I am not very sure about the demographics of CS but I hope there are parents who have children who have reached around 17.
In your opinion, is corporal punishment useful? Do you take heed to spare the rod, spoil the child?
Other CS-ers who are parents, feel free to chime in too. And when I mean corporal punishment, I do not refer to the token palm smack.
I refer to the full blown tied to doubledecker bed and whacked with cane with (temporary) scars, or at the very least, hard caning on the palms.
As a father of 2, let me share. I agreed on giving hard punishment. However, the parents must ask themselves the following before they do it:-
1. Do they have a clear objective of the punishment?
2. Is the child's negative behaviour a reflection of the parents?
3. Have the parents spent enough time communicating and build bond with the child?
4. Do the parents understood the child on their negative behaviour?
Well, if "no" for any of the above, then perhaps despite how many hard punishment were given, it will not work. So, what's the point?
Many parents, especially with the encouragement from the Government plus the higher living standard, are struggling hard to make money. After they gave birth, the next thing is to look for a child care centre to look after their kids. While leaving their kids to the "professionals", what they can do is to provide material and "logistics" support, which of course most of the case is to comfort their own guilt for not spending enough time to understand their children, to build trust, bond,...
So, how many children will really listen to their parents teaching, if they don't even know their parents? Come on, our children are also human too. Do we just listen to anyone who think they are higher, like parents? Especially, when we grow up to 17, able to join beauty contest and fraud credit cards. Who cares if they scold and scold?
We can punish them whatever way we think it will work, but we have to be very conscious of what we are doing. It can be a very negative result, especially if we ourselves as parents is not do our parenting job properly. Perhaps, it's better to give a different approach.
Cheers!