“My children do not listen to anything I say. What should I do? Although I know that it is a wrong method, I usually scold and beat my children. I usually feel angry with them and then with myself. I can not bear this type of life; there must be another solution.”


With these words, the sighs of the hopeless father who beats his children ended. He is confused between those who see that beating is the only solution and those who accuse him of neglecting his children and make him feel regretful. Due to the travails of those who assume the responsibility of the upbringing of children, I write these words:





Beating in the Eyes of Child-care Experts:

• 10 percent of parents harshly scold their children and do not see anything wrong with this


• 20 percent of parents severely scold their children but do not wish to do so. They are looking for a better way to discipline their children.


Even if I doubt these figures because I believe that the numbers are much more than this, few parents use beating correctly as a means of punishment.


Specialists still have different opinions about the efficiency of punishment through beating. They also disagree whether or not this is an efficient practice employed in a sound upbringing. However, most of them believe that beating does not change the child's behavior. Rather, it is just a temporary remedy for the child's bad behavior, but in fact it teaches the child nothing.

Given this logic, specialists divided the parents' methods in punishing their children into three different methods:

1. The impulsive method:

This method is also known as the “day-long” method. Mostly, this method is a reaction of the parents to their children's behavior in their daily life. This is commonly used with young children in particular. Their parents are not quite serious when they beat them violently. They often pull their children by their clothes with one hand and move the other hand in the air. In most cases, the beating is symbolic and the child screams thereafter and then returns to play again. This is the so-called "beat the child on his hand" method.


Many parents rashly use this method when their children do something wrong, like touching the electricity cord and similar actions. The children are excused because they neither know nor imagine that this is harmful. The parent should explain to his child why touching such things is not allowed and this justifies beating. Then, the parent should keep such things away from the child or keep him away from them and hence, the children will imitate him. If parents simply resort to beating, children too will just learn how to beat.

2. The anger method:

It is the most prevalent and the most harmful method. When you get angry and then scold and beat your child, this leads to a number of problems, including teaching your child how to provoke you and make you angry, and that his bad behavior causes you to lose control over yourself. Scolding and beating in moments of anger is impulsive behavior and is often a reaction to the child's bad behavior. If you scold your child and beat him when you are angry, you are unaware of what you are doing and you may harm your child.

When you scold and beat your child if you are angry, this creates negative feelings. Actually, you create these feelings inside yourself, your child as well as the rest of your family members. Such feelings could destroy your child's self-confidence due to extreme fear of parents and feeling that their parents have no confidence in them. Besides, the Prophet  forbade us from getting angry when he said: “Do not get angry.”

When you scold your child or beat him when you are angry, you mostly do so out of revenge. Thereafter, your feeling of guilt gets more and more severe until it finally explodes.


3. The planning method:

Although it is rarely used, this is the third method used by parents and it is the best method for those who want to punish their children through beating. It is when a parent talks to his child about an episode of bad behavior and tells him that he will be punished with a beating if he repeats such an action again. Say, for example, “If you use bad language, you will be punished by a beating.” When your child talks obscenely, you are required to quietly beat him. Quietness is crucial here because if you are not quiet, this means that you are using the anger method in punishing through beating. This method involves the implication: “beating you hurts me more than you.”

 

There are several causes of behavioral problems and psychological disorders that befall our children, some of which afflict them throughout their lives -- such as introversion, aggression and lying. Some of the following causes are fundamental to most of the problems:

• Bad role models

A child could fall into the habit of telling lies if he finds one of the adults telling him a lie or telling a lie to anyone else. A child could learn to cheat and steal when he gives his mother the sum of money that remains after buying bread, for example, and when she finds an extra pound or loaf, she neither rejects the child's behavior nor orders him to return it to the seller.

What does a smoking father expect from his child when he grows up? How could he order him not to smoke if he has been smoking in front of him for many years? Thus, a bad example is among the greatest causes of psychological and behavioral problems from which our children suffer.

• Contempt and humiliation

To beat a child with a shoe, to kick him, slap him on the face, abuse him with the foulest words, criticize him, or humiliate him all lead to the same result: i.e., behavioral and psychological troubles. It will become easy for the child to tell lies, steal, transgress against others, abuse, curse and take what he is suffering from his parents out on other children. Humiliation also includes exaggerated blaming and reproaching, and misusing the reward-and-punishment approach: all of these lead to most behavioral troubles.

• Family problems

What should we expect from children whose fathers and mothers quarrel day and night and probably for the most trivial reasons? Instead of mutual understanding and making arrangements to rear their children, they exchange abuse, insults and accusations. Moreover, the father might beat, drive away or divorce the mother. All of this will lead to psychological and behavioral distortion in the children’s character, particularly if a child loses the sense of security that his peers, who have happy parents and quiet homes, enjoy. This loss makes it easy for the child to steal, tell lies, and act aggressively. A child who lives with feuding parents feels inferior, resents and hates others.

• Excessive cruelty

Some fathers and teachers have the misconception that they will only be respected if they beat the child severely, or if they appear stern, and gloomy, staring and frowning all the time. A father may feel that he will not inspire awe and obedience in the house unless he slaps his children severely on their soft cheeks, even for the most trifling mistakes, and do not contend themselves with maintaining absolute abstention from kissing and embracing them. He does this under the pretext that this might reduce his awe in the sight of his children. However, this reminds us of the man who saw the Messenger of Allah  kissing Al-Hasan and Al-Husayn  thereupon he said, "'I have ten children and I have never kissed any of them.' On that the Messenger of Allah  replied decisively to this cruelty: 'Whoever does not show mercy will not be shown mercy.'" Such excessive cruelty with children develops within them a lot of behavioral disorders and psychological troubles in the future. Enuresis (involuntary urination), fear, introversion, telling lies, and other problems are mainly caused by cruelty.

• Spoiling children

Spoiled children are the ones whose parents are over-protective, closely guard them, place them in an incubator-like environment and never let them leave it. Rather, they bring them everything they want or ask for, and such children turn into distorted characters who are indecisive and feel afraid of all that surrounds them, besides being excessively timid, telling lies and harboring feelings of inferiority. The spoiled child's failure to bear any responsibility (since all his demands are answered); subjugating his parents (who, in turn, submit to him); his feeling of haughtiness and arrogance, as evidenced by his repeating the phrase 'My parents never say no to me'; his rebellion against the authority of his parents, and disrespect for them or refusal to comply with their commands: all turn the spoiled child into a person who is incapable of social adjustment, since he always expects his friends and fellows to comply with his arrogance and demands. This is why he is always alone without friends.

• Domination

The direct exaggerated observation assumed by the parents and caregivers to the child deprives him of a sense of security and independence, gives him a false feeling of inferiority, and may, sometimes, force him to tell lies. A child must be observed, but in an indirect, moderate way without interference in all that the child says and does. Excessively domineering parents and caregivers may ask the child, "Why are you looking out of the window? What are you doing in the kitchen? Why are you wearing that shirt?" And other similar questions which only indicate the clear domination of such parents and caregivers, since their children are not in need of that, and its contribution to the upbringing process is negative.

Dear parents and caregivers: let us contemplate the real causes of these problems, given that almost no house is free of them and that they have a negative impact on the upbringing process.