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27 Tammuz 5761 - July 18, 2001 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
Corporal Punishment

by R' Zvi Zobin

The word `corporal' comes from the Latin word corpus -- body. Corporal punishment is any physical punishment which is on the body of the person being punished. The only non-death corporal punishment mentioned by the Torah is that of malkos, flogging, which was to a maximum of 39 lashes. In addition, Beis Din had the power to administer makos mardus to someone who rebelled against their jurisdiction and these floggings had no maximum number.

This is not the place to discuss the legalities of the rights of individuals to administer corporal punishment, but it is generally accepted that parents and instructors do have some degree of right to physically punish children -- though this right is very limited.

To some, the word `smacking' conjures a violent `beating,' yet a smack can be administered with varying degrees of force, or even with no force at all.

Little Shimmy stretches out his grubby chocolaty hands to touch the clean, white tablecloth. You say "No!" with a stern tone. Shimmy looks at you -- and grabs the tablecloth, wiping the chocolate all over the white cotton.

Swiftly, you grab his hand away and give it a little smack and say to him, "I told you `No'!"

Shimmy bursts into tears.

The smack was barely a tap; perhaps softer than a kiss. It was too light to hurt him, so what caused the tears?

The answer is that you hurt his pride. He knew he was being punished and now, instead of being kissed and cuddled, he was receiving a punishment.

Often, that small potch is all that is needed to imprint into the child's mind the awareness that he has stepped over `the red line.'

Current thought in training children to behave tends to rely on reasoning with the child.

However, the baalei mussar explain that logic is only effective if the mind rules over the body. If the body rules, then the person will distort his logic to fit the demands of his body.

A child's ability to reason is limited for two main reasons. Firstly, he does not yet have the neural maturity to process logical thought as well as an adult. Secondly, he has not yet learned to rule his body with his mind.

The first aspect will only come with time and training. But we can help him deal with the second aspect by `talking' directly to the body and showing it that it is not always in its interest to try to dominate the mind.

Hence, the famous saying that a child has two sets of ears. One set is on either side of his head. The other set is at his lower end. If he does not get the message through the upper set of ears, he might need to `hear' it via his lower set. That is the purpose of the smack which does hurt, though not excessively.

The child knows that you are capable of hurting him more, and the small smack will usually be enough to help him see reason. The memory of the small amount of pain will weigh in the favor of the mind when it tries to convince the body to behave correctly.

The classic `beating' which was the favorite of the non-Jews until the beginning of the New Era rarely has any place in chinuch, and guidelines should be sought before inflicting anything more than is mildly painful. Some present-day gedolim have been misquoted as saying that they are against any form of corporal punishment. Actually, their objection is to corporal punishment as a "way of life" and they agree that occasionally, a child does need to receive a mild degree of corporal punishment when he "does not get the message" any other way.

Rabbi C.P. Scheinberg shlita advises the "points system," the incentive system in which children are awarded points for good behavior, leading eventually to a significant prize when the target number of points is reached. He explained that if a child is rewarded with small prizes too often, the small prizes will lose their appeal and will not provide the incentive. He also advises that when one child wrongs another child, you should pointedly give something nice to the "victim" and not give it to the "agressor," thereby giving the aggressor the message that he loses by being aggressive.

Rabbi Scheinberg also stresses that if it is necessary to give a potch to a child, it should never be to the face of the child, as this can instill a life-long fear into the child.

Chazal stress that the way of Torah is the way of pleasantness. If a parent or a rebbe rules by force of fear, he is paving the way for eventual rebellion and he is distorting the values of the Torah.

 

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