I have several followers with young children and I decided to share a reflection on spanking, a resource that many parents use in Brazil to “educate” their children and it is a crime (even in Brazil!). The reflection serves as a warning to parents anywhere in the world to find a smarter way to educate their children. It also serves as a warning to those who find it natural to spank their children and consider moving to another country, where they can be punished for their aggressiveness and laziness to question family standards.
I have a degree in communication, not psychology, but understanding a little psychology is part of my job and the content I learned at university and continue to study after graduation. It is essential to have a good understanding of psychology to develop good communication. And this whole text is based on communication, which is influenced by psychology. It's about what a parent communicates to a child when they spank and various things related to it, both on the sender's (parent's) and message's receiver's (child's) side. And also about causes and consequences.
I'm going to use the term father often, but all the reflection goes for mothers, grandmothers, guardians, nannies, etc.
Fathers who spank their children or even give other forms of punishment usually do so because the child did not do something the father wanted or the way the father wanted. At least I've never heard of other situations involving spanking and punishment. I'll just talk about spanking from now on, but the logic is the same for other punishments.
It is worth noting that currently not even dogs are trained by up-to-date handlers with methods of physical punishment. The best trainers work with positive training. Why do you treat your children worse than dogs?
Think about it: what does a father teach a child when he hits him because he didn't do what he wanted?
I can't think of a single positive thing he teaches in this way. Maybe those who got spanked and never worked on this issue with the support of psychology will look at themselves and think they are a great example of a human being and that's why they will cite as an answer the qualities they see in themselves, because they don't see the negative consequences of that act. And so that person remains blind to the damage he is going to do.
What I perceive, as a communication professional, is that the father who spanks is ignoring who the child is, his needs and limitations, to name a few points. He uses aggression (the spanking) to communicate his frustration that the child is not like the toys and dolls he played with as a child that did everything he wanted (at least in his imagination, because dolls and toys also have limitations such as not talking and not moving the elbows). The child is not to blame for the father's inability to see and accept who he is.
I call spanking aggression because it may not leave any physical marks all the times, but it does leave emotional marks. Always. One of them is precisely the person who was spanked in childhood wanting to communicate their frustration with those who see the world differently from them through aggression, including continuing the family cycle of aggression by spanking their children. The so-called “law of the strongest”, as if someone could only be respected if they were physically stronger than the others. This includes attitudes like those “mass shootings” that occur with some frequency in the US, of young people shooting and killing several colleagues and teachers at school. Before you spank a child, think: Is this the kind of child you want to raise?
Spanking does not generate respect, it generates fear and distrust. Respect is earned in other ways. Think of how many people are respected for their intelligence, talent, authenticity, and other qualities that have nothing to do with physical strength. Many of them, qualities that anyone can develop. The law of the strongest may be necessary for wild animals to deal with other animals. Not for humans to deal with other humans. It is necessary to face these misguided views that we have learned from having had a flawed upbringing to break the cycle of violence. Taking parents off the pedestal and seeing the damage they did to us because they are human and had fewer resources than we have today to understand themselves. Or a lot of prejudice about it.
A person who has learned to communicate their frustration in the form of spanking/aggression can, with this simple reflection, realise how truly respected they can be.
Fathers are the adults in the relationship and must know how to express themselves and try to understand what the child communicates with each attitude. It is important to have emotional maturity for this before having children or parents, due to their inability to communicate, can cause serious trauma to their children.
Now let's look at the other side of the question of what spanking teaches children to reflect on how to have a better outcome than spanking. Imagine a father who sought help to deal with the way he was raised, understand how it affects his behaviour and avoid passing on his own traumas to his children. And let's focus on the kind of adult the parent wants that child to become.
An emotionally mature person does not want a child like himself. She is aware that each human being is unique and wants to help her child develop his natural qualities. For that she will really listen to her kids. Understand their expectations, their limitations, their desires and frustrations and try to help that child deal with them. No violence, whether physical or emotional, and no abusive attitudes.
Brazil has a culture of normalising violence precisely because it starts at home and the family is placed on a pedestal as if they were perfect people. The grandfather would spank the father who beats the wife who beats the young son who breaks the toys or does cruelty to the dog or weaker colleagues, and few stop to reflect on their own behaviour and change it. This wave of strong men like the superheroes from movies in the media is also, in part, a consequence of this, this need for self-affirmation through physical force that starts with an “innocent” spanking. Apparently, the culture of the United States is not very different from the Brazilian one at this point.
How to change this pattern of behaviour and have more effective and really welcoming communication? How do you develop a behaviour that makes spanking unnecessary?
For starters, look at yourself, daily, observe your own thoughts and feelings and listen to yourself in a way that many people were not heard and welcomed in childhood and seek different references to change behaviours that cause harm to yourself and others. Invest in self-knowledge, preferably with the support of a good psychologist to understand the reasons for acting in a certain way in a given situation. We all have patterns of behaviour that came from somewhere. If you've never questioned yourself, it's time to start.
The father who, before hitting his son, questions himself about the real reason he wants to hit the child and the consequences of this for the kid, has some chance of reaching answers that do not perpetuate violence and that welcome the son as he is, cutting him to become a mentally strong, independent human being, able to make decisions in a mature and intelligent way, respecting people. It is very important to listen to your child, create an emotional connection with him, and respect him as an individual. Allow yourself to learn to be a parent with your child. Allowing yourself to get to know your child, letting go of expectations and seeing who he is. This attracts real respect, something spanking is incapable of offering. Your fears are your problem and you have an obligation to resolve them or at least not pass them on to your children through irrational attitudes.
A child is a citizen and many civilised countries respect their rights. You should respect it too. Or not have children.
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Nycka, the Nomad
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