Spare the Child, Ditch the Rod

Written by Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC


This philosophy's been around a long time.

In fact, a study done by Zero to Three, a nonprofit child-development group, found that 61 percent ofrepparttar adults who responded condone spanking as a regular form of punishment. The percentage of parents who actually use spanking is believed to be much higher.

And when my five year old son's behavior went beyond annoying a few days ago, I felt inclined to joinrepparttar 111137 majority and swat him to "teach him a lesson."

Most parents reach this point with their kids. We feel as though we can't take any more of what our kids are dishing out. It usually happens when we're tired, stressed, and overdone.

So what are our choices when we reach this point?

Spanking certainly can take care of things quickly and can temporarily change your kids behavior. But there are many reasons to questionrepparttar 111138 practice of spanking your kids. Here’s five of them:

1. Do you really want your kids to be afraid of you?

Kids will sometimes obey more readily when they're afraid of you. Is this what you really want? What happens when they're six feet two and two hundred pounds? Effective parenting is based on love and respect, not fear.

2. Spanking shows your kids that you lack self-control

The huge majority of spanking incidents come when a parent is angry. What is quite clear to your child is this: when my Dad or Mom gets angry, they hit me. And whenrepparttar 111139 same child hits his sister when he gets angry, do you demand that he shows better self-control?

Something’s wrong with this picture. We teach our kids best through our own actions.

3. You may breed resentment and anger in your kids

Kids who are spanked usually don't learn a great deal about "correcting" their misbehavior. They don't usually sit up in their rooms and say, "Gosh, I can really see after getting spanked that I was wrong. I'll do better now." They do think about how angry their Dad or Mom is, and they can develop a good deal of resentment for their parents.

Marriage, Divorce, and Kids

Written by Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC


It’s been said that one ofrepparttar problems that married couples have today is that men tend to choose their wivesrepparttar 111136 same way they choose their cars or trucks.

They getrepparttar 111137 best one available and hope that there’s not much maintenance downrepparttar 111138 road.

While this may occasionally be true, there are certain practices that married couples must follow in order to avoid adding to a divorce rate that hovers around 50%. These are practices that are essential not only forrepparttar 111139 success of their marriage, they are essential forrepparttar 111140 well-being of our children.

In Maggie Gallagher’s book, “The Abolition of Marriage,” she states that, “Half of all children will witnessrepparttar 111141 breakup of a parent’s marriage. Of these, close to half will also seerepparttar 111142 breakup of a parent’s second marriage.”

Can we possibly continue with a system that allows half of our children to witnessrepparttar 111143 breakup of their parent’s marriage? Is a divorce rate near 50% enough to have us consider new ideas about how we decide about marriage and divorce?

One logical place to start is to educate people aboutrepparttar 111144 qualities of a successful marriage.

We can’t be effective when we educate them two months before they marry. Emotional intelligence skills and relationship skills must be taught to our young people early in life.

When we do teach them about successful relationships, we should include these qualities:

1.Commitment—According to one definition, “commitment is a freely chosen inner resolve to follow through with a course even though difficulty arises. How do we show our children what to do when difficulty arises? Do we move to whererepparttar 111145 grass is greener? Commitment is a daily discipline. It’srepparttar 111146 core from which we respond to difficulty. It’s what makes our lives richer and deeper.

2.Emotional Awareness—If we know what’s really bothering us, we can have effective and meaningful conversations with our spouse. We can be genuine, honest, and open with each other. And we can discover that much ofrepparttar 111147 pain we feel in our relationship is actually our past emotional history coming back to haunt us.

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