Dubai
Love, care and proper attention remain as the most effective measures in making a child behave over corporal punishment, an expert said.
Stephen Pizzey, Director of UK-based Child and Family Training and symposium speaker at the 5th Arab Regional Conference on the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect conference, said there are ways to instil good behaviour in a child aside from the conventional corporal punishment.
He said during the session that positive parenting, where children are disciplined without breaking their spirit, is more beneficial to the relationship between parents and children.
Promoting positive parenting includes understanding children’s difficult behaviour, giving praise and positive attention, giving attention and ignoring, giving effective instructions and rewards, and shaping challenging behaviour in children.
“One has to look at what helps promote health in children, and it’s love, nurture, attachment, care, managing to cope with less than optimal behaviour in a way that is accepting and not punitive. For some parents they may need to find setting boundaries that don’t involve physical chastisement,” Pizzey told Gulf News.
- Stephen Pizzey | Director of UK-based Child and Family Training
Actively ignoring a child throwing a fit rather than over-responding may even be more effective.
“As long as the behaviour isn’t going to be harmful for the child, sometimes we can overreact to what we’re experiencing and sometimes behaviour from the child is designed to attract attention and if we have too many negative responses, then that will accentuate the negative response of the child. So being able to manage to not respond can be helpful as long as the child is not going harm itself, or not in a dangerous situation.”
This approach can suffice for all age groups provided the parents understand and think about how they approach and deal with the child.
“We need to think of other ways to help encourage their [children’s] growth, maturity, responsiveness and help them manage themselves more. But also realise that children and young people will exhibit immature behaviour, so we as adults need to be the mature ones.”
He said approaching the child and explaining why he is being disciplined is more effective because the child will learn that he will get positive attention by showing positive behaviour.
