Sunday morning is special because I receive a message from Mary Charleson who is a marketing educator, speaker and strategist and author of Five-Minute Marketing.
Today she focused on Super Bowl ads and the one that struck me was Dove Men plus Care “Real Strength”.
In September 2014, the discussion about physical punishment of children had a different twist.
After NFL football star Adrian Peterson used a branch to beat his child the question of whether any parent should ever use physical means to discipline hit the airwaves. The action, which he called a whooping and assumed was appropriate discipline resulted in injuries to the back, hands, buttocks, ankles, legs and scrotum of his four year old child. The bulk of the discussion on social media suggested that physical punishment is not quality parenting.
As a result of this event the role of elite athletes as loving parents took the forefront. And today The Super Bowl is going to feature loving and caring Dads.
The Super Bowl is definitely a macho event featuring big strong men. Football is not for wusses.
But off the field these men can be caring Dads.
I am a parenting speaker and author and know that it is never appropriate to hit a child for any reason whatsoever. We proudly talk about being a peaceful nation, about having zero tolerance toward all violence. How can we then permit any form of violence against our children?
Physical punishment is never discipline, it is punishment, and it is punitive. It is defined as the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury for the purposes of correction or control of the child’s behavior.
It always carries a risk. The research shows that hitting children increases the risk of physical injury, impaired parent/child relationship, child aggression, delinquency and poor child mental health.
It also doesn’t work. Hitting children is not an effective way to teach children right from wrong.