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04 Psychology

Now listen to a lecture related to the topic in step 1. Fill in the blanks of the note diagram below with keywords or key phrases used in the lecture.

W: Ok, so the inevitable question arises: what is an effective method parents can use to discipline their children?

How do you tell a young person unable to understand complex language that particular act is wrong?

As I’m sure some of you remember from your childhood, spanking is a pretty common way to discipline a child, but is it a good practice? In my opinion, it’s not.

To start out with, simply spanking children doesn’t really teach them morals. If a child misbehaves and I spank him, the justification is that he will learn that his behavior is wrong and will stop doing it.

This is incorrect logic, though − I mean, you’re not sitting down and explaining to children which actions are right and wrong.

Instead, you’re spanking then on the bottom expecting them to discover the moral connection themselves.

For children that are just learning how the world operates, expecting them to make this kind of inference is just… well, It’s not reasonable.

In addition, spanking really isn’t a better disciplinary tool then other punishments like time-outs.

The fact of the matter is, all the studies that child psychologists have performed have pretty much concluded that, well… spanking isn’t more successful at all.

In actuality, it’s probably a lot less successful. At least with time-outs, children have the time to think about what they’ve done and remember not to do it in the future.

This isn’t true with spanking − usually the children forgot about the spanking just five minutes after it happened.

Time-outs are actually far more successful for long-term behavior correction.

Additionally, when children are spanked, they don’t comprehend it as a punishment, but instead learned that it is all right to use violence to resolve a situation.

Parents that spank children understand it as a quick solution to a problem because with a simple spank on the bottom, the children learn to behave, or so the reasoning goes.

But spanking is not universal punishment, and children don’t always make the connection between the spanking itself and their bad behavior.

Since the children don’t recognize the association between the two, they merely comprehend that the parent is using violence to express anger.

And since parents are the first people that children learn from, they are more likely to use violence to communicate their own anger in future situations.

So really, all of the conventional wisdom about spanking is pretty much inaccurate. Spanking is, well… it’s kind of ineffectual.

It doesn’t benefit children at all, and parents really shouldn’t be practicing it any more, with the knowledge we have now.