Hello, everyone.
I welcome you to my blog. If only there was a chart for parents that discipline kids the lost, African parents would top that chart year in and year out. We used to have a neighbor whose job was to always remind parents, particularly mothers, about the bible verse of sparing the rod and spoiling the child, and that will always provoke them to give kids the punishment even if they wanted to wave it off. Trust me, kids in my neighborhood never liked that aunty. The world is changing; parents are no longer strict like they used to be while we were growing up. These days, I see kids do things that you dare not do as a kid back in the day, and you see people laughing over it.
Parents beliefs on how to raise their kids vary from one parent to another; no style of raising your kid is wrong as long as it helps the kid stay on track and they don't end up becoming a menace to society. Parenting and raising a kid is doing whatever works for you as long as the kid you are raising stays on track, abides by the laws of society, and acts right at all times. How a kid was raised is how they will behave, which is why they say charity begins at home; whatever the parents point out to be right is what they will consider right, and it will be hard for an outsider to change that.
I have seen parents who cover up for their child for stealing, and they think they are showing that child love and giving the child that impression that stealing is the right thing to do. I have also seen parents who believe that only they can raise their kids and no one else has the right to actually correct their kid; whatever their kid does is right until they say otherwise, and there are parents who also believe that a child cannot be raised by just them and others can correct their child when wrong. Whatever way works for you, just ensure you raise your child right.
Corporal punishment actually involves hitting the kids, slapping them, and spanking them, which inflicts pain on them, and whenever they want to do the same wrong thing again, they remember the pain they had to deal with and immediately desist from doing it, but the truth is that overtime they tend to get used to it and are no longer scared of it. I have heard kids say, "After all, they will only flog me or punish me" and go ahead to do what they have in mind. This is why constant corporal punishment is bad and not advised.
For the fact that just steady corporal punishment is not good, parents must corporate the habit of combining both corporal punishment and word of mouth to raise their kids. Parents must know that not every crime committed by kids requires a corporal punishment; sometimes a word of mouth can even do a better job than corporal punishment. This is how I was raised, and I feel it is actually the best way to raise a child. Not everything requires a corporal punishment or inflicting pain on a child; corporal punishment should only come into the picture when the crime committed is grievous.
I agree with you that each child are different from another and what work with one may not for another, so we should observe and decide, but if possible words is better, if a child doesn't take heed after, then rod won't be a bad thing.