Guiding young children is an awesome responsibility that requires patience, understanding, flexibility, knowledge of child development and appropriate practices, intentional decision-making, but most of all guiding young children requires kindness and love. Guidance involves discipline, not punishment. To begin our discussion on guidance let’s first look at the difference between discipline and punishment. “Discipline is used to teach and guide. Punishment is used for the purposes of controlling and retribution.” (Godfrey, 2013) Guiding children does not mean taking punitive action when they fail to meet an expectation. Instead, guiding means to help children learn how to function suitably in a variety of social contexts. The goal is not to break a child’s spirit, causing them to fear harsh punishment or judgement. The goal is to teach them how to regulate their emotions and actions, to develop control, so they can make safe, responsible decisions.
An adult who practices punishment, controls a child externally. This communicates to a child that they are not able to control themselves, thus have no responsibility for their actions. Also, it can create in the child’s mind, the idea that they can commit a behavior so long as they do not get caught or are willing to accept the consequences. Behavior that is modified with punishment does not evolve from the understanding of what is expected in a society, but rather from fear. Since no understanding was obtained this will not
One idea, I agree with, from Chapter Three discussed how punishment hinders ethical development. Before students act out or do something bad, they think about what consequences they might face for such actions. This “suggests a disturbingly primitive level of moral development, yet it is our use of punishment that causes kids to get stuck there” (p. 29). I could not agree more with this sentence. I remember as a child thinking about doing something bad and the consequences that might result. I remember how I typically would do the “bad” thing because either I would not get caught or I could take the consequences. However, the book suggests getting children to think about the consequences of their misbehaviors is not effective and does not instill better values or awareness of others’ needs. Because of this, we as educators must
CS III b: Times have changed. I can remember when coporal punishment was an acceptable means of re-direction and discipline. Today, with more education, educators and providers have better ways of communicating and developing stronger characters in children. A completely different means of fostering growth and discipline have evolved. Proven lesson methods through psychologists have opened doors for marked and proven progress. Understanding my students backgrounds through home visits, parent meeting, and one-to-one time with my children help me and my fellow educators develop a "whole" view of a childs image and make-up. Re-direction, strong fun-tasks, and constant guidance is the initial start to helping children with challenged
When it comes to using positive guidance strategies with young children, I find that discipline, guidance, and punishment are all teaching or learning skills necessary to be a productive teacher. As stated in chapter 5, “when talking about discipline, keep in mind the differences among the three words and be precise in your choice of words.” (Marion, 2015, p. 124) in which case discipline is Latin for “teaching and learning” versus punishing a child with physical aggression.
“In our society, aversive control through punishment is perhaps the most widespread means of controlling behavior. Our system of laws is backed up by threats of punishment. The reason punishment is the glue that holds so much of our society’s fabric together is that, for the most part, it seems to work. It is the fastest way to bring behavior under control” (Smith, 2013, p.
The article I have chosen is titled, “Why Physical Punishment Does Not Work,” written by Paul C. Holinger. To summarize, it describes how physical punishment is not an ineffective method of teaching kids proper behavior and its detrimental effects on a child’s behavior later on in life. Furthermore, it lists alternative ways to correct a child's misbehavior without the use of violence. This article lightly reflects on B.F. Skinner's Theory of Operant Conditioning. The following information is how the Skinner Theory can be related to the article.
Subconsciously most adults tend to believe that the easiest way to deal with a disobedient child or person is to physically harm. This answer of violence more times than not stems from the anger a student caused in doing wrong. Justification for corporal punishment originates from the past and is often the defense of pro-corporal punishment advocates. Physical punishment can be traced back to ancient times exemplified in Egypt, concerning the slaves that built the pyramids, these deep roots of physical punishment are often referred to as a form of proof that it works. To use Egyptian violence as an example is pushing the envelope of what corporal punishment is today, however the reaction to that punishment is similar because human nature is present in both time periods. Punishment in and of itself is not inheritably detrimental to a person’s development, however in the case of school corporal punishment the extra violent input into a child can produce unintended violence later in life.
