I wonder how my parents and people in their generation became decent adults.
Everything I know about psychology tells me that children don't grow healthy when their parents beat them, and yet I see more examples of kids turning bad because they were never hit than kids getting scarred by their parents hitting them.
We have an idiom here "العصا لمن عصى" which means "A wooden stick is for who disobeys." It was a common practice when I was young to hit children who disobeyed their parents with wooden sticks or rubber pipes. (Both hurt like hell, especially in Winter.) It was common even in school to hit those who forgot their homework, arrive late to school, or act rebellious.
As a child, I hated that! ...I was a very obedient kid, but I had my share of times I messed up pretty badly and was punished for it.
Looking back on it now, I don't think it was bad to be hit for doing wrong. Especially since I was never punished for something I disagreed with being wrong to do.
The fear of punishment is a strong motivator to avoid bad behavior. It's the only motivator that works for some children. It balances out the temptation one might feel for doing bad behaviour.
My mother and father, when they tell me about the punishments they had when they made mistakes make me flinch. Sometimes, they were punished without even knowing what they did wrong. Yet, both of them are decent people with no emotional scars that I could notice.
People in older generations were strong, or maybe there was a secret ingredient that made them healthy despite the beatings they endured. If there was such an ingredient, I'd like to know what it was.
Children in new generations are rebellious. They're never punished enough, and their bad behavior seems to be reinforced by adults, if indirectly.
They don't study in school and cheat. They use bad words to refer to their parents/teachers and know they'll get away with all of that. It's terrible.
I wonder what sort of adults we're creating right now... I'd be happy to be proven wrong and they all become decent adults, but I'm not too confident about that.
I don't think it's wrong to hit children, but I think it should be the last resort solution when all other solutions fail. Also, hitting them should never feel like an act of revenge.
The worst things you can do are to punish children without explaining what they did wrong or beat them without giving them a chance to explain their reasoning. Sometimes all they want is attention or maybe they don't know better...
Children are 'innocent' for better or worse.
...These are my thoughts after listening to a teacher talking about how rebellious children in her school are, and that she's 'supposedly' not allowed to hit them, (even though other teachers hit them,) and she doesn't know what to do with them.
I was thinking... If hitting is psychologically damaging, how did I and people from older generations become decent adults at all? Or if leaving children without hitting them is better, how they not become rebellious?
What do you think?
I'm not sure how this post will be received since "beating children" is a very sensitive topic in most of the world. I don't like the term "beating," and I'm not sure what is considered "beating." My thoughts about it may be too jumbled... Would love to hear your opinions about this.
For now, have a nice day. Salam (Peace.)
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