punishment and discipline children

Children is a gift from god to us.Parents play a main role in teaching children to behave. Punishment and discipline are common ways to teach children’s behavior.

What is the different between punishment and discipline? Punishment is to make children suffer from their mistakes. Punishment that uses pain stops unwanted behavior for a short time cause by fear of parents or for the punishments itself. It builds anger and also damage self-esteem.

Discipline is teaching children to learn from their mistakes. It teaches correct behavior and values. Discipline develops self-control by teaching children to be responsible of their action. In discipline, we use praise and encouragement to educate children with good behavior. It build self-esteem.

Punishment focuses on the parent being responsible for controlling a child's behavior, rather than the child controlling his/her own behavior, which is the focus of discipline.

Jane Nelson has given out the guidelines for parents to use penalty in disciplining children. Parents whenever possible should reveal the penalty of misbehavior ahead of time so children will know what to expect the next time they choose to misbehave. For example, tell them to ride on the sidewalk or their bike will be put in the garage. This will teach children to be responsible to ride on the sidewalk because they don’t want their bike to be taken away from them.

The penalty should be logically related to the misbehavior. Don’t send your child to bed for riding on the street.
Parents must speak out their comment in respectful manner to let children know they have a choice about how they behave. Parents need not to shout in presenting their comments. This will show children values.

Parents also need to provide reasonable solution that will allowed children to correct the behavior.

Punishment makes children hate themselves and others. They dislike themselves and others for getting the punishment. They may plan to get revenge when they grow older. Children may only behave to avoid punishment not because they want to be good. Children may learn to be sneaky in order to get away from being caught.

Art of child development is complex process. The outcome of parents effort is influence by factor of the child, the environment, the parents and the context. For example, different children have different strengths and weakness. When a child misbehave, it may be because he cannot do the instruction or does not understand the instruction.

According to Dean A Trumbull (pediatrician) in Parents Need Techniques For Behavioral Control, “Young children need corrective and punishment, but this is often ignored by the opponents of physical punishment. Time out and disapproval are effective tools but are not sufficient to control all problem behavior with all children.