Corporal punishment for children : for or against?

A news about a woman who almost killed her child with beating has surfaced online. She 13 year old child with a razor blade, apply grounded pepper on the wound and afterwards spanked her mercilessly with a cane until the girl fainted.

What were this woman's reasons for doing such? When interrogates by the police after she was reported, she said that she had sent the girl to purchase some food items for dinner since around 3:00pm yesterday and she didn't return until around 6:00pm which, according to her was already late to prepare dinner since the man of the house comes back around that time. This 36 year old mother asked her daughter where she had been for the past three hours but according to her, the girl didn't give her an answer, perhaps she meant that the girl didn't give her an answer she wanted to hear from her as she clearly had making assumptions which is alright, then she proceeded to strip the girl naked, cut her with razor, applied pepper in her wounds then flogged her until she fainted. The young girl is now in the hospital in a serious condition. Of course, the woman blamed it on the devil.

I am quite sure the above story isn't something some of you haven't heard of before, such things happen all the time, especially in African or maybe Asian homes (I doubt Asians go to such extremes though). This is something that happens a lot in African homes . It makes me reconsider what a lot of us call "disciplining" our children. If this woman had not been caught, I doubt if she wound have had any regrets about the pain she inflicted on someone she calls her daughter, she probably would have thought she was doing the right thing. I don't know, perhaps she had thought her daughter had started seeing a man hence her late response to the errand she embarked on and she has acted out of anger, she might be right or wrong about that, but doing something like that, to a 13 year old or to anybody for that matter, is...not cool.

On a general note, the issue of employing corporal punishment to discipline children is something I have mixed feelings about. As a child, I have been spanked on the butt a couple of times by my mom, especially the time when I used to.... but it never exceeded three to five strokes of the cane I remember my dad being against it at the time even when it was light, moms are usually the parents who carry out these sorts of punishments. Nonetheless, I find it quite unsettling when it exceed certain extremes in the news I read. There are children who've been killed accidentally with this so called means of "discipline" by their parents. Kids can do naughty things at times I get it, but while punishing them, do not forget what they are.. kids.

Perhaps those who beat their children mercilessly aren't only angered by what they did. Perhaps they have underlying issues which they need to seek help with because I seriously can't understand why you would do that to a child you carried in your womb for nine months.

Whats you take on this?

Thanks for reading.

Yours Layly,

❤️❤️❤️.