1. Developmentally appropriate practice as defined by NAEYC is a “framework of principles and guidelines for best practice in the care and education of young children, birth through age 8. Children cannot perform tasks that they are not yet developmentally capable of doing and teachers have to be aware of this. One would not expect a one year old child to be able to write their name, not only because they are not cognitively able to understand this task, but also because their fine motor skills have not developed enough to hold a writing instrument. Therefore, most adults would realize this task is not developmentally appropriate. A kindergarten teacher, for example, can able to expect his or her students to know why it is necessary as
Have you ever looked at a child in the eyes and sensed something, just something, was not right? Have you ever been that child that has something to share but you do not know who to talk to or what to say? This goes on all the time with children of today’s day and age. I call it the new parent age. The new parent believes that it is ok to punish the child in very demining ways. This is what is known as child abuse to the state. In Tommy MacKay & Liz Malcolm psychological journal entitled “Guest Editorial: Child abuse and protection – the need for practice-based evidence in educational psychology” in the academic journal Educational & Child Psychology they discuss the majority of the issues we currently have and how they tie into educational psychology.
Our program’s philosophy on positive child guidance is to discipline instead of punishing children for accidents or mistakes they make. With the help of our committed staff, we can provide a positive atmosphere that will allow the children to feel loved and accepted to help build their self-esteem. Our program will offer the children with choices, but there will also be reasonable, and developmentally appropriate limits. The educators will model positive behaviours that will teach the children to problem solve and build self-control in a healthy, and safe way.
My current views on guiding children are that children need to be guided in a way that's right for them personally. Every child is different and one guidance approach might not work for one child while will work for another child. Children need their caretakers to be patient with them and allow them explore the world at their own pace. There are so many different ways to guide children but I feel that one of my most important current views on the subject is that children need to be guided in a loving way that caters to their emotional needs. When a child’s emotional needs aren’t being meet they will have trouble with following guidance. Guiding a child into becoming a successful teen and adult is crucial and in my opinion parents need to put
At this stage, children mainly focus on how their authority will judge their actions and what will be the physical consequences of their actions. Also, because of their fear of being punished, their behaviors are based on obeying rules of the authority; this is why Stage One is usually called “The punishment and obedience orientation” (Berk 320).
Children are like flowers, if well taken care of they will bloom. If ignored or tortured, they will wither and die. Child discipline is one of the most important elements of successful parenting. Today, many people have this notion that physical abuse is in no way a solution to helping children discern between right and wrong. Since generations children have been taught the art of discipline through physical punishment. Often this approach to disciplining has resulted in two outcomes, one is where the child becomes more tolerant and is willing to adhere to what he/she has been told, or the other which more often results in children developing a sense of anguish and desire to revolt.
Associating pain with a bad action. It worked for sure. As we got older, the pain was, as we quickly discovered, not as bad as we thought. It turns out the threat of the spanking was always worse than the actual spanking. So our parents turned to other options. For example, we all liked some really old PC games we had. So if we didn't do right, bye-bye computer for a week. Now it's mostly lectures about why it was wrong. I really miss just being spanked and being done. When I have kids, will I use operant conditioning on them? Yeah. Everything I like about myself today is because my parents used operant conditioning. If my parents didn't use operant conditioning on me, I wouldn't even want to hang around me. I'd be pretty humorless. I truly believe that many convicts and other “societal outcasts” so to speak, are caused because of parents who didn't take the time to teach their children right and wrong. Teach them they can't just do anything they want to. Are all of the people who grew up with poor, or MIA parents bad? Nope, sure aren't. And to that point, not all people who had amazing, loving, very good parents, turn out to be any good. Some people ignore what they have been
Discipline is one of the basic things a child learns from his parents before he or she faces the outside world to learn more about life as a whole. Teaching this trait can depend on how the parent shows it to their child and how they explain the importance of having this trait both in and out of their homes. Misbehaving children cannot be avoided as they are curious little beings and they have a tendency to explore. But there are some parents, even teachers, who do not tolerate misbehaving and they resort to corporal punishments such as spanking to make sure the child never forgets how painful it is to misbehave as they will remember the punishment entailed to it and become more disciplined. However, not all children would understand the
Parents should be learned about how their form of discipline affects their child because punishment does not have a sense of discipline as the only outcome. Sometimes children are less responsive to a certain form of discipline than others. It cannot be helped that a child is unique and different from others. The child is also a factor in terms of discipline and punishment it is not solely dependent on his/her parent and the way they discipline.