Is hitting your child a solution?

When children are young, they do things that don't please the parents. Infact, they do a lot of it and a lot of times. At a very young age, like till 1.5 years, children usually don't understand anything. But after that, they sometimes make deliberate mistakes but I would still call them honest ones because they are not smart enough to know that that's a mistake.

I have a 1-year-old and he does stupid things all the time. He would eat my hair, literally cut and eat them, bite my cat, eat food from the floor, throw things randomly (sometimes really expensive ones), he won't sleep at night when all I want is sleep, and a lot of other things he does throughout the day that irritates me to the core.

But does that mean I should hit him?

Hitting or Beating up a child or even scolding them is of no use and make so sense to me whatsoever. A kid as young as 1 year has no sense of right and wrong and all they are doing is out of curiosity, excitement, and for seeking our attention.

Sometime back, my son was feeling very sleepy and somehow I could not make him sleep because I had something very important to do and with that, he hit me hard on my face. Now that slap from him was definitely not with an intention to hurt me but it was his way of showing his anger that I was not putting him to bed. But in return, I slapped him back because I got irritated with what he did. And then there were thousands of tears and cries and sobbing and it felt so bad, as a mother, I felt I have failed.

It was then that I promised myself that I would never hit my baby no matter what.

So for all the parents who think they can control their child by hitting and scolding, here is my piece of advice.

1. Hitting and Scolding will only make your child stubborn and sometimes, it would be impactless for your child, they will get used to it.
2. It will make your child understand that they can use violence to exercise control on others.
3. They will either start hating you or fearing you so much that they won't see a parent in you, rather someone who would just beat them up if they did anything wrong.
4. They will never open up their heart to you and would lie to you assuming you would hit them.
5. They will see you as tough parents and never as friends.

So how do you deal with your child in such instances?

1. Be calm and patient when you know they are too young to understand anything (like in my case)
2. If they have some sense of understanding, try to explain to them why do you consider their actions as wrong and what could be the possible consequences.
3. Even after telling them that it is wrong and they still wouldn't understand, let them learn by making mistakes and then they would never repeat.

Being a parent is tough and your child will never appreciate the good things in you if you do one bad thing to them. It feels bad and unreasonable but that's how it is. We must learn to deal with it.