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Hi everyone, Melissa here at CloudMom. So a study has come out in the journal of pediatrics
finding a correlation between various forms of harsh physical punishment and onset of
a range of mental illnesses. Wow! This is a really big deal. Parents listen up. I know
a lot of children from my generation were disciplined through forms of physical punishment
including spanking, so this is something you really, really pay attention to and there's
a lot of sort of subtle distinctions in the study, but really that is the main gist. Now,
it got me thinking a little bit about what we have done in our family. My husband and
I have chosen not to use any forms of physical punishment for our children including spanking
and here are the reasons why. Number one is that when my child has done something wrong,
I want them to get the message of what they've done and for that I need words. And even though
sometimes when I get really upset or angry, I wish that my words were even taken down
a notch, but they are still words. So I want that message to come across through words.
And the number two reason why my husband and I have chosen not to use spanking as a form
of punishment. Looking at my notes here is that when we have a really big disciplinary
issue and believe me we have them, things get pretty heated, it seems like when it starts
to get better is when my child calms down, and I think that by using physical punishment
including spanking that my child wouldn't calm down. I think it would actually even
make him possibly more upset which is another thing that makes me not wanna use that means
of punishment. Third thing is what we do when one of our kids does something which we think
is wrong is we give them a timeout and that usually helps them to calm down and what we're
trying to get them to do is to think about what they've done to reflect a little bit.
And I'm not sure this happens when a child gets spanked, for example. Do they even think
about, "Oh this is what I did." or when the spanking is over do they just say, "Okay,
my punishment's over, I'm done." So that's where I come out, we do not spank, I don't
think it's the right thing to do personally. But I wanna hear from parents who do spank
their kids. Why they think this is an appropriate form of physical punishment? And why they're
doing it and what they think about this study? 'Cause this is a really really big study,
so please comment on this blog at CloudMom and thank you so much for joining.