Commentary

When should you punish kids?

By Leighton Levy

I AM ALL for parents punishing kids when they misbehave. If you ask me, too little of this is being done today, and that is why so many kids are unruly and disrespectful.

However, on the other side of the coin is that some parents punish kids for things that they used to do as children. This is almost tantamount to parents punishing themselves or trying to beat themselves out of their children. Trust me, you can beat your children out of their jeans but you can't beat your genes out of your children.

You often hear parents say their kids are rude after they break some precious family heirloom, spill something on the carpet or rip the guts out of some electronic gadget around the house, and as an observer, if you're not careful, you take it for granted that the child is in fact rude. But is that really true?

Once a child

Sometimes I think parents forget that they were themselves children once.

They forget perhaps, because their childhood was so long ago, but I think they choose to forget because they, for one reason or another, did not enjoy their childhood, which speaks in part to why we have become so obsessed with being adults.

Here in Jamaica, many people take themselves so seriously they forget about their inner child; that part of them that makes them understand that when a child rips something up it's not because he or she is rude, but because he or she is a child and that is what children do.

The other day I was in Mega Mart (what's new, huh?) and this little boy put his hand down an opening in a trolley his mother had her purchases in. His hand got stuck inside that opening and after his mother dragged his hand out, she scolded him mightily. I am standing there wondering why. He's like four or five and he was terrified that his hand got stuck, which I believe was enough punishment. He certainly didn't need his mother saying to him "I should just beat you right here and now..."

Now, I am almost 40, and I understood why he pushed his hand down that opening. He did it because at the time it seemed like a pretty harmless but fun thing to do, not because he wanted to be rude.

I got my head stuck in a turnstile once when I was about six or so. I was not even thinking of being rude, I was just curious about whether or not my head could fit between the space that the bar swung over whenever it turned. The answer was a resounding no and after what seemed like an eternity they finally managed to free my head.

I learned from my experience and I don't remember my mother scolding me. I distinctly remember that she comforted me in my time of need.

I think kids should be punished when they deliberately disobey their parents and do things that you know they know are wrong but do it anyway, and that entirely depends on the child's age.

My five-year-old niece, for example, gets sent to a 'naughty corner' whenever she does something that she knows is wrong. If, however, she repeats her indiscretion, she knows that a spanking is in order. Two or so years earlier, spanking her would have been nothing short of malicious.

My credo is the older the child the bigger the lick, but as parents we need to think carefully about what we punish our children for. Some of our parents made us the way we are when it comes to how we relate to our children but we are supposed to be smarter than our parents, aren't we?