Time, a lot of time will have to pass until the population internalizes (at once) that hitting children is so bad how to hit your wife, the baker, the neighbor's dog or the elderly.
Time and the example of many parents who, when conversations arise talking about children and violence, explain that "I don't hit them" and "I don't punish them" and that we don't agree with that cheek on time, with no intention of showing that we are better parents or anything like that, but trying to explain that there is another way to educate, which may be as or more valid than the traditional one, by having children who are not child delinquents or potential thugs.
Cheek in time is not educational
Of course, today you look at two adults and it's hard to tell which one got cheeks and which one didn't. The imprint is not really visible unless the violence was the daily tonic, the self-esteem would be absolutely diminished and the person had a sad life as a consequence. I want to say that many people relativize the cheeks in time they received at the time because "hey, here I am, nothing has happened to me".
And as I said a few days ago, I'm here too, but something has happened to me. If I want to tell it, and if I don't want to, I don't. I may seem the happiest person in the world and in fact I usually enjoy a good mood every day, but you always have the doubt of what it would be like if my childhood had been different, because maybe now I would be even a better person, or more sociable, or more successful, or more daring to face new challenges, etc.
And is that the cheek is not educational. Neither the one given on time, as they say, to mark the limits of "up to here, period, I command", nor the one given at the wrong time, I don't know what it can be ... (I guess the one with mission only download the rage and helplessness, anger and tension accumulated, by force, on the child).
The more physical punishment, the worse behavior
That I do not say, what those who do the studies say. Hitting children causes children to submit to the parents' will. They obey. They pay attention. They become what we want them to be, while they are children. They stop being them, they take us fear, they learn to fear us and they learn to listen to us to avoid our reprimands.
So far there will be someone who believes that it is something positive, because you get the child to obey you, which on the other hand is logical, because they are in a clear situation of inferiority. However, studies say that that fear, that feeling of being able to suffer a physical correction in case of doing something wrong, make children feel resentment towards their parents, see their self-esteem diminished and may have submissive behaviors (learn to always obey, losing criteria and autonomy) or aggressive, if they decide to rebel or imitate behaviors, sometimes with people who are not their parents.
I am talking, for example, about two studies conducted in the USA. in 2009, when they concluded that Children who received physical punishment were more likely to have behavioral problems and aggressive behaviors in adolescence.
I am talking about a study in which violence was correlated with children with the appearance of mental disorders.
I am talking about a study in which they came to observe that children who received physical punishment presented some brain patterns similar to those of soldiers returning from war.
I am talking about a study that analyzed children and adolescents who received physical punishment at different ages, proving that the young people who were beaten were more likely to approve cheeks as a measure of education than those who had been hit only when they were more little ones. Something like "the more you hit your child in time, the more likely you are to get him to hit his children too."
I am talking about a study conducted in Tanzania in 2013, where children receive Cheeks on time at home and also at school, in which they evaluated 409 children of about 10 years, who had been stuck as children and were still stuck (about half) as an educational method, seeing that the more physical corrections, the greater the behavioral problems.
And so I can spend hours, but I think it is not necessary. It is just a matter of common sense, of not doing to others what we would not want them to do to us and of not to do to our children what as children we did not like that they did to us.
No, when we were little we didn't deserve a cheek on time. A reprimand maybe yes, a "let's talk seriously", too. But never the outbreak of force on someone helpless. It is abusive, it is humiliating, and the worst, it is your father and mother who does it. Terrible.
It can be done differently.
Exact. I just said it. People believe that the moment they stop hitting everything, it becomes a jungle in which children tie you to a column in the garage and slowly end your life. As if we had no mouth and as if the decades of experience and life had not served to have more resources than let go of the hand.
"Don't hit, talk!", I tell my children when unable to express themselves they want to use force, arms and feet. I stop them, I separate them and I urge them to speak: "Come on, explain what bothered you and why," and so they begin to speak. I act as moderator, they reach an agreement (or not), and there the root grows a little more.
The root of the dialogue, of the communication, the one that I water when, instead of hitting them, I bend down and speak to them. When I take a deep breath and count to two million because the body is asking me to do something terrible with them. The root of the communication, which they must also water to talk, to express discomfort, to be able to release what they feel, not to keep it inside and to solve the problems in that way, speaking.
Now, decide: do you want water the root so that dialogue, debate, communication and problems are solved by talking? Or maybe you prefer to go through all this and fix things with your hands, so that our children fix things like that in the future?
Photos | Runar Pedersen Holkestad, ellyn on Flickr On Babies and more | Why hitting children is a bad business (for children). Hitting children makes them aggressive, "There is never justification for hitting a child." Interview with psychologist Ramón Soler
