Severity as a parenting method:
The desire of any parent is that their child maintains a behavior characterized by obedience at all times, however, some in that search incur in the application of methods by means of which they manage to transform the behavior and turn these beings into obedient but unhappy.
Many parents repeat the patterns that were used in their own stage of socialization without analyzing the repercussions or negative effects that they had on themselves and without adapting them to the present.
These practices can be inclined towards severity, which in principle generates estrangement and disconnection between parents and children, since the dynamics revolves around an oppressor and an oppressed situation in which the child lacks any type of rights.
Exercising and applying punishments and sanctions as coercive measures on the child so that he behaves in the required way at all times influences the satisfactory development of his personality. He will be obedient but he will lack important tools for adult life such as the ability to take initiative, his curiosity will be stifled, and spontaneity will be denied to him.
Punishments sometimes include physical or psychological abuse that the child will suffer in silence and must be kept to himself. Insulting, hitting or threatening him in order to exhibit appropriate behavior is not the best way to ensure that that child has a solid base of behavior, on the contrary, as soon as the adult who represses him is not there, he will take advantage of it to execute any mischief.
Effects of repression on the formation of the character of the child:
The continuous repressive measures will result in an unhappy child, with a great load of anger and accumulated pain. This will be a little sociable, isolated, quiet child, little interested in knowing what is around him.
You may not be interested in eating and making new friends, perhaps because you have a deep fear of rejection. He is a child who plays and smiles little. He definitely lives in fear of making a mistake that will lead to punishment.
The work of parents, in addition to disciplining, must be focused on raising happy and confident children.
Children who are raised in harsh atmospheres tend to be insecure and have low self-esteem because they have learned that to be loved, they must be someone else. If he shows himself to his parents as he is, they will not love him or punish him. Therefore, he must assume a personality that is not his own.
The continuous disqualifications in which special importance is given to negative facts and never to positive ones end up destroying any positive conception about himself. Many of them, to release so many repressed feelings, tend to behave in an inappropriate and aggressive way in spaces like school.
By way of imitation, they treat peers perhaps smaller or weaker of character with an aggressiveness quite similar to that they receive at home so that they obey.
Steps to raise happy and obedient children:
Teach them from love and understanding that there are norms and rules to cope appropriately with others such as respect, consideration, among others.
When he makes a mistake, explain why, be the first to set an example and highlight his qualities, before his defects.