Physical Punishment Leaves A Child With Deep Scars

Physical discipline has been used for decades as a method of upbringing to maintain discipline and parental authority. However, it has since been shown that this type of punishment of a child is not effective; on the contrary, the consequences of physical discipline haunt the mind of a child until adulthood.

Nevertheless, many parents still see corporal punishment as the best method of upbringing and punishment to correct a child’s misbehavior.

A child’s physical discipline can include, for example, eardrops, pinches, hair blockages, and even severe punches. What is perhaps even more worrying than physical violence is that more and more cases of parents’ overly violent parenting methods are being reported today.

Physical punishment or child abuse?

The line between physical punishment and assault of a child is very blurred, as both physical discipline and assault are characterized by the use of violence against a child or young person to control his or her behavior.

Physical discipline can be defined as the induction of a painful experience in a child with the goal of correcting the child’s bad or unwanted behavior. If the line between assault and corporal punishment were to be drawn, the purpose of physical punishment is not in itself to harm the child.

However, physical discipline can very easily lead to assault that causes physical injury, even if the original intent was not to intentionally harm the child. The punishment that led to assault is often due to unreasonable or uncontrolled use of force.

This type of discipline has a profound effect on a child’s psyche, causing problems to arise over time in both the child’s mental balance and mental health.

Consequences of the child’s physical punishment

Despite several campaigns against the abuse of minors, corporal punishment remains the most common and accepted form of violence against children.

Physical punishment of a child has several serious consequences for the physical and mental health of the child, which extend well into adulthood. Physical punishment includes:

• It damages a child’s self-esteem and exposes the child to feelings of insecurity and fear that make him or her a socially insecure adult.
• Limits a child’s independence by making him or her an easily submissive and controllable adult at a later age.
• It impairs a child’s emotional development and makes him or her feel anxious, sad, and restless.
• Complicates the ability to communicate between parent and child that lasts until adulthood.
• Increases the child’s feelings of rejection, loneliness, and rejection.
• Limits the development of essential social skills in situations of conflict.
• Generates aggressive and violent behavior in a child, for example towards friends and classmates.
• Disrupts a child’s normal learning process and limits his or her creativity and emotional intelligence.
• Teaches the child to use violence as a normal method of resolving conflicts and impairs the child’s mental well-being and cognitive skills.
• Promotes the application of corporal punishment as an approved method of upbringing in adulthood also with one’s own children.

The effects of corporal punishment are far from visible

Although the psychological damage caused by upbringing is always comparable to the method of punishment used, research has shown that child victims of physical violence in particular often become the perpetrators themselves.

However, this does not always mean that the young person would intentionally cause pain to other people. Rather, the violent behavior stems from the fact that these young people have never been taught any other way to resolve conflict situations; in their own youth, the only way to go through and resolve conflict situations was always through violence and aggression.

The physical discipline experienced in childhood has also been linked to drug and alcohol abuse by many young people.

Another consequence of physical punishment for a young person is personality disorders, which lead to both uncontrollable mood swings and sleep problems. These personality disorders may be the result of increased growth of cortisol, a stress hormone that can, in the worst case, lead to neurobiological imbalance in the adolescent.

Finally

In conclusion, we can draw that physical discipline interferes with both a child’s normal mental and psychological development.

For this reason, as parents, we need to avoid this method of parenting and find other ways we can improve communication with our children.

You can influence a child’s behaviors by motivating and encouraging the child when he or she behaves correctly, and ignoring the child when he or she behaves badly. In this way, you help the child completely without violence, as well as identify their own misconduct, that you teach the child with love and patience how he or she should behave.