Some parents still think their children need to be spanked. I remember one dramatic example. Ten years ago, I had a conversation with a taxi driver from Yugoslavia. He mentioned that the problem in America is that parents are too soft. They don’t beat their children. I asked him if he was beaten. He was proud to say that is why he turned out so well and so had his children. Neither he nor his children had ever spent the night in jail. He went on to say that not a day passed when he was growing up that he was not beaten.
As an adult, he was grateful for the beatings he had received.
He assured me that this was a common practice in his country and it had saved him from becoming a criminal.
This is an amazing psychological reaction. Quite often, children who are severely beaten or abused will bond even more with the abuser. Over time, they begin to justify the abuse and feel they deserved it. Instead of recognizing what they experienced as abuse, they defend their parents’ behavior.
When they have children, naturally they feel their children deserve the same abuse. This is why it can be so difficult for some parents to adjust to positive parenting. They hold on to fear-based parenting, because they were punished and feel that their children deserve it as well. They believe their rearing helped them to be better citizens and so it will help their children. It is common to hear an abused child say, “I was so bad that they had to beat me.”
Children who are severely beaten or abused
will bond with the abuser and defend the
abusive behavior.
Certainly, many more parents who were beaten now recognize this to be an outdated practice, but really don’t know what else to do. Though they don’t like spanking or punishment, they don’t have an alternative. Other parents have given up spanking, and as a result lose control of their children, or their children develop self-esteem issues. If we are to give up spanking and punishing, we must replace them with something that works effectively to manage children and create cooperation.
VIOLENCE IN, VIOLENCE OUT
When children are receptive, feeling, and open, as children are today, once violence goes in, it comes right out. There is no doubt that when children are managed by using the threat of violence, punishment, or guilt, they will resort to violence, punishment, or guilt when they feel out of control as a way to regain control. All the rampant dysfunctional behavior and domestic violence in our society today is the result of not knowing another way to deal with the strong feelings that people feel.
When feelings were not so awakened, violence and punishment worked. But today the world is different. Parents are more conscious and more feeling and so are their kids.
Without a new way of managing and controlling children, they will become increasingly violent and continue to behave in dysfunctional ways. Either they will act out in rebellious and aggressive ways, or they will turn that violence inward and abuse themselves with low self-esteem. Either they hate others or they hate themselves, and often they feel both.
Children exposed to violence either hate
others or hate themselves.
I can only laugh when some experts say there are no scientific studies to prove that spanking makes children violent.
That is what they said when I began teaching Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus more than fifteen years ago.
They asked, “Where are the studies to prove that men and women are different?” It was just common sense.
Scientific studies are very useful to expand our awareness and insight, but when we become so dependent on scientific studies and ignore common sense we have gone too far. Scientific inquiry then becomes as dangerous as the superstition it helped society to escape. Fortunately, not all scientists and researchers are so narrow-minded that they easily dismiss common sense.
When we are dependent on scientific
studies and ignore common sense,
we have gone too far.
Although “violence in, violence out” is common sense, it has also been shown through studies that exposure to violence makes children more violent. After the riots in Los Angeles in 1989, different groups of children were shown videotapes of the violence for three minutes. Afterward, they played in another room where there were violent toys and nonviolent toys.
When told that the violence on TV was just actors pretending to be violent, the children didn’t play with the violent toys but played with more neutral or nurturing toys.
When told that the violence on TV was real, almost all the children played with violent toys. Aggression dramatically increased. Watching real violence on TV clearly triggered increased aggression in these children.
It is not until age fourteen that children or preteens have the cognitive development fully to understand a hypothetical situation. Even if a child or preteen is reminded that the players on TV are only pretending, he or she cannot remember for long. And if they reminded, after five or ten minutes, they will still emotionally respond as if it was real. Without the required cognitive development, what a child feels is real becomes real.
When children witness violence or mean behavior on TV, they lose, to some degree, the opportunity to develop a healthy sense of innocence, serenity, and sensitivity.
When children are not over stimulated by
violence or meanness on TV, they are clearly
more secure, relaxed, and peaceful.
If a parent decides a movie is okay for their preteen, but still has some doubts, then it is better to have their preteen watch it when it comes out on video. Video, in the home with the lights on, has much less of an impact than a dark movie theater with a bigger-than-life screen. A theater increases an adult’s ability to suspend his or her disbelief and to experience the emotional ups and downs of the movie. Movie theaters are designed for adults to forget what is real, so they can temporarily feel as if the movie is real. For children, we want them to remember that that what they are watching is not real.
Too many movies or too much TV, even without violence and mean acts, can be over stimulating to children.
One of the most common reasons children act out or can’t control themselves. Children learn primarily by imitation.
What they see is what they do. Too much sensory input overwhelms their nervous system, and they become irritable, demanding, moody, hyper, whinny, too sensitive, and uncooperative. Too much stimulation is not a healthy influence.
Yet, many of the very people that complain loudest about violence on TV will turn around and threaten their children with violence and punishment. Yet they are right.
Violence on TV and in the movies does influence our children and teenagers, but this conclusion about TV is misleading, because the influence of the parent and their philosophy and practice of parenting is much greater.
Parents have a much greater influence on
their children than does TV.