Beyond the physical discipline.

Being a parent isn't an easy task to carry out, sometimes I wonder how our parents do it. They tend to keep our behaviors in check always. They weren't given any manuals or special tutorials on how to train their children, yet they've raised us with some stuff they self-learned themselves.

One of a parent's jobs is to train up a child, and the scripture has also made it very clear to them that "it's the way you train up your child that will guarantee what the child will become in the nearest future." Imagine being embedded with such a huge responsibility. When it comes to teaching and training a child in the way that pleases you and society as a whole, it takes time and patience.

This topic brought back a funny moment I witnessed, I had this stubborn nephew. Who doesn't listen to anyone, If you tell him to sit down, that's the time he would want to stand. His mum had tried all disciplinary methods on him "all to no avail." There was a time his mum flogged him because he used abusive words on his fellow child. Could you believe after crying for some minutes, this boy repeated those same words to the same kid again "Yeah, he did."

I can practically mention the number of times my mum raised her hands on me while growing up; the only time my mum raised her hands on me was to give me a dirty slap to reset my factory because it had some malfunctioning. "Besides that" nope, no other moment like that ever happened. But then, with my younger brother, it was the opposite of my case; now, I can proudly say, "It solely depends on the child as well."

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Like my mum will always say "Discipline is a reward you give to a child to enable them to behave appropriately." I don't know where she got to know about that statement, though. In my part of the nation, most parents think discipline has to do with physical pushinment thereby inflicting pain such as hitting and smacking on a child; I've also witnessed some parents locking themselves and their children behind doors so they could fight themselves and the one with the higher power will come out victorious.

I know training a child is a difficult task since there is no written manual anywhere, and that's the major reason every parent is faced with the challenge of generating the particular one that suits them.

I don't believe in physical punishment being the only solution to keeping a child's behavior in check, there are some other ways to go about it. Children are very special humans that they learn by example; they look at you and try to portray those characters they see you portray. As parents, or should I say "as a potential parent," we are role models to our children, it's what they see us do that they will display outside, and that's why they say "charity begins at home".

I feel like inflicting a child with pain won't stop them from misbehaving, the highest is gonna do is to build a different mindset in them that, whenever they do something wrong "it is physical punishment they'd be faced with" and some might end up getting used to it to the point that they won't feel any pain whenever you're being flogged.

In conclusion, children's behaviors are caused by different factors. We, as a parent, just have to find the reason behind the behavior our children are portraying and try to discipline them positively, which might include physical punishment sometimes. Paying quality attention to our children can also help create more bonds. And catch them doing good as well when a child does something good, it should be acknowledged, it is always good to notice when our children do something good, so they would be aware of it and try to keep up that good behavior.

Thanks for reading 🧡