Children need self-esteem

Queena N.Lee-Chua and Ma.Isabel Sison-Dionisio have a very useful publication for parents, Helping Our Children Do Well in School: 10 Successful Strategies from the Parents’ Best Practices Study of the Ateneo de Manila High School in 2004. First, there were questionnaires administered to 823 parents. For validation, focused group discussions followed. In their introduction, they declared: “There are no shortcuts, magic formulas, or easy way out in education. Constant presence, communication and guidance are essential, and these apply not just to dual career families but to single parents, too. Raising children and ensuring that they love learning is difficult. It requires patience forbearance and a whole lot of love. But the rewards are worth it – confident children, motivated students and soon productive members our society need so much.”

I only selected  sections of the book which may be  relevant to  corporal punishment and verbal abuse.  Chapter 3: Communicate Regularly and Well includes, “Avoid Negative Communication.” It lists “top five parent miscommunication behaviors” and points out their effects on the children. Both “accusing” and “labeling” harm the self-esteem of the child. “Nagging or lecturing” causes the child to be “parent deaf.” “Threatening” is ineffective; because initially it “scares the child” but if you do not act as you have threatened  – “the child will not believe you.”

So, they encourage adults to build the child’s self-esteem to “build feelings of adequacy through encouraging words such as, “I like the way you handled that”; to “model positive behavior”; “avoid comparing the children”; motivate through “high but not unreasonable expectations”. And add that many of the above are possible when they experience acceptance.

Lee-Chua and Sison-Dionisio suggest “minimizing reward and punishment.” They quote Dinkmeyer and McKay: “Reward and punishment is negative; discipline is not.  We suggest you think of discipline not as a way for you to be in charge or in control, but as a learning process for your children and teens.” Lee-Chua and Sison-Dionisio say that punishment results in “resentment, rebellion and retreat. The cycle is vicious. The teen starts to think, ‘This is so unfair!’ (resentment).  Then he starts to rebel, ‘I don’t have to do it their way.  They are so old fashioned!’  Finally, he thinks about retreat, ‘I will just make sure not to be caught’.”

As an alternative, “using natural and logical consequences” are more effective ways of handling misbehavior.  If children are late, they have to do make-up work. Or if they miss meals, they may have to prepare meals themselves. Other alternatives to punishment are “suspension of privileges;” “express strong disapproval;” and “explaining to the child how to make up for the wrong done”.

They, too, discuss “spanking”. “Never give your child a beating.  This is excessive punishment, full of hostility and ill will. Never slap your child on the face. Never hit your child with an object. Never allow anyone else to spank your child.” In the research, “many parents in the focus group discussion said they did not use physical punishment because it gave the message that violence could be used to resolve problems.”

Science Daily reports that  Dr. Joan Durrant, Department of Family Social Sciences, University of Manitoba, and Ron Ensom, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario wrote, “Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses.”

”When parents in more than 500 families were trained to reduce their use of physical punishment, the difficult behavior in the children also declined.”

“Physical punishment is also associated with a variety of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and use of drugs and alcohol. Physical punishment may change areas in the brain linked to performance in IQ tests and increase the vulnerability to drug or alcohol dependence”. Because of the health effects on the young of physical punishment, physicians have been urged to advise families to use “constructive approaches to discipline”.

Carol Roach in “The Effects of Criticism, Verbal Abuse and Judgment on Children and the Adults They Become,” emphasized: “Harsh criticism can shake the very foundation of a child’s self esteem and make children feel like they are bad, worthless, and useless. The scars do not heal on their own. If the child is not given support, he or she becomes an adult with low self-esteem. The effects of low self-esteem are devastating. In adulthood, people suffering from low self-esteem often hold themselves back from great opportunities because the feel they do not feel ‘good enough’”. She also called attention to  findings of the research of the University of Calgary “that verbal abuse often has more psychological impact and subsequent psychological damage than physical abuse.” She laments the lack of awareness on the part of parents regarding the act of verbal abuse and its impact on children. “Their criticism is not helping shape the child into a productive vibrant individual, but rather a shell of a person who is very insecure, very afraid of life, and afraid of doing something wrong.  Sometimes they are not even sure what that wrong would be because they are criticized for everything they do anyhow.”

The UP Cebu Gender and Development Office is committed to positive discipline. For this reason our GAD Committee has joined the coalition opposed to corporal punishment, represented here by two guidance service specialists  Annabelle Gilla-Maglasang and  Annie Aboga-Manzano. They have actively participated in the sessions crafting  the Cebu City ordinance.