Focus: Planting a bomb or a blossom at your kid's wellbeing and development?

I thought I'd like to share a little story about myself. Looking back, I've always been a nice kid, if not, I am often described by my parent's friends as a polite, patient and well-taught kid. But sometimes in my childhood, I must have done something so mischievous, so raunchy, something that would instantly startled my mother's temper. I remembered some, and most of them didn't end well for me. But looking back now, I don't hate my mum, I just felt I was angry and sad but I didn't really put much blame to my mother.

I know some of my friends, whose mother had never beat them up or using physical violence like sticks hitting and smack on the bum, which I found it is impossible. By impossible, I mean sometimes for a parent, if you do nothing to show your authority to your child, they will not listen to you and years gone by, the child will become more disobedient and rebellious, trying to battle against the upper level of dominance. Showing authority by smacking and punishment is needed for a child's development in my opinion. But as I looked at them, they are perfectly fine and nice, not like those baddies and vandal fiends roaring at you across the street at night.

But at the same time, some parents did offer strict rules and regulations at home and outside home where children has to abide with them or else they will have a serious consequence. Again, children turned out to be nice citizens, but some children are as hard as a rock. No matter how you push them to the east, they will drag themselves toward the west. A saying in Chinese described this very nicely: 'Good advice may sound harsh to the ears' Whenever children have to listen to their parent's constant scolding, they tend to dislike it. Moreover, if you tried to force them to behave in something they refuse to, they will directly turn against you.

Different styles of parenting will not determine how a child will turn out to be in their adulthood, and there is no consistence about which method of child-raising is the best one.

So I realised not every family is using the same method of child-raising, although there are several similarities in concept, every parent do it differently. But things can sometime go off and some parents are often seeking shortcut to resolve their children's bad behaviour.

Is it acceptable for mums to do this to their kids? Let's decide.

Here is a perfect example of a mother telling her boy to not to shoplift. She used a radical measure to counter this problem - by putting him on the street while he's wearing a badge written, 'Do not trust me. I will steal from you as I am a THIEF.'

The thing I found in the article was even though the mother has took him for a tour to the detention centre, a walk in the police station showing him cells and cuffs to hint the consequence of stealing, in order to educate his 10-year-old son to not stealing things from shops, he still performed shoplifting. Well, for a mother dealing with such a troublesome young boy, it must have been frustrating.

Now that she noticed everything she's done was held to be ineffective, she decided to use the concept of 'humiliation' as a punishment for his son's wrongdoing. However, this act has stirred up a heated debate regarding whether his mother's act is doing mare harm than good to his son, as the media reported this incident in the news.

I am not certain about others, but I understand her mother's intention is to use this method to let his son to reflect on his acts of shoplifting. Plus nowadays, children are having much more protection and looking after than the past generations have ever had, making the society believe that other than suggestion or encouragement, every other punishment methods should be banned from using on children, that gives children an overwhelming idea that their parents will not smack them, ground them, or even raise their voice at them.

Giving so much protection and attention from the society, I believe children of a certain age will understand no matter how raunchy they misbehave, they won't be suffering from consequences. This has to be changed and rationalised because if more children are like that, the significance and the influence of parents will be diminished. Saying that this kid will be a criminal and suffer from traumatic mental shift is a bit far-fetched, but I think the society shouldn't criticise this mother's act of tough love. I think she will know and capable to make decision on what best it will be for her son.

Source

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