Preventing Physical Punishment of Children: A Community-Based Program to Reduce Adverse Health Outcomes

Globally, millions of children are physically punished every day, increasing their risk for lifelong mental and physical problems. Physical punishment fosters aggression, generates feelings of rejection, disrupts the brain's stress response mechanism and compromises the neural systems needed for self-regulation. Addressing this epidemic requires a paradigm shift in parental thinking. Created at the University of Manitoba in partnership with Save the Children, the Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) project aims to transform parents' beliefs about punishment and control to promote problem-solving and mentorship, helping parents understand the emotional, cognitive and neurodevelopmental bases of children's behaviour, empowering them to resolve conflict in health-promoting ways.