Teaching children to recognise and control their behaviour is an important job for the adults in their lives. It is very common that any unacceptable behaviour of a child need to be addressed in a proper way. Sometimes in order to shape the correct behaviour they use punishment. It can be physical like beating, slapping, pinching, spanking, and hitting with an object such as belt, stick or verbal like scolding, and yelling. Physical punishment is associated with increased child aggression, anti-social behaviour unhealthy parent-child relationship, mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and phobia among others. Verbal punishment may lead to wrong modelling behaviour (child may imitate your action).
Yet people believe that physical punishment is the ultimate tool to correct the unfavourable behaviour of the child. But you are mistaken. It worsens the mental state of a child. Sometimes in order to avoid punishment the child could lie or become abusive. You can modify your child’s behaviour through punishment but not physically or verbally. Hence, it is important to instil these kind of punishment only when it is necessary. So our biggest challenge is how to reduce a child’s unfavourable behaviour. Let us see what are these rules!!
Rule No 1: Punish Your child’s unfavourable behaviour by adding something aversive in the environment. Let us illustrate this with an example. Your child is being assigned a simple task that is clean the table after meal. But he/she has ignored the task due to mobile phone usage. This has been repeating often. So now your goal is to reduce the behaviour. So along with the present goal introduce something aversive that your child doesn’t like to do. In this case you can add washing vessels, and cleaning basin, until the child comes back and starts cleaning the table again. Here your goal is to reduce the habit of mobile phone usage. This is also known as ‘positive punishment.’
Rule No 2: Punish your child’s unfavourable behaviour by taking away something good. Let us illustrate this with an example. A boy is throwing tantrums in the supermarket. So his mother takes away the bat and ball that he likes until he stops that behaviour, so that the child will learn that if he throws tantrum his favourite thing is taken away. This is known as ‘negative punishment.’
Rule No.3: Make sure the goals that need to be completed are explained to your child properly, otherwise they find excuses to avoid punishment. For example if you don’t explain why the extra chores are given when they already have one (in positive punishment case) the child may avoid both the task by simply complying about health issues. So it is necessary to make the child understand the extra chores are given due to non-completion of the first task. Your goal is reduce the unfavourable behaviour not to make the child feel fearful about the consequences of the punishment.
Rule No.4: Punishment suppresses the behaviour, but when the threat of the punishment is removed, the behaviour returns at the same rate. For instance, the child may stop throwing tantrums until he gets his favourite thing back. However, after that he may repeat. therefore, make sure that you explain if the child repeats his/her action, the child may lose something bigger.
On the whole punishment is given to reduce any unfavourable behaviour, and not to instil fear in the child. Every parent or teacher’s aim is to make the child understand what is socially acceptable behaviour and what is not.
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