The last thing most parents want is to be told how to discipline their children.
But the case of Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings football star who was indicted after hitting his 4-year-old son with a switch, has generated a national discussion about the most effective ways to teach children to behave.
"Mr. Peterson's case was settled by the courts, but the case for how to guide children to develop values of self-worth, respect for others and setting goals should be argued at every dinner table in the land," says Peter Gorski, M.D., the chief health and child development officer for The Children's Trust.
Many parents believe spankings and other forms of physical punishment are acceptable because that's how they were raised, but today's parents should take a close look at those methods, Gorski says.
"The biggest challenge for parents is to reassess how they were disciplined and to be willing to think hard about the positive or negative effects on emotional and psychological development," Gorski says.
The Children's Trust funds numerous culturally sensitive programs throughout Miami-Dade County that do not dictate how to parent, but instead offer reasonable, research-based alternatives to corporal punishment — along with an increased understanding of how children develop.
[For more of this story, written by KiKi Bochi, go to https://www.thechildrenstrust....ews/newsletters/1183]
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