Severe Punishment of Children

By: Abdullah Aljafary

What is the severe punishment of children? It is using harmful physical force in a long term by parents and teachers to discipline, teach children the good manners, or even when a child disobeys in the simplest order. Parents and teachers usually use tools such as a stick, belt, or their pair hands to hit the children in order to teach them what the parents or teachers want them to learn or to do. This kind of punishment could lead to have unconfident, smashed, isolated, or even handicapped youngs.

In the near past, this action from parents and teachers was an acceptable outrage even when it was seen in public places, and some people who witnessed the scene would encourage this kind of actions or do nothing against it. To illustrate, many young students had been hit harmfully because they did not do the homework, did not pass the class, or any reason related to learning. The society, furthermore, did not condemn these punishers.

Today, most of the organizations and governments from any country prohibit hitting children for any reason or purpose. For example, many of children's rights organizations around the world agree unanimously that anyone hits any child physically should be facing a legal process and punishment. As a result, children rarely be hit, and anyone would interrupt when he or she sees any harmful physical action towards any child because it has become an unusual scene these days.

Instead, there are many ways of useful punishments which are not harmful physically and mentally, and many television programs, magazines, and parenting books have provided the parents and educators new ways of how to punish positively. Some of the positive punishment depends on encouraging, and some depends on forbidding. For example, parents and educators would promise the child a present or candy or anything would be a reward for his or her effort, and the parents or educators would not give the child anything if he did not do what is expected from him or her. Moreover, if a student, for instance, sees the teacher gives his or her colleagues rewards to encourage them for their work and he did not get anything, he would do his or her best in order to get rewarded as his or her colleagues. Another example, parents would not let their child play or do what he or she likes mostly if he or she did something that let the parents have decided to punish him or her.