Impact of Slapping: Effects on Children and Parenting

What Happens When You Slap Your Baby Across The Face?: Slapping is considered normal in many homes, especially when parents have completely lost it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s okay. Slapping is terrible and can lead to severe consequences. So, if your family started unhealthy parenting patterns, try to work and stop them, so you don’t affect your kids.

Yes, parents lose shit at some point. And it can be tricky dealing with kids’ screams, throwing things, or destroying stuff in the house. Worse is the disrespect that comes with teens looking for independence or the tests kids do to test you. But does that guarantee you slapping your baby? So, what happens when you slap your child across the face? Stay tuned!

What Happens When You Slap Your Baby Across The Face?

Slapping a child even once can affect them. Now, making this a standard discipline method can have drastic effects on children. Here’s how slapping your kid affects them:

It makes Them Have Physical Aggression

Kids learn how to treat others from an early age based on how others treat them. This begins with how the parents, caregivers, and siblings treat them.

If you slap your kid, they will learn that slapping is okay. For instance, if your baby provokes you and you become angry to the extent of slapping them. Your little one will learn that slapping is an acceptable way to deal with being angry at someone.

When kids are young, they believe that what they see or experience at home is expected. So, if hitting happens in your home, your baby will instantly think it’s normal.

Interfere With Your Relationship With The Child

Children can easily misinterpret what you see as a discipline method to be something deeper. Young and old children may think their parents don’t love them when they slap them. As parents, we teach our kids we’re nice to those we love, and slapping goes against this teaching. This makes them believe you don’t love them when you slap them.

And even if your child knows that you love them, slapping them can still negatively affect your relationship with them. Children and teenagers who are slapped are not as engaged with their parents as those who are not. They’re also not as warm and loving towards their parents. This makes these kids not to be close to their parents.

Teen Depression

Research suggests that adolescents who experienced harsh physical discipline are at a higher risk of depression than those who did not. The study considered other factors to determine whether depression resulted from physical discipline or something else.

The more you expose your child to slapping, the more likely they will be depressed. This can even be worse if both parents choose it as a form of discipline.

Low Self-Esteem

There are various ways how slapping can cause low self-esteem. One, if you slap your kid infront of other people, they’ll feel humiliated. Repeated humiliation can decrease your child’s self-esteem.

Slapping kids can also cause them to have behavioral problems, which can affect the relationship they have both at home and school. Your child may have a more challenging time making and maintaining friends. Children with difficulty maintaining friends may have lower self-esteem than those who haven’t.

Your Kid May Get Hurt

Many people imagine that child abuse involves a psychopathic parent beating their kids. However, that’s not entirely true. There are many cases of child abuse involving accidental abuse. Many have accidentally abused their kids out of anger and frustration more than intentionally abusing them.

When you’re angry, you tend to release that, even though unintentional. This can lead to you hitting your kid harder than you may have intended to, leading to busted lips or bruises. So, even if you’ve settled on physical discipline as a discipline method, never practice it when angry. Take time out and calm yourself before spanking or slapping your baby.

It Teaches Your Kid Unhealthy Coping Skills

Slapping your kid teaches them that it’s okay to hit others. But what’s more harmful is your child learning that hitting is an appropriate response to strong emotions. This can result in your little one behaving violently towards solid emotions like anger or frustration.

How Can You Avoid Slapping Your Baby

Here are healthy ways of disciplining a child without using physical force.

Teaching Them Healthy Coping Skills

Toddlers may not have enough self-control or understand more healthy coping skills, but older children can. Examples of healthy coping skills you can teach your baby include:

• Drawing.
• Playing with playdough.
• Screaming into a pillow.
• Ripping a paper.

When teaching your kid healthy coping skills, learn to be a role model. Children learn much by observing your behaviour rather than what you tell them. And sometimes, all you need to do is what you want your kid to do.

Positive Reinforcement

Although some parents choose negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement works excellently with all children. With positive reinforcement, you focus more on the positive things your kid does and less on the negative behavior.

For instance, when your child disrespects you, you can avoid punishing them and pay less attention to the behavior. And when they are respectful, you praise them for their excellent behavior. At the end of the day, kids want their parents to be proud of them, making this method extremely effective.

Communication

Communication work great for older kids like teenagers who don’t need much discipline. Teens can learn healthy and effective ways of communicating with parents.

With this approach, you can get the desired results by teaching your kid about the consequences of their actions. Teens often react well to effective communication as they want to be considered responsible adults. Hence, they’ll welcome the change.

Conclusion

What Happens When You Slap Your Baby Across The Face?: Slapping your baby across the face is not recommended, even out of anger. If you’ve done so and feel bad about it, it’s best to take anger management and parenting classes that will help you control your anger and be a better parent. Remember, hitting your kid can severely affect them. There are also many healthy ways to discipline your kid besides physical discipline.