Raising your children to be polite, respectful and well-behaved has its challenges as any parent will tell you. And everyone seems to have an opinion on it, even if it is uninvited. But if there's one thing that many can agree on, it's that smacking children is a big no-no.
However, as parenting styles have changed over the years, there's now another thing that some want to add to the list of disciplinary methods that should be left in the past, as they feel it's just as bad as smacking.
Navit Schechter, 43, a cognitive behavioural therapist and mum-of-one maintains she would never call her six-year-old daughter, 'naughty' as she believes it's as bad as any sort of physical punishment and there can be only one outcome if it is used: an upset child.
Chastising children with words like 'naughty' will ultimately produce a generation eager to please and nothing else, the expert claims - and she's urged fellow parents to stop doing so.
The businesswoman, who runs a range of parenting courses near her home in Cornwall, said: "In the world that I am in, among my friends and in my work world, most people that I'm surrounded by would see the word ‘naughty’ as quite a dated parenting style, much in the same way as smacking.
"We're choosing not to smack our own children, because we would see it as physically abusive.
"Similarly, there's that same kind of idea around using the word 'naughty'. We want to bring our children up to be compliant, because, of course, it makes our lives easier - but we don't actually want our children to be compliant people.
"If you're saying, ‘don't do that, that's naughty’ because you don’t like their actions - there's this kind of implicit assumption that you have to do things the way that we want them done.
"You then see the pattern that we see in adults, appeasing people and not being able to say no in case their actions upset people."
And it's not just negative terms like naughty that Navit has taken issue with, as the mum thinks that even describing young people’s behaviour as 'good' can have detrimental effects on their self-worth and cause issues in later life.
She explained: "I also feel really uncomfortable when family members call my daughter a ‘good girl’.
"So many adults today feel the need to be good, to be liked and for other people to accept them.
"It’s that black and white way of thinking and not looking at the context around it, because we’re inherently kind of good, but sometimes we’re not.
"If we hold ourselves to standards of thinking we can never make mistakes, we can never let other people down, we can never do things that other people don't want us to do - that can keep us stuck in really unhelpful patterns that create a lot of anxiety and low self esteem."
A number of fellow parenting experts also agree with Navit's 'naughty ban', with Jo Mitchell-Hill, 46, a parenting coach from Maidstone, Kent, telling how the word "impacts on kids’ self esteem and shames them".
She commented: "I don't use the word naughty because it has such a negative connotation.
"The word is used to describe the child, and not their behaviour. If you want the best out of your children the more positive and encouraging you are, you're going to build that self esteem.
"You're going to build that positivity and build up how they feel about themselves."
Foster carer and former teacher Jo added: "With my daughter, my pupils and the kids that lived with us the expectation is you’re going to try your best, and if you’re not, you’re struggling - so come and speak to me.
"Kids aren’t born wanting to be naughty or wanting to misbehave, their misbehaviour is a communication.
"Kids don’t understand the difference between positive and negative attention.
"Children live in a very traumatic world, we’ve got to be aware as parents that we are the biggest influence in our children’s lives and what we say and do matters."
However, Dr Samantha Madohsingh, 54, said ousting the word is a load of rubbish.
The clinical psychologist said it’s 'madness' to suggest calling a child 'naughty' is akin to smacking.
The doc, who is originally from the States but now lives in Richmond with her 16-year-old daughter, said: "Words have power, when we use words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, that is binary thinking.
"People will think to themselves, ‘no one can be perfect, and I'm not pure and angelic and always good’ - so the only other option is to be bad.
"So what we need to focus on is the behaviour - the child isn’t naughty, that behaviour is naughty and naughty behaviour is not acceptable or appropriate.
"The word ‘naughty’ is not abusive - it just struck me as extreme, honestly.
"I feel sometimes that we're going in the completely wrong direction.
"As a parent of a teenager in this country, what I'm seeing with kids is terrifying.
|We have two extremes - we have people who are either so strict and bordering on abusive, and then we have the fully permissive ‘let's just let them be wild and do whatever they want’ crew.
'I think somewhere in the middle is where it's at."
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
