Growing children and revery pranksters are veritable synonyms. But forgetting this, guardians meet out severe punishment to unsuspecting kids. Inhumans as it is, it reflects poor parenting as well. If parents really want a change in their children, they need to act cerebral and realise that children understand language of love better than that of scorn or revile.
Don’t hurt their sentiments
Parents seem to believe that they have absolute right over their children. Ergo, they want them to do their biding—else face music. There are guardians galore who unleash harsh and inhuman punishment for innocent faults of innocent youngsters.
Thankfully though, time is now changing. Couples are serious about their children. Awareness about family planning has translated into child-centric guardianship. Indeed, even an excess of care and affection is uncalled for as that makes children stubborn and careless. Yet, merits of child centric parenting remain above doubt.
In some households it is almost customary to leash children with a piece of rope, make them stand in sun, twitch their ear, make them do sit-ups, and pull at their pleats. Slapping is also a common occurrence. Some parents take exception to punishment meted out to their wards in school, but seem oblivious to their own habit of reaching out for rod on slightest pretext.
No less substantial are host of problems like rising costs of living, paucity of resources, financial crunch, exploitation, and damming work load. These add up to compound problems of parenting. No wonder guardian couples are a bundle of nerves. And when children approach them with their little problems—they explode—on their own little ones.
God is gored
The day you hurt a child’s sensibilities, you besmirch your soul. When you are high handed towards children, you fall from God’s grace.
—Aristotle
Some guardians aver that punitive measures are essential, else kids go berserk. These elders seem to forget that even though immature, children have an identity of their own. And it is foolhardy to ruin their present in garb of bettering their future.
Why brow beat a child?
Scolding of children, calling them names, is to demoralise them for sure.
Children who are beaten up off and on, fail to develops a wholesome personality.
Their physical and mental growth is retarded. Psychiatric problems of myriad kinds dog them all their life. Studies have revealed that children reviled and abused at home grow up to become a formidable problem for the host society as waywards who have no respect for home, humanity, and the whole lot of beauty this world holds out for them. ‘Street children’ are glaring example of this abrasion. Reviling makes kids rebellious and distances them from home and society. Battered children become smug, mischievous, overbearing, fearful, and foul mannered. Experts of mind and behaviour ascribe it to a painful childhood that men take to crime. Not without reason, there is a cut out legislation against child abuse.
In Germany stringent laws were formulated as deterrent for such parents as maltreat their children. Under this Act, beating of children, pulling at ears, and tugging at braids, are deemed cognizable offences.
Children are the future of nation. With this surmise, educational institutes in European countries forbid corporal punishment to students. In fact physical assault on pupil is treated as criminal offence. Even Indian psychologists subscribe to this line of action. Indian society and the institutions of learning, they say, need such laws of children’s welfare. Because domestic violence and school-college-staccato are becoming nightmarish for children.
According to Byren Engled, famed psychologist of Minnesota university, “Children who grow up with bruised emotions remain underdeveloped in comparison to others. Reason being that repeated insults lower self esteem and children starts believing that they are hopeless and good for nothing.”
Granted that parents, even as they punish their child, do so wishing it would help their ward. Yet they would do well to remember that wishes are not horses. A child may be checked temporarily by resorting to harsh measures. But these, in the long run, prove counter productive. At times aggrieved children may catch their guardians by the neck, or inflict damage on elders in one way or the other.
If elders pine for welfare of generation x, as indeed they do, they should rise above a pedestrian and perverted mentality. Experts are emphatic that youngsters can be shown mirror with tender loving care. Caution needs to be exercised while telling children where they went wrong. Even though it may not give instant result, there is no denying that radical changes will come about in course of time. Because such caring and sharing compels children to think and introspect, and jettison their bad habits.
Remember
❑ If you desire your ideas and life style to impact your children positively, then make it a habit to interact with them affectionately.
❑ To burden a child with your own worries, vicissitude and wiles, is sanguine enmity with the child.
