The most dreaded instrument at our home decades ago was the bamboo cane. I have to hand it to our mum. She was a suffer-no-fools, take-no-prisoners person when it came to ill discipline or bad grades.
One thing I always remembered though was that she never took joy disciplining the three of us. I think the tough love she showed worked, since none of us at home turned into brats, had reasonably ok grades, and certainly didn’t get into bad company.
More than 30 years later, circumstances are pretty different. In some parts of the world, cane a child and you’ll have child welfare services coming on your head. I often really wonder what’s the reason for this change. Is it because our social perceptions of what is acceptable punitive measures has changed? Or we’ve all become ardent believers of soft-approaches when it comes to misbehaving children at home.
We’ve now got persons like the following principal of a preschool declaring that she does not believe in caning, as one can read from a letter to The Straits Times she wrote:
I am the principal of a preschool, and to me, caning is a form of abuse. It sends the message that adults are bullies, and that one can resort to violence if the other party fails to understand what you want.
Being a parent does not give one the right to hit one’s child. It shows disrespect to the child. Would you hit a colleague if he does not follow instructions or disagree with you?
Her letter has garnered some attention both in the ST thread and elsewhere, with many readers pointing out that her letter hasn’t made any mention of growing juvenile delinquency or misbehavior around the world.
I’m sure that many growing up children or young adults will vote against caning if they were given the opportunity to. But I wonder how many of them will vote the same way as parents.
That’s one area Ling and I were talking about for our forthcoming daughter. How and when to discipline? Well, I’ve got it in my head that I don’t think we should discipline our child for poor academic performance. Physical discipline should be used only when nothing else works, or the child misbehaves in the way that is potentially life-threatening. Like if she brings out a knife from the kitchen and threatens someone with it… *touch wood*!
An interesting related discussion here too though the context is discipline in UK schools.
definitely in support of caning! however, if the caning is justified in that it appeases one’s anger, then it’s wrong.
when it comes to misbehaviour, at times when the kiddo’s already into the act of tantrums, one may have to let the kid “fa xie” out within an acceptable period of time then comes the whack to bring them to their senses. it’s like how one deals with a drowning victim – trying to persuade or sweet-talk them at that stage got no use right??
that reminds me, i have to go shop for a cane at lunch time…;)
I remember my mum being the household disciplinarian when I was very much younger. There were occasions where my siblings and I were badly beaten up because of an offence she “believed” we had committed.
It didn’t matter then whether how hard we begged for mercy. We soon realized that the more we denied our alleged wrongdoings, the more she suspected us of guilty behaviour.
As a result, the cane upgraded to a clothes hanger and subsequently to belts and not one, but two canes.
There were absolutely no room for negotiation, and if you were suspected of a certain misgiving, it was as good as guilty as charged.
Similarly with academic performance, I was never once good at mathematics, so it was constant beating whenever we failed to achieve a correct answer on how many apples Bala and Ali had altogether.
Ironically, my Chinese language exams reflects a different result — I managed to score more than 90s for most of my tests and exams, and at times, I even had a chance to vie for top positions.
So, looking at various vantage points, one can understand that physical discipline can only do so much. Younger kids cannot comprehend and express logic and reasoning, so caning and getting anywhere near physical may only justify the cause at some point; however, what about kids getting on to being teenagers? How will parents react then?
Even with tough measures implemented at home, I remember myself getting into trouble for petty pilfering in primary three.
Asking for what you want was almost always impossible. It may be because parents had difficulties providing for our wants; such matters cannot be comprehended by younger kids, because adults impressed upon them for being incompetent to gratify their needs and wants. (or at least I interpreted it that way).
The habit carried on to later years, and in primary six, when I was again accused by my peers for something I didn’t steal, it dawned on me that people (and society today) flagged past offenders as potential suspects almost immediately. It was a personal revelation and a personal choice to motivate myself for change, and I’m thankful for it.
Imagine those times when my school principal demands to see my parents.
I don’t mean that my mum was at fault for trying so hard to take care of three kids. But I believe that it was the lack of sensitivity and a breach of trust that occurred at a tender age that widen the gap for communication. It was an indirect connection, but definitely related.
Over the years, my mum naturally evolved from being a caring, motherly figure to a scary, monster in the closet representation.
For these reasons, I am for physical discipline, only if it is timely and justified. At some point of time, caning will eventually be akin to abuse, especially for adolescences and it will cease to be effective.
Ling and I were talking about child disciplining last afternoon while on our way home. Now that we know for certain it’s a baby girl, I told her she’ll have to be the person to discipline our daughter… I have no heart for it!!! Boys Ok, not girls LOL.
don’t speak to soon leh…i also thought i won’t have the heart to discipline given how oh-so-cute they looked as babies!
truuuuuue, your heart will ache (your hand lagi more so if you not holding disciplining materials) but when the time comes to discipline, it will eventually come…it’s a whole lot of factors involved that drives you to discipline there and then.
I have 2 articles under my notes in Facebook- the first 2 I ever posted in fact on this issue of child discipline from a Christian point of view. For us, we’ve never found the need to cane our daughter, but we do smack (sometimes quite hard) on upper thigh with hand (some schools of thought prefer cane instrument cos they say it’s less intimate than hand and so the discipline is more objective)….
Rule of thumb: try not to cane/whack in anger otherwise it becomes vengeance and can breed resentment in the child.
Do it in a controlled manner (get the party who is less emotional about it to do it- sometimes I have to let A do it if I am too wound up)
For young kids, some form of physical discipline is necessary cos they are extrinsically motivated. Sometimes, you can counsel and reason and threated and scold for days n weeks on end and they still commit the misdemeanour after countless rounds of saying sorry, but after one round of whacking (for more strong willed kids may need more rounds), the pain is felt and remembered and there is INSTANT repentance and change.
For my son, A says expect to cane next time cos boys need the force of the rod/ sterner discipline
Yeah Pam; Ling was remarking the other day that based on what she’s observed, there’re parents who physically discipline their children as some sort of cathartic release from pent up anger, stress etc. Real scary.
Hmm – your other comment on the Christmas post doesn’t show up on the Comments Bar on the right hand side. Not sure why.:(