A young mother in Kumily has allegedly branded her seven year old son with a hot iron ladle and had put red chilli powder in his eye as punishment for having stolen a tyre from a local shop. It has also been reported that a neighbour noticed the incident and brought it to the attention of the local authorities who have booked a case against the mother.
While we at “Kumily Calling” are all for the protection of children and against physical punishment for children this incident has led us to ponder on the larger issue of punishment and rewards for children to inculcate values and good morals among our offspring.
In this connection, we would like to mention that branding and scalding children with hot iron utensils as a form of punishment was quite common among the older generations of Indian Society. In those days the adage used to be “Spare the rod and spoil the Child”. When we were in School, we used to get caned on our palms quite frequently and we can still remember the burning pain in our palms after such a caning.
While branding a child with a kitchen utensil sounds rather extreme; mild punishment to a certain degree is good to remove any quirks in a child’s values. However, inflicting physical injury is extreme and must be stopped. Severe physical trauma may scar the child for life and result in the opposite of the effect actually expected by the parent.
As an alternative to punishment, we at “Kumily Calling” would like to advocate using rewards as an incentive to make our kids embrace values and good morals. Are we spoiling our children by sparing the rod? We are interested in knowing what method you as a parent have adopted to handle your children and bring them up to be good citizens of our Society?
We seek your views on the role of punishment in a child’s upbringing and request you to share them with us by mail to editor@kumilycalling
