After fifty years of research, experts concluded that scourges do not work, nor are they educational, and that they have negative effects on children. In some countries, such as Spain, hitting a minor is a crime with imprisonment from six months to one year.
But each case is a world. Just as a judge recently acquitted a mother for slapping her 11-year-old son because he was "justified", yesterday the Criminal Court No. 1 of Almeria He sentenced a father to seven months in prison for hitting his 15-year-old daughter for being late home.
For being his first crime and being a penalty of less than two years, the father will not enter prison. But also, as a preventive measure, You are prohibited from approaching or communicating with the child less than 100 meters for a year, seven months and fifteen days.
According to the sentence, the discussion took place because the child "did not comply with the educational indications that her father gave her." The father He grabbed her hair and slapped him several times (two according to the father), without knowing that the young woman suffered injuries due to these blows.
The judge considers that there has been a "overreach in your right of correction, because when exercising it has to be through acts that benefit the child (...) that protects her in some way, which does not happen, when for arriving a little late at the set time for the father, take her violently by the hair and slap him. "
However, it justifies physical punishment when it is the child who initiates the violent action:
"The use of violence in this degree in any way may be allowed and, in any case, a minimum act is allowed but provided it is the only way to solve a problem of special gravity and when it is the minor who initiates a violent action, which does not happen in this case, in which the child is disobeying her father, but in no way uses violence. "
You can educate without pasting
There are those who think that physical punishment is necessary to educate children, but it is not so. You can educate without pasting promoting dialogue and laying the foundations of a respectful education since they are very young. A troubled teenager does not go from one day to the next, it is the consequence that something has failed in their upbringing throughout their childhood.
Physical punishments not only do not work, but they are counterproductive. There are good reasons why children should never be hit, among them, because by hitting them you teach them to use violence to solve problems instead of using dialogue. On the other hand, the more children are hit, the more likely they are to challenge their parents and experience greater antisocial behavior, aggressiveness, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties.
Difficult adolescence
"Teenagers ... my mother!", "They are in the age of the turkey. Everything happens." "I can't with them", are comments we hear frequently about teenagers. It's a difficult stage, a great challenge for those of us with children at that age, but if we don't justify hitting a child, neither can we justify hitting a teenager because he has grown up or is more rebellious than a few years ago.
Hurting a child, regardless of age, may never be necessary to educate him. Adolescence is a very contestant stage, but children are being educated since they were little, establishing clear values and limits that give them security, and making them see the consequences of their actions.
Everyone, or almost everyone, has skipped the rules sometime. Challenging the limits is part of the development of the independence of the child who becomes an adult, and parents must be there to mark the way forward.
We know that it is easier said than done, but maintaining self-control is very important to avoid exploding and falling easy, which is to slap. Physical punishment will not help the teen to reconsider, on the contrary, he will see it as an injustice and another reason to "confront" his parents. Communication is essential at all stages, but in adolescence it is very special.
There is also a reality that we cannot deny: there are more and more cases of teenagers, who Not being satisfied with the limits imposed by parents and they slap them, they denounce them. That reaches the courts, sometimes with foundation and sometimes not, but always on the basis that hitting a child is a crime.
The Penal Code, in its article 153 explicitly sanctions all types of domestic violence against children with "imprisonment from six months to one year or work for the benefit of the community".
However, it is not entirely blunt. The law also provides that parents, in justified cases, may exercise your right of correction "with moderation".
"The parents may, in the exercise of their function, seek the help of the authority."
In this case, the judge considers that the father exceeded his right of correction by condemning him to seven months in prison. they will not enter the jail.
