To cane or not to cane?

When I was a new mum still trying to make sense of diapering, feeding, burping and rocking my little infant, my aunt shared this edification with me. She said that children are a gift from God. We as parents never truly 'own' them; we are merely stewards of these little ones.

There are many definitions and areas of "stewardship" but the general one is of "the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care". How do we ensure our children are brought up carefully and responsibly without spoiling them?

An article in Sunday Times (11 Jan 09) and AsiaOne.com (13 Jan 09) talks about caning children and whether it is "a good way to punish kids". It reports parents who resort to the cane and have reaped benefits from it. On the other end of the spectrum, there are many parents who do not believe in the cane.

A quote from the article:

"But the signs are that things are changing, as more parents shun caning for a more communicative way of disciplining. Nearly half of the parents polled by Sunday Times do not cane their children."

I have caned my child a sum total of 3 times. I remember them vividly because I do not favour the cane. I use it only when I really need to enforce a certain discipline after rationalisation, reinforcement, timeout and swatting his behind with my hand fail.

The first 2 times I caned him, I had prepared him for it and swatted his palm twice. Each time I caned him, I followed it up with a reconciliation and discussion on the issue of misbehaviour after the dust settled.

However, the third time happened two years ago when I lost my cool and gave him some huge red welts at his elbow area. That caning session left a deep impression on me. It made me realise how adults can lose control in the fit of fury and not be able to gauge the level of pain inflicted. At the risk of sounding like a wimp, it does hurt me to cane my child. My mother used to say that she felt the pain in her heart whenever she caned us but I never believed it. In my finite thinking as a child, I wondered how that was possible. Now I know better.

No parent wants to intentionally hurt his child. Some do it out of frustrations from life, some out of their own childhood experiences, some do it because they believe corporal punishment works and some do it at the spur of that heated moment.

But to whip out the cane for every misbehaviour can do more harm than good. The child ends up living in fear and thinking that violence is the way to go. What's worse is that he might grow immune to it and become more rebellious. I remember a secondary school mate who boasted that she could just stand there and withstand the cane until her mother collapsed in exhaustion.

Of course, there are parents on the other end who do not even reprimand their children. They adopt the "talk till you drop" method and basically give their children free reign in whatever they wish to do. We just have to flip the newspapers to find out how rambunctious and audacious some of our young are today.

My child attends an all-boy school. By all accounts, it is a great school. But we can't control whom he mixes with and the boys are really an assorted bunch - as varied as watercolours on a palette. My child now talks to me thus "When are we going swimming, sia?", "Mummy, my Chinese book's dog-eared, sia." or "This omelette's good, sia." Gosh! When did I become a "sia" and what on earth is a "sia"?? I later found out that it's a popular lingo among the boys these days.

I believe that when God makes you a steward, he will give you the grace to fulfil your duty. Discipline should be balanced and prayerful. Nothing works more than wonders than a parent praying continuously for his child.

I thank God my own mum is doing that for me everyday. She doesn't have to tell me. I know it in my heart.