EDITORIAL - When discipline turns to abuse

One news item that likely escaped everyone’s radar was the incident in Pasig City where a couple was arrested for beating to death their eight-year-old son.

According to the couple they ordered the boy to perform squats to discipline him for some offense. However, when he refused to do so they hit him repeatedly with their slippers until he collapsed.

The boy later died in the hospital. Doctors said his legs and arms were full of bruises. The couple are now facing charges for homicide and parricide.

We are not for sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Disciplining a child, even through corporal punishment, sometimes has its place in a proper upbringing, especially when the situation requires it, and especially for children who don’t respond to other and softer forms of discipline.

However, parents must also be responsible enough to know when disciplining crosses over into actual abuse.

In the case of the couple in Pasig City, the squats they ordered the boy to do was quite a reasonable punishment, when you consider they first chose a task that would have just resulted in physical exhaustion as opposed to physical pain. But after the child refused and they resorted to violence, they should have been able to tell when enough was enough.

Today corporal punishment is not as common as before because of how easy it is for the child to complain to overprotective authorities. It has even become somewhat controversial because child experts say there are better ways to discipline kids and that inflicting corporal punishment can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury, and mental health problems in children.

But if you ask those who underwent it as children, they will say it kept them on the straight and narrow. Some will even say they are the better because of it.

We are not saying parents should spank their children for every perceived offense. But they should be able to tell when they are crossing the line from teaching them to actually harming them.