Most of the time punishment is used to nurture our child’s discipline.  An adult will use a rattan to beat a very “naughty” child because he thinks that beating can stop his naughty behavior and get him to become more discipline.  Before we proceed, it is important for the adults to understand the meaning of discipline and punishment.  By creating better understanding, we are able to be better parents or teacher for our children.

Discipline is important in modeling a child’s character.  A child is said to have good discipline when he is able to control himself and behave appropriately in an acceptable behavior by the adults.  We have a set of rules or instructions that we need the child to follow so that he knows his limitation and his life will be in order.  For instance, a child is not allowed to run in the class to avoid accident happen.  Therefore, children in a class have to control themselves by walking in the class instead of running.  They are trained that they can only run in the playground or garden.  In order to discipline a child, means to instruct a child to follow particular code of conducts to maintain order in an environment.

Punishment refers to the practice of imposing something unpleasant on a child if the child is caught misbehaved.  It is the action that we take to get our child to follow our rules and obey to us.  Basically, punishment can be hitting, beating, yelling, slapping, canning etc. which cause fear or pain on the body parts of a child who is being punished by an adult.  Some adults believe that punishment will stop the child from repeating the same misbehavior because the child does not wish to go through the pain or fear caused by any form of punishment.

I used to see two boys were being punished by their teacher by standing outside the classroom.  They were just left outside for a long time unattended.  I saw them standing outside the classroom almost every day.  Initially I didn’t aware that they were punished as they looked relax.  They were crawling from one side to the other or they were touching here and there.  I even thought that they were lost or refused to go back the class so I tried approached and convinced them to go back to their respective class.  When I tried to do that, their teacher would suddenly come out from nowhere and told me that they are being punished.  I was told that their behaviors are unacceptable and needed to be disciplined.  My question is :  how effective is the punishment?  Do the children really understand why they are being asked to stand outside?  If they learned to be discipline, why are they having more fun outside the classroom compare to the inside?

Most of the time, a child needs time to understand the do’s and don’ts set by the adults in an environment.  We need to be patient enough to help him grasps the concept of self-control.  I believe that we should guide the child and let him make his own decision on he want to behave.  He has his own reason of his behavior.  Listen to his reason!  If his behavior is inappropriate, then we tell him why we find that it is inappropriate to behave such a way.  I find that this way is much more effective, but of course it needs time and effort which most adults lack of patience to do so!  This is called self-discipline instead of discipline by force.

One girl was scolded by her ballet teacher for not following the instructions.  She was very upset.  “I want my way.”, she told me.  Adult scolded the child because she didn’t do what we expect her to do.  At the same time, the child does not understand why the adult would not allow her to perform her way.  I called this miscommunication and misunderstanding!  Instead of scolding and judging her being misbehave, adult should pause awhile to explain to the child.  Listen to her and then tell her that she will get her turn to do her way after finished the lesson.  Reason with her get her to understand that she has to follow routine when the class is on, but she will be given a time to dance her way during free choice time.  If her dance movement is dangerous that she might sprain herself or hurt other children, we should talk to her why we stop her from doing the movement.  Scolding not only unable to create awareness and understanding, but it creates fear and disappointment.  Continuous scolding will destroy the girl’s interest in ballet dancing and lower her self-esteem.  Fear will be cultivate in the girl’s mind and slowly eaten up her creativity.

Nurture our child’s discipline is not an instant lesson, but it is a long process.  Punishment is just get the child to listen for a while, once you turn your head around, he will be doing another stunt act!  Punishment does not provide long term positive effect on a child, instead it creates long term negative effect on him such as fear, stubbornness, increasing anger and dissatisfaction, and so on.  We will talk about good discipline in the coming post.

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