The most dreaded instrument at our home decades ago was the bamboo cane. I have to hand it to our mum. She was a suffer-no-fools, take-no-prisoners person when it came to ill discipline or bad grades.<\/p>\n
One thing I always remembered though was that she never took joy disciplining the three of us. I think the tough love she showed worked, since none of us at home turned into brats, had reasonably ok grades, and certainly didn’t get into bad company.<\/p>\n
More than 30 years later, circumstances are pretty different. In some parts of the world, cane a child and you\u2019ll have child welfare services coming on your head. I often really wonder what\u2019s the reason for this change. Is it because our social perceptions of what is acceptable punitive measures has changed? Or we\u2019ve all become ardent believers of soft-approaches when it comes to misbehaving children at home.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve now got persons like the following principal of a preschool declaring that she does not believe in caning, as one can read from a letter to The Straits Times she wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n I am the principal of a preschool, and to me, caning is a form of abuse. It sends the message that adults are bullies, and that one can resort to violence if the other party fails to understand what you want.<\/p>\n Being a parent does not give one the right to hit one’s child. It shows disrespect to the child. Would you hit a colleague if he does not follow instructions or disagree with you?<\/p>\n Her letter has garnered some attention both in the ST thread and elsewhere, with many readers pointing out that her letter hasn\u2019t made any mention of growing juvenile delinquency or misbehavior around the world.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure that many growing up children or young adults will vote against caning if they were given the opportunity to. But I wonder how many of them will vote the same way as parents.<\/p>\n That\u2019s one area Ling and I were talking about for our forthcoming daughter. How and when to discipline? Well, I\u2019ve got it in my head that I don\u2019t think we should discipline our child for poor academic performance. Physical discipline should be used only when nothing else works, or the child misbehaves in the way that is potentially life-threatening. Like if she brings out a knife from the kitchen and threatens someone with it\u2026 *touch wood*!<\/p>\n