Seriously, time to stop spanking your kids.
Chandré Gould, a senior research fellow in the Crime and Justice Division of the Institute for Security Studies analysed the life histories of repeat violent offenders and is trying to promote positive parenting as one of the ways to combat violence in our country. Why positive parenting, because it helps to prevent the kinds of violence children experience, and grow up to repeat Positive parenting encourages non-violent discipline.
The study that was done found that spanking and slapping, parenting stress, and parental mental health are significantly associated with both children’s depression, anxiety as well as aggression.
There are so many other reasons why positive parenting is a GREAT thing but I'll do another post about that, for now we're talking about smacking children.
I think it's a no brainier really that hitting a child can't be a good thing. If its NOT okay to hit your partner why on earth would it be okay to hit a small defenseless child.
Moving on to the NEW STUDY just completed at the University of Texas. Around 700 people were studied for the research. 68% admitted to being physically punished in childhood and 19% of them committed dating violence.
The study also showed that physical punishment negatively impacts the short and long-term health and behavior of children and can cause long-term damage. It showed that smacking can lead to mental health problems and cognitive ability .
80% of children worldwide are punished physically and the substantial research is clear that it does more harm than good It makes sense that if a child is taught to deal with conflict with violence they may carry that over later on in their lives. After all we as parents are the ones they look up to and are the examples of how to deal with conflict in a healthy way.
Another study that was done on 160 000 children over a period of 50 years proved that the more children are physically punished the more aggressive they become.
There are so many studies that have been done and not one has validated physical punishment as a positive thing at all.
So why do people still argue that its okay to hit a child?
Is it not time for us all to change our way of thinking. At some point it's going to be time to acknowledge that it's not something that should be done.
If you've hit your child, its okay, you made a whoopsie, it happens when we don't know better, especially when we're mirroring what our parents have done to us. But I think it's time for everyone to stop now, research new and better ways to discipliine your child and lets help our children to shine.
