In Finland they spare the rod without spoiling the child.

"Spare not the rod and spoil the child" is a biblical saying that’s very popular in Trinidad. Corporal punishment in the home is now illegal in forty countries. Trinidad is not one of them. However, this practice is tabu in Finland and has long since been discontinued. In contrast, every now and then some Trini Facebook friend will post a video of some child doing something wrong and will ask if that child shouldn’t be spanked. One video was of a teenager being spanked with a belt for posting semi-nude pictures on FB. Almost all the Trinidadians commenting are usually in favour of spanking. When I argued against spanking I have gotten replies like: "We were spanked and we turned out OK" or "Spanking is the only thing that works". My mother-in-law was horrified when I told her these stories. In fact physical punishment already began to lose favour in Finland in the previous generation. Only one of my friends reports being spanked by his father and he is still angry about it. When I comment on my friends’ posts I cite current research findings explaining that physical punishment actually does the opposite of what parents are trying to achieve and may even lead to mental problems and delinquency. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/23/health/effects-spanking-brain/ . Still, Trinis will argue that spanking is good for the child.

I have never liked being spanked and already as a child I knew that there must be a better way to teach children to behave. I remember wondering how a spanking would help me to learn anything else other than how not to be caught next time. I don't understand how anyone who has been spanked can do the same to their children. But I do understand that if you have been given no other example to follow you will probably fall back on the same methods your parents used. The fact is, spanking in the moment is easy. But long-term, strategic, non-violent parenting is more difficult and takes more work and patience. When my Finnish friends talk about ways to get their children to behave, it seems that using non-violent methods comes naturally. One of my friends was asked where she came up with all these parenting tricks and she says she doesn't really know. “Probably my parents did the same with me” she replied. But for someone like me who grew up being spanked and hearing things like "children should be seen and not heard", "children don't have feelings", and my all time favorite, "because I said so!" non-physical child rearing methods do not come naturally. That’s why I read countless parenting books. Because of all the research I do on parenting, people probably think that I am a “helicopter parent”. But the truth is 1) the scientist in me has to research every topic of interest and 2) I don't have non-physical disciplining examples from my own childhood. So basically most of my ideas on child rearing have come from books.

What I really like about Finnish child rearing is that parents believe it is possible to teach correct behaviour without spanking. In Trinidad people seem to see child rearing as a power struggle where parents are the master and children are subservient. Here, child rehearing is about building trust and teaching children correct behaviour, not forcing them to do what you say through fear of violence. Finns think the point is to teach the child so that later they can make the right decision on their own when the parent is not around. That way the parent does not always need to be looking over a child’s shoulder with a big stick for them to behave.

Of course one and two year olds are not at the developmental stage to understand and be reasoned with. But there are methods and tricks like distraction etc. which can be used until the age at which you can reason and teach consequences. The point is that there are other methods besides spanking that work. And if you really want to find a non-physical method of child rearing, you can. There are many resources out there, TV (Supper nanny), websites and blogs, and parenting books. I found that many of these methods work and I haven’t needed to spank my child to get her to act appropriately. Of course it’s not easy and children will not always behave like angels even with all your best efforts. But that’s life.

Contrary to popular belief sparing the rod has not made Finnish children spoilt. In fact, at one of our “family birthday parties” where there were eight children of various ages, my Brazilian friend remarked on how well behaved Finnish children were in comparison to Brazilian children. I had to agree that I had not experienced such well behaved children in Trinidad either. Finland also has low rates of delinquency and crime. So maybe there is something to be said for not spanking your child. And maybe children will act better with gentle treatment and positive reinforcement.

Fatherhood the Old Fashioned Finnish Way

The following story is something a friend of mine posted on her facebook. I thought it so exaggeratedly true that I had to share it with you my friends. This story is very representative of the stereotypical way of bringing up your children the Finnish way i.e. via the school of hard knocks. This story was a reply to a post on the page of an American who has a Finnish girlfriend and lives in Finland. The link to this post and reply is here. http://www.finlandforthought.net/2008/12/03/quirkiness-among-finnish-men-is-a-positive-trait/

Well, my father was very old school finn. He teatched me to swim by throwing me from the pier to the lake. When I was able to scramble back to the shore he was very happy and said: See, you can swim and the water is nothing to be affraid.
He teached our dog to avoid the sauna by sticking its nose in to the red hot stove. Dog never came in to the sauna no matter what after that.
He showed to me and my brother how to make slingshots, throw a knife and axe, make ice balls instead of just snow ones during the winter to gain advantage over our enemies during the snow wars.
He teached me to drive my bicycle by putting me on it and pushing me down the hill. We did it so many times that I finally stayed up because the falls hurt too much.
He gave me my first knife when I was five. When I was ten, I had already nine scars in my left hand. I also learned to make fires in the woods, rain or snow. I also learned how to put fire in to the fireplace.
When I once loaded too many logs in to fire place, he let them fall out and told me to watch what kind of damage those burning blocks did to our summerhouse floor so I would learn when the fire escapes and turns in to a house fire. The I had to put it out.
When I was affraid the dark, he took me to his car, drove me about six kilometers away from our summer house and told me to get out. - You know where you are, he said. - It is six kilometers by the road and only two trough the woods. See you at the breakfast.
I was seven years old but I was proud when I was at the breakfast table before anybody else woke up. When my father woke up and saw me, he was very proud of me. - Fill the buckets at the sauna with water, all of them, he said.
When my older brother got caught first time for drinking at the age of eleven, my father threw him around couple times and then opened his own Kossu and took a sip, and offered one for my brother too. After that we did not discuss about alcohol again.
We had a tradition in my family that when ever my father was drunk, we had to wrestle with him and for real too. I remember when I was able to dislocate his spine disk and he dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes for the first time, he was proud of me. After that I was no longer a kid.
He has funny sayings. " A man eats everything he orders", " Never trust the russians" and " Swedes are sissies" and the old classic: "Never loose a fight for a guy smaller than you". Also" It is not a shame to loose a fight if you can hurt the other guy". He also quoted his favorite writer Väinö Linna often. He favorite was "Koskela from Finland, eats iron and shits chain."
When he was diagnosed of cancer he warned everybody: I don't want to hear any fucking thing about Jesus. He eventually won the fight with the cancer.
Once, when we were coming from our summerplace, we drove from there to Helsinki in just two and a half hours. Speed meter never went below hundred and twenty and topped at one ninety. When I got jitters because we were going sideways in curves with tyres screaming, he smiled and said: "You feel that? Nice when you are in control, isn't it?".
His uncle who was at the Tali-Ihantal in 1944 once decided to talk to me about the war. All he said was this: " You know the battle of Tali-Ihantala? That was no fun".

There are some similarities in this story to those of my husband's upbringing such as using knives as children. My husband received a commando knife at the age of ten, as a Christmas present no less, and was allowed to play with it in the forest with his friends. There, they carved pieces of wood and chopped things while playing in a forest with deep, defense moats dug out during the winter war with Russia. Moats so deep any small child who fell into it would surely break a few bones. But their parents weren't worried they just told them how to be careful and let them go. This is something very foreign to me, and my husband and I have discussed how difficult it will be to mesh my overprotective Trini/Anglo parenting style with his Finnish laisez faire/school-of-hard-knocks style. We'll see how it turns out in twenty years time.