We have often commented on Babies and more that punishment is a reprehensible method both at the educational level, for how unhelpful it is, as at the relational level, because parents become judges and executors of sometimes unequal penalties (some days you get more angry and others less and the punishment it's more or less beast), sometimes motivated by minor causes (depending on your patience, some days you don't punish and sometimes yes) and sometimes humiliating towards children, eroding a relationship that should feed on love and not negative aspects.
Come on, the ideal as adults is to try to educate without punishment, but if you are not able to do it, or if you believe, despite what we explain here, that you do have to punish the children, at least be careful what you can think of as punishment, because many parents have produced serious burns to their children to put them in hot water as a reprimand and because a few days ago a father accidentally killed his son by sitting on top because he didn't want to go to sleep.
Father's name is James Dearman, 31, and is charged with reckless manslaughter after sitting on top of his 6-year-old son as punishment for not going to sleep. It happened in Englewood, Florida, where James was playing a video game with his girlfriend.
Apparently, as we read in Diario Sur, he told his two children to go to bed, to sleep, and they said no. Maybe they were not sleepy, maybe they wanted to stay awake to be with their father and girlfriend, but the refusal did not suit the father and decided to put them facing the wall.
One of them, the little one, took it as a game and turned around to see what they were doing. At that moment, the father did not think of anything other than to invite him to go to the sofa with him, where he laid it down to sit on and thus have him controlled.
What the man did not think is that his 122 kilos would be too many for the child's chest, that he was not able to expand it to breathe (I don't know if you have ever put enough people on it, but the feeling of not being able to catch air is quite horrible). The little air he could catch used him to shriek and struggle, but his father ignored his groans.
There came a time when the boy said nothing more and Dearman interpreted it as a surrender of the child. Moments later he went with his girlfriend to smoke a cigar in the garage and when they came back they realized that the boy was not breathing.
You have to be…
Well, yes, you have to be what you can think of putting behind the sentence to do something like that, but there are people who have these ideas, and all because it activates "the automatic mode", that in which he loses his patience and gives free rein the pain that comes before him in order to annoy, humiliate or make the child see who is the boss or what is the lesson he should learn right away.
But if we don't punish, how to educate them?
Well, acting as adults. What does that mean? Well being imaginative and looking for ways not to use physical or psychological abuse. To do this you have to explain the rules, what you expect from them, what you think is right and what you think is wrong, how you feel when they do something you don't like and how you feel when they do something you like.
Let's say that the dialogue should serve to cement some values that must be internalized little by little, as you explain them and as you see how you behave as a father and as a person. In the end, the important thing is that they are good people because they feel they must be like that and not that they are to avoid punishment, because the motivation will be much weaker than your own.
When you are motivated to be a certain way, when you think you should be humble and respectful, you will be an adult much more likely than if you are motivated to behave in the eyes of others because, if not, you will receive a punishment. In the second case, it will be enough to look for a moment and a place without supervision to do what you want without fear of a possible rebuke. And it will be enough to lie ("I have not been") to try to save yourself from grief. This, in addition, drives away parents and children, because the lie causes distance and because the damage that causes a punishment, as I said, is able to make a dent in a relationship.
On the contrary, trust, dialogue, establishing clear rules and explaining them, and above all, the spend a lot of time with the childrenBy making them feel respected, it serves as a seed for them to respect parents and also respect others.
In any case, if you do not know how to start, I leave you with this post that I wrote a while ago with six tips to start educating without punishment, because I know that most of those who punish would never sit on top of their children, but that does not make the rest of the punishment really effective and positive.
Many years ago we should have eradicated the punishments of the "booklets" of each teacher because a society is created from below, from children, and we have to start doing it differently to change our society. But as it has not been, as we are still with it, we will be many who, from time to time, remember that we could do it differently, probably better.
