An Alternative To Spanking Children

One thing that I was staunchly against doing whenever I had my daughter, was to spank her. I had never wanted to raise my hand to my child, and it was something that meant a lot to me to do. I've seen a lot of parents that I knew and respected, losing their temper with their children, and they ended up spanking them when they grew frustrated. I never judged these parents and I often feared that whenever I was in their position, that I may do the very same thing. This was definitely one of my biggest concerns whenever I first had my daughter, as I knew that a certain point she was going to push my hot button, and I knew at some point I would lose it with her. I read a bunch of parenting books, and a number of articles on how to discipline your child without spanking them, and there were a number of great suggestions that I thought were going to be useful.

While many of the suggestions that I read about were helpful, the one thing that I found was the most effect of with my daughter as she started to get older, was giving her a timeout. This is something that my mother had done to me whenever I was little, and I harkened back to my childhood and remembered how much it used to drive me crazy. My mother refused to ever spank my brother or I, and this punishment did more for disciplining us, then any kind of corporal punishment ever would have. Often times, depending on how bad it was, my mother would make me sit on a chair, for either five, 10 or even 20 minutes. I would have to sit alone on this chair in the middle of the room, and I had nothing to play with, and couldn't even watch TV or anything of that nature.

When I started using this on my own daughter, I realized how extremely effective it was with her. Often times when she would misbehave, I would tell her that she was going to get a timeout, and it was usually an extremely effective strategy and she would instantly calm down. Of course there were always situations that arose where she got herself so worked up that it didn't matter what kind of threats I gave her. This was of course when I had to learn to use patience with her. However, I definitely endorse giving your child a timeout as one of the most effective disciplinary strategies that you can use. I know, because I have seen it work countless times.


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