The cheek: why is it never an effective punishment?
You may get a quick result, but the slap and slap is never an effective punishment. If you want to educate your child to understand why he should change his behavior, you should explain things to him and look for other methods to correct him.
Losing your nerves is the order of the day, especially with life so accelerated that we carry. But we have to convince ourselves of one thing: physical punishment, in the form of a slap, cake or slap is never effective, the only thing we are getting is to "liberate" our impatience in some way, and almost always we repent later. Only in some very specific cases can be justified, even knowing that it is very ineffective.
Nor can we think that a cake, a slap, a scream, or a humiliation, is the way to educate and get our children to respect us and obey us. Correct in this way is not to exercise authority, but to impose authoritarianism.
What psychology says about the cheek as punishment
When we talk about punishment, we usually refer to a sanction that follows inappropriate behavior. Said sanction can be of two types:
1. That inappropriate behavior is followed by the presentation of a negative stimulus: It can be a slap, a scream, an unpleasant sound ... the technical term that is used to refer to this type is that of positive punishment.
2. That inappropriate behavior is followed by withdrawal of something that is positive for the child: a special dessert, a video movie, remove recess time, remove points that the child has been previously given .... The technical term used is punishment by omission or cost of response. This is far more effective than physical punishment: causing negative behavior to be followed by the loss of something that is positive for the child.
The cheek is ineffective in education
The first type of punishment presents a series of important problems, perhaps the biggest one is that, regardless of whether it is ethical or not, it is very ineffective for several reasons:
1. Its effectiveness is temporary: In general, it only works while the person who punishes is present and, when the person is absent, the negative behavior reappears.
If it is mild and frequent, the child gets used to it and stops responding to punishment: for example, those children who get used to the screams of their parents or the teacher.
2. Punishment can become a reinforcement, he compensates for the punishment to keep attracting attention: for example, children with low self-esteem, children whose parents are very little at home, children with school failure ... often discover that the only way to pay attention is to behave wrong. Even if they give them a slap, at least they pay attention to them, or they manage to become the center of attention in the class ... this can be more than fear of punishment. You have to teach our children in this case, positive ways to get the attention of their parents and teachers.
3. Side effects appear. If the punishment is intense, in the first place it would not be ethical, and, secondly, side effects often appear such as fear, aggressiveness displaced towards other weaker people, strong feelings of guilt ... which often become generalized not only to the child and the situation that is punished, but to many other situations.
How to prevent nerves from betraying us
Today, almost all parents are aware that physical punishment does not fix anything. But the issue is that sometimes we can not control ourselves. They put the "nerves of rush" their tantrums, their tantrums, how stubborn they are sometimes, see that they do not do the things we ask, but quite the contrary, although we have repeated it many times (we are testing) etc. And "zas" we can not anymore and we escapes a few lashes or a couple of cakes, or grab them roughly by the arm or pull their hair.
Physical punishment and punishment in general, does not teach what needs to be done, but only what should not be done: therefore, if we do not give the child the opportunity to receive attention and reinforcement through other more adapted behaviors, it is very Probably it will happen as we pointed out in the previous point: that the punishment compensates him in order to receive attention or that he habituates to it with fear or ignoring it.
The cheek, is it ever justified?
Despite all these objections, in some specific cases the use of punishment may be justified, even knowing that it is not very effective. According to Teresa Artola, in those cases in which the negative behavior is serious for the child or the people around him, and when other more positive techniques have not worked. For example, in disabled children who self-injure, negative behavior is often cut off causing it to be followed by an unpleasant stimulus such as an annoying noise.
It also depends a lot on the age of the child.For example, in those children of 2 or 3 years, with which it is difficult to reason, and in some specific case, it may be appropriate to use a scourge, as a way of making him understand that what he has done is wrong, not as a way to relieve father or mother.
Another example: you see your son who has pulled the hair of his brother or another child, perhaps a soft cheek in the hand that has been used to pull the hair can come well so that he does not forget his behavior and always remember the " bad hand. " However, in many cases, although the father or mother can serve as relief, it is ineffective and it would be much more effective to reward him when he is surprised doing the opposite behavior: reinforce positive behaviors.
Marisol Nuevo Espín
Advice: Teresa Artola. Doctor in Psychology.
