Why did they punish me?

By the counsellor Rajaa Shamiya: Why did they punish me?

It is a question many children ask: "Why did my father hit me? Why did they tell me off? What did I do?" Many parents hit their children without the reasons being clear. Among the common mistakes in social upbringing is that the child is punished without knowing what he did wrong. When we explain to the child the mistake he made, or the problem he caused, we avoid many of the problems our children fall into out of fear of punishment; in addition, he does not repeat the wrong behaviour he engaged in, the child learns to be truthful whatever the circumstances, and parents preserve a relationship built on respect, honesty and mutual understanding between parents and children. There are many problems children fall into as a result of their parents hitting them, the most important of them lying, since the majority of children resort to lying to avoid the punishment hanging over them. When we asked Ahmed, who is thirteen years old, he answered: "I am forced to lie so as not to be punished. I know that lying is forbidden, but I am afraid of the severe beating and the foul insults. Sometimes I try to tell the truth, but in the end I get hit by my family." In addition there is the greatest problem arising from physical punishment of children, namely aggression: we find many children identifying with their fathers, so the child hits his siblings, his classmates at school and the neighbours' children. We therefore asked Mohammed: why do you hit your brothers? He answered: "I do not hurt them, I am just playing with them. My dad hits me and it is normal, it does not hurt." But when we interpret this we find that the child projects his internal emotions onto others and responds in the way he received from his parents, so that he has no approach of understanding, only an approach of hitting. In addition there is the other problem arising from punishment, namely emotional deprivation: we find many children lacking affection and tenderness from their parents, and we find many children saying: "I do not remember my father ever hugging me or saying a kind word to me. All I remember is that he used to hit me a lot and for no reason." Punishing children without clear reasons is the cause of many problems, and so parents must adopt, in raising their children, an approach of understanding built on dialogue, in addition to explaining to the child the reason for his mistake without punishment. Then the child realises that what he did was wrong and cannot repeat it again.