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**Child Abuse vs. Discipline** A child and her brother find themselves fighting over a remote control and complaining about who's turn it is to watch T.V. Their dad visits their room several times to warn them to stop fighting, but the children's quarreling only continues to grow stronger. All of a sudden, the boy lets go of the remote, and the sister ends up lightly bumping her head on a table. The sister starts to cry and the dad barges inside their room. As a result of the girl's crying, the dad sees his son as the culprit, and punishes him with the back of his hand.

From time to time, these children find themselves being punished by words, belts, a coat hanger, and even slippers. Other times, during their most severe punishments, they would find themselves kneeling on the carpet of their living room with hands raised, trying to maintain this position for an hour straight.

The mom never approved of these actions, but could barely do anything about it, since she had to spend most of her time working. In an attempt to try to collect evidence of the abuse being done to her children, she would secretly take photos of her son's bruises and she would force her children to write inside a secrete journal, recording all the harsh forms of punishment done by their dad.

One day, while the dad takes his usual 2-hour-long shower, the mom, brother, and sister rush to get inside their mom's car and drive away to escape their life in LA.

If you haven't guessed it already, the "sister" that this story is referring to is me. Yes, the events that took place above were all true. To give a little bit more background on this story before I start my view on child abuse vs. discipline, I'd like to state that this all happened until I was about the age of 8 or 9. My brother and I weren't abused as badly as those kids you hear about on TV. I don't have any traumatic psychological disorder because of those experiences, and neither does my brother. Our form of punishment was only used when discipline needed to be taught. My dad wasn't some couch-potato drunk. He was just disciplined that way growing up in the Philippines. I'm not trying to justify his actions, but I'm simply explaining that he didn't know any better.

Now, back to the topic at hand. We all know that child abuse is completely wrong, but what about when it comes to disciplining a child? The Huffington Post did a poll on the punishment of children and "found that 81% of 1,000 adults believed that spanking with a hand should be legal, and almost half think it's an effective form of punishment." Personally, I believe that the use of physical, emotional, and mental punishment to any degree should never be used as a form of discipline on children.

Often times, people use the word "discipline" and "punishment" interchangeably. The difference between the two is that discipline is used to teach children why their misbehavior is wrong. It's used through communication and positive reinforcement to promote self-discipline. Punishment, on the other hand, is often used in association with crime. Children are not criminals, and therefore, should never be treated as such. Punishing a child will never establish a clear reason as to why their misbehavior is wrong and it only promotes an aggressive and negative reaction to solving a problem.

Scientific researchers have proven that spanking a child improves the chances of obtaining psychological disorders and altered brain function. "A 2009 study concluded that children who were frequently spanked 'had less gray matter in certain areas of the prefrontal cortex that have been linked to depression." Punishment influences children that fear is the answer to controlling a situation and that problems can only be stopped by use of external forces.

In my experience, I remember being more of an aggressive child who always reacted negatively when things weren't going the way I wanted them to. I didn't know much about self-respect or self-discipline and sometimes, I treated my classmates poorly because of it. I used to constantly fear that my dad would punish me if I did something wrong and I remember always trying to put the blame on my brother, just to protect my own self. Selfish? I know, and I completely regret it. Nowadays, things have been better, but I still find trouble in trying to communicate with my dad or finding respect for him.

All in all, I believe that discipline should be the only method used to teach and help children learn the right form of morals, rules, and values in society. It builds a mutual respect for both the child and parent, and it helps develop a better communication between them. Most importantly, it focuses on changing misbehavior from within, instead of waiting for someone else to tell them.