Are parents overprotecting children?
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Originally posted by stupidissmart:
Agreed! Pain is the fastest way to get the message across. Human nature is not to do things where u will get physical pain...Once bitten, twice shy
OooOooo.... tat sounds like a lot of pain...
I remember an incident where I get severly caned when I was young... I steal some money from... hehehe... my grandma
to buy some toys and my mum discover it. At night it was hell... the toy was thrown and I was caned for 2 hours straight. No amount of begging or crying can make her stop.
I think she did the right thing to me then as I deserve every single bit of it... I never think about stealing ever after tat incident...
For young children, how to talk sense into them when they don't even understand much about anything ? If my mum just talk "sense" into me then I will just probably just say "Orr.." or "Yes" and when I have a chance, I will steal again. I gain a toy and I have lost nothing u see. When one is young they r just not sensible. If a child really did something wrong, [b]caning is really the best way to tell it to them. [/b]
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*Prays for Singapore's future* -
In the Nan Chiau incident it was the godsister who blew the whistle. She is a teacher and there is a possibility she is with Nan Chiau and has an axe to grind against the principal.
Anyway, I do find kids today rather spoilt. They should be appropriately punished when they do wrong. Punishment which is to instill discipline and not fear in them is not only good for them but for the society as a whole. Spare the rod now, we may end up with a bunch of tyrants in the future! -
yeah....still remember the times when i got hit by rulers in school. teachers slapping students were common then. i got so scared that she would tell my parents that i studied real hard. at that time, it was a really terrifying thought that i would go home to even more caning... but to think back on it, it has served its purpose....
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yes... discipline cannot be ignored. physical punishments cannot be ruled out but should be used only as a last resort. in the end there is not much different between disciplining kids in the past and now - just that perhaps now one needs to talk more to them.
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It is easy to allow anectodal cases to tar everything. It is not true that children in general (over in Singapore) are spoiled or over-protected.
I remembered one parent whom I called in over his son's grades. He gave me a cane and told me in Mandarin, "Teacher, I give you the cane and the authority. If he doesn't listen, I allow you to cane him!" I had to give it back to him. I told him that I will cane my own son but I do not cane my pupils. Somehow I got the feeling he doesn't get what I mean, because he repeated the same line again. Unfortunately, the child was still not studying.
Another pupil of mine was called up by me for not doing his silent reading. I got him to stand in front of his class and do his silent reading. The angry mother confronted me the next day for causing 'psychological damage' (she spoke in Mandarin) to her child. I told her plainly that I had no reason to touch her son if he did nothing wrong. Off she went to the principal. Thank God I had a supportive principal. She simply told her, "Mdm, I can give you the hotline for MOE and the e-mail address. Why don't you tell them that my Discipline Master has disciplined your child?" Well...we did manage to get to talk on calmer terms about her child, and from what I knew, I was spoken of kindly by her when she's with the other parents.
Yet another pupil of mine...well...he's incredible. He joins no CCAs. He doesn't participate much in PE. He doesn't interact much with his class. When he was in Primary 5, his mother refused to allow him to attend the P5 camp, paid for by the school. When he got a chance to go to an event much coveted by Primary 5 pupils - the National Day Parade rehearsal - his mother wrote in to disallow his attendance. When his form teacher spoke to him, he told her what his mother said, "What if the terraces collapse? What will happen to you? It's much safer at home!" The last I got a chance to spoke to her (after he's gone to Secondary school), she told me in worried tones how he has to stay behind in school for his band CCA (CCA is compulsory in Secondary School). I have to assure her that this is part of his growing up, and is good for him. I wondered how much of his independence he has to reclaim as he goes into his teenage years.
But for each of these cases, I can also come up with truly independent pupils who did charity work, gave tuition to their siblings, led a 'rebellion' against the class teacher (yikes! I had to be called in to mediate) and so on. I can recall pupils who can climb trees and wallow in mud pools. It just happens that the extreme cases are the ones we remember most!