need to be careful in this day and age when a child can call protective services to get vengeance for a punishment.
There only seems to be one use for spanking and that is that it instills a fear of parents and gives a kind of respect for them. This respect is not respect earned because of values or anything that the child is looking up to, but respect out of fear of being hurt by spanking. Spanking instills violence in children and shows them that it is ok to hit someone if they do something they don’t like. You will find more children resorting to violence outside the home if they experience it inside the home. If spanking is used, it must be used with great control and verbal explanations to the child of why his behavior was not appropriate, even still, it seems that discipline could be dealt with in better ways such as time out, taking away privileges and the like. We shouldn’t teach our children that it is o.k. for adults to hit children, but not other adults. Children are smaller than adults and should not be put in the position of fearing them.
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