Parenting methods – traditional or modern approach

First, i must say I am no parent myself, but I am really curious when I hear my friends sharing their experience in parenthood. There appears to be two different schools of thought.

One camp thinks that the way to teach is the traditional way, the way that we were brought up by our parents. A mixture of hard whacks and caning to drill the correct lessons into the child’s head and the parenting skills are obtained through experience. Another camp thinks that physical punishment is totally pointless and not the way to go, and the right way is to talk sense into them regardless of the age and parenting can be learned through the reading of parenting books.

Well, the these two camps of thoughts do appear contradicting to each other, since one focused on pain to let the child remember things, since it is a question mark if the child understands what the parents are saying, while the other camp thinks that the child is smart enough to understand right and wrong.

I believe that there are benefits in both schools of thoughts, but the important thing is not which method is better, but which method is more suitable for the child in questions. There are kids who are intellectually more developed and they are able to understand what their parents are teaching them, of course, some will be able to understand and accept the reasoning, but not all will do the same. Some children on the other hand might not be able to comprehend such reasoning and would continue to make the mistakes again. I might have simplify things a bit, as there are many types of children and there is never a one-size-fit-all solution.

Ultimately, I think the important thing is to find a method that suits the child, it could be a mix of traditional methods, or the modern way, a mixture of punishment of pain and reasoning. No one can teach another what is the right way to teach a child, it is more important to find one suitable instead.