Disciplinary Spanking Is Not Child Abuse

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Child abuse is an issue within society that effects the lives of not only the victims but also the lives of many people in the social order. Child abuse is any mistreatment or neglect of a child that results in non-accidental injury or harm and which cannot be logically explained. There are several forms of abuse and neglect and many state governments have developed their own legal description of what constitutes child maltreatment for the purposes of removing a child and prosecuting a criminal charge. Child abuse consists of different forms of harm including physical, emotional, sexual, and neglect. Physical abuse is any non-accidental physical injury to a child. Physical abuse is an injury that results from physical aggression. Types of physical abuse can consist of beating, whipping, hitting, pinching, biting, or spanking. Spanking is the most used, traditional form of physical punishment, consisting in a beating applied on the buttocks. It involves striking the buttocks repeatedly, usually as a physical punishment, with an open hand. Spanking can also be implemented including belts, whips, rods, paddles, or any other household item. Educators and parents usually administer spankings to children. Spanking usually refers to a child lying, stomach down, across the educator's lap and the parent or teacher repeatedly swatting the child's backside. The issue of spanking is whether it is justifiable or an act of child abuse. Some child specialists, such as Christine Walsh and Michael Boyle, argue that if a parent must administer a spanking, it should not be through anger and only as a last option when other forms of discipline have been deemed unsuccessful. They say that for a spanking to be instructive it must be... ... middle of paper ... ...their child while obviously angered, that emotion is likely to be very noticeable to the child. Unfortunately, that anger is all too likely to become attached to the punishment, resulting in the unwanted link of: mad parent = pain. A serene, calm parent is very much less likely to turn out to be an active part of the negative memory. Obviously, this is completely up to the judgment of the parent, but I have a tendency to concur that not only is spanking less likely to be abused if lightly applied, but also it maintains a better influence when it is applied. I would declare only when there clearly doesn't seem to be any other way of getting through to the child. Spanking is unquestionably not the only effective punishment, and perhaps not even the best, nevertheless I consider it to be effective, when applied carefully, in relation with other teaching mechanisms.

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