I don’t think there will be any parent who will want to see their wards go astray and be happy with it. This is why parenting has since become the most challenging factor in raising children. Discipline is something huge that helps parents in bringing up their children but disciplining a child in the way he or she should go cones in different ways which must not involve using the rod at all times or a kind of punishment for that child to grow up properly.
Discipline should come mostly by how parents present themselves to their children because children learn and emulate from what they see at home from their first steps before going into the world 🌎 to mix up with people around them and those they cross part with. By this I mean that if parents are badly behaved at home and even outside the house, our children definitely will begin to copy our bad behavior which is the beginning of how discipline will not be so effective either by using rods to beat a child, giving them punishments of various kinds or even shouting at them.
Growing up as a girl child I can’t remember my parents ever using the rods on me because I was always seeing the behavior of my parents especially that of my mother who has such a gentle soul, relating to us her children with motivating advice and care of how life is a journey full of mysteries. Although we as children will definitely misbehave once in a while, my parents never used rods on us but words of the mouth which goes beyond advice but telling your children the reality of how growing up as discipline children will help once future in all their dreams.
But out of the house, it was never the same because I could remember several punishments I received while in a boarding school. Some days will be kneeling down for hours because we did not turn up on time for morning devotions or sweeping the school compound alone because you were late to the assemble. These were the days I will never forget because even while serving the punishments then I never see them as wickedness because they are lessons of life which helped bring changes to our lifestyle.
As a parent now and how the world is changing too, I was using the rod I keep at home to always scare my children when they misbehave but don’t flog or spank them with it because even before reaching to the rod, the child would have started shouting and crying, “mummy I will never do it again “. And hearing the child say this most times touches my heart ♥️ to even go ahead to spank the child. This is always the opportunity I have to seat the child down for one on one discussion and advice. Making them see reasons why such a behavior or act is displeasing.
However, many parents tries very hard to impact good discipline in their children which will help them later in life, but sone still comes out with lots of bad behavior which is why parents go extreme to severally punish their children and this is either due to personality of the child, the environment he/she was born into or influences from peer group which parents most times can not handle. Yes! I have seen lots of children who were tortured and punished who never changed. And have also seen children who behave exactly like their parents because of lead down lifestyles examples by their parents who did not go through any sever discipline.
In convulsion, children are children who must misbehave and should be punished but not too extreme. We should lay down good behavior too for children to follow as this will save us lots of stress from parenting which every parents should put efforts to, because if we don’t pay attention to our kids as they grow, it definitely gets out of hands before we find out lots of bad behaviors in them. Either words of the mouth or corporal punishment will end up not helping us as parents if we don’t catch them young to follow our footsteps 🦶.
This is my response to the Hive Ghana Weekly prompt for week 74 tagged “Discipline”.
Thanks for reading friends ❤️❤️🥰.
Sourced images are credited.
