I read an article called “When children of abuse become parents” that I found on ABC news. It is about several different parents that are struggling with trying to break the cycle of abuse because their children are misbehaving. These parents have been abused when they were children whether they were spanked, punched, or thrown across the room. They do not want to abuse their children the way they were abused because they know that it caused them problems. I thought this article goes great with what we talked about in class last week. We are talking about if it was wrong to spank children or not.
On this website there were video clips of parents struggling with their children misbehaving and not listening to them. The parents were threatening them with taking things away or threatening to hurt them and so forth. Then the families volunteered with a mentor program called Parent Aide. This program helped the parents learn a new way to deal with their children’s misbehavior. The Parent Aide said that what has worked best for children in order to prevent them from misbehaving is to maximize praise when they are doing something good. They said to do it with exaggeration and touch them by either high fiving them, patting them on the head or giving them a hug. For example, if the child takes their plate to the sink say “Wow! Thanks so much for taking your plate to the sink,” and then give them a high five! The parents could not believe that this would work, but it did. When children don’t get enough attention from their parents they will try to get it another way by throwing a fit or acting bad. They said by constantly praising them for the good things that they do and by keeping a reward chart for them that they will have better behavior.
I am so glad I read this article and watched the video clips because I am a new mother and I was spanked when I was a child, but I really didn’t want to spank my children. This gives me a new insight, and I hope to try this on my children. I thought they did a great job on explaining everything and then showing video clips to demonstrate. It was a very great article and is defiantly something I will recommend people to read.
I do believe that children do just act worse or throw a bigger fit when you yell at them or spank them. I know it is hard not to spank your kids because when you get impatient with their big tantrum it is hard to prevent. But what if you could prevent your kids from having these tantrums in the first place or at least not having them very often? I do agree that if you model the right way to act and praise them for doing it then they are going to do good more often. A lot of kids that misbehave just want attention; I know because I did it when I was a kid. I was born in a family of five, and I always wanted more attention from my mother, but she was always very busy, and when I didn’t get it I always back mouthed and acted out. Then she would spank me, threaten me or ground me, which wouldn’t help because I would just do it again. My mother use to pull my hair, kick me, slap me, and spank me, and it really did affect how I controlled my anger because now when I get angry at my boyfriend my instant reaction is to slap him. I know it is not right, and I don’t want to abuse him or my children so I believe it is important to break the cycle of abuse.
When my parents told me I couldn’t go do something it just discouraged me or made me lose confidence, but when my parents believed in me and encouraged me I felt like I could do anything. So once again I really understand what the article is talking about and how important it is to break the cycle of abuse.
I also encourage anybody who hasn’t read this article and seen these video clips to go to this website http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/parents-struggle-break-cycle-abuse/Story?id=8549642&page=1.
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