How To Punish a Child

What is punishment? Punishment is nothing but a rough handling of a situation or a penalty. Whenever you give punishment to your child remember that you are only giving penalty to him/her. That’s it and punishment has nothing to do with “the behavior” you want in your child. Punishment doesn’t modify the behavior of your child.

Punishment basically ruins the relationship of a parent and a child and in most cases as the age of child increases, intensity of punishment also increases as a result making the parent-child relationship worse.Reported aggressive behavior in most of the children is nothing but the outcome of lots of punishment which further result into rebellious attitude.

Try not to use punishment instead of punishment it is better to use consequences.

Consequences are the result of a particular action or situation. Implementing consequences is actually not easy for parents as well asfor the children, and it also takes alot of courage for the parents to implement and for the children to follow. Rather than giving punishment to the child, set consequences with the child. Try to connect to the intention behind your child’s behavior or particular action or it’s better to ask your child about his/her own behavior. Try to sit with them and co-create the consequences with them, because consequences are created with children not by parents alone. Since consequences are co-created with children, they will follow the consequences.

By setting consequences parents not only exclude the punishment but introduce the new term in their parenting style and for which you have neither complaints nor does your child. There is no need to shout at them because in this way your relation is getting spoilt with your children. Plus you don’t have to poke or nag them for every small thing.

Let's take some examples of parents and teachers who have been applying consequences with children: 

·  A father whose son has a habit of spitting almost every time and everywhere, father wants to end the “spitting” behavior of his son……. Both of them sat together and co-created the consequences of it. Father knows that his son loves milk, so he co-creates that when his son spit anywhere then his milk will get skipped.

·  A teacher co-creating the consequences for not completing the home work in class.

Teacher along with her whole class co-created that they start playing  games in the beginning of every class and  whenever any  student comes to class without completing  his/her homework then that child will not be allowed to play the game and has to complete the home work by sitting outside the class room.

This flourished so beautifully and consequences were followed by the children themselves. After practicing this for one or two weeks the children who had not completed their homework they themselves went outside the class room and completed their homework and came to the class later.

Note: -   1. Consequences have to be co-created   

              2.  Every time consequences have to be applied                                   whenever such a behavior occurs that you want to                              exclude/correct.

Written by Sana Parveen, Parwarish Institute of Parenting Pvt. Ltd.