Physical Punishment as a form of Disciplining a child.

by: Villamor, Montalban, Dispo from 11 STEM- Apacible

It is inevitable to experience in childhood is to make mistakes especially in the

way parents discipline their children. All kids act badly. How to discipline a child is a
difficulty that every parent must overcome. When a child misbehaves or has serious
behavioral issues, it can be frustrating. Children require boundaries and rules. There are
various approaches in order to teach kids rules and support behavior modification.
Examples include praise, time outs, taking away one of privileges, and physical
punishment. Parents who received physical punishment as children are more likely to
employ physical punishment on their own children. Physical punishment, often known
as corporal punishment, is anything done to inflict pain or suffering in response to your
child’s actions. But is it really right to punish children physically? what is another way of
criticizing and providing solutions to children's problems when it comes to discipline.

Physically punishing kids is wrong due to the fact that it might have a short-term
behavioral impact. However, using physical punishment on your child may have the
following effects: bullying other children, being aggressive, behavioral problems, fearing
his or her parents, poor self-esteem, thinking that hitting is okay, and especially
increased risk of depression, anxiety, and personality problems. As stated in, The
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2018), the examples of physical
punishment includes spanking (one of the most common methods of physical
punishment), slapping, pinching, or pulling, hitting with an object, such as a paddle,
belt, hairbrush, whip, or stick, making someone eat soap, hot sauce, hot pepper, or
other unpleasant substances also. In extreme situations, physical punishment can lead
to more severe and abusive behavior towards children. Abuse can cause injury, loss of
custody, arrest, jail-time, and in even the death of a child. Based on Senate Bill 1477
this law bans all forms of physical and mental abuse, damage, mistreatment, and
exploitation of children in an effort in order to protect them from the traditional forms
of discipline employed by the majority of Filipinos. Many children are dealing with a
mental health issue some of them commit suicide and some are bullying and hurting
other people because of violence that are giving to them. According to Durant and
Ensom (2012), over the past two decades, research showing an association between
physical punishment and negative developmental outcomes was starting to accumulate,
and the Convention on the Rights of the Child had just been adopted by the General
Assembly of the United Nations. By 2000, the convention had been ratified by 191 of
the world’s 196 countries, 11 of which had prohibited all physical punishment. Today,
research showing the risks associated with physical punishment is robust, the
convention has been integrated into the legal and policy frameworks of many nations,
and 31 countries have enacted prohibitions against the physical punishment of children.
These three forces have altered the landscape of physical punishment, allowing
physicians to confidently encourage parents to adopt constructive approaches to
discipline and strengthen child well-being and parent-child relationships.
 Physical discipline of children was widely recognized around the world as an
acceptable way to coerce behavior that was conceptually distinct from physical abuse.
Some of the population agree with the physical punishment, because they say that the
children is more discipline and more respectful and they are the living evidence.
However, as research revealed connections between “normative” physical punishment
and juvenile aggression, criminality, and spousal abuse in later life, this viewpoint
started to shift. Large representative samples from the United States were used in some
of these studies, and some of them controlled for potential confounders like parental
stress and socioeconomic status. Other studies looked at the possibility that parental
reasoning might moderate the relationship between physical punishment and
aggressive behavior in kids. Physical punishment was linked to increased levels with
reference of aggressiveness toward parents, siblings, classmates, and spouses,
according to almost all of these investigations. But given that more aggressive kids
receive greater physical punishment, are physical punishment and child aggression
statistically linked? Although this was a possibility, evidence was accumulating that
physical punishment provokes aggressive behavior. According to Dodge et al. (1996),
this study examined harsh verbal and physical discipline and child problem behaviors in
a community sample of 2,582 parents and their fifth and sixth grade children.
Participants were recruited from pediatric practices, and both parents and children
completed questionnaire packets. The findings indicated that boys received more harsh
verbal and physical discipline than girls, with fathers utilizing more harsh physical
discipline with boys than did mothers. Both types of harsh discipline were associated
with child behavior problems uniquely after positive parenting was taken into account.
Child gender did not moderate the findings, but one dimension of positive parenting
(i.e., parental warmth) served to buffer children from the detrimental influences of
harsh physical discipline. The implications of the findings for intervention programs are
discussed. In early modeling studies, boys in grade one who watched a one-minute
video of a boy being yelled at, shaken, and spanked with a paddle for misbehaving
displayed more aggression while playing with dolls than boys who watched a one-
minute video of nonviolent responses to misbehavior. Early experiments had shown that
pain elicits reflexive aggression. Demonstrated in a treatment study that a decrease in
the severity of discipline used by parents of boys at risk for antisocial behavior was
followed by a significant decrease in their children’s aggression. This and other findings
compelled researchers to determine the mechanisms tying physical punishment and
child aggression.

Physical punishment is not a good idea because of the fact that negative
psychological and physiological reactions are triggered. In addition to experiencing pain,
sadness, fear, rage, humiliation, and guilt, children who feel threatened also undergo
physiological stress and have their neurological pathways for coping with danger
engaged. Even though it is difficult to discipline a child it’s not right to hurt them. There
are so many ways to discipline a child like communication, they can understand. Child
doesn’t understand an adult for the reason that they’re brain are not fully develop so a
child continue being a hardheaded, but a adult that fully matured and have a
experience being a child, it is not hard to understand children. So physical punishment
is not a good idea for disciplining a child.