Punitive attitude detrimental to youth
New Zealand’s lust for punishment is harming our teenagers, a child development expert says.
Nathan Mikaere-Wallis says we’re a country with a ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ attitude towards youth offending and it needs to change if we ever expect them to be upstanding members of the community.
The neuroscience educator travels the world talking to teachers and parents about ‘brain appropriate ways’ to engage children, as well as speaking about conditions through which a brain’s behaviour may be changed.
‘‘Our society is reasonably punitive towards children, and more so towards teenagers,’’ he said during a recent visit to Hamilton.
‘‘We changed the law to say we’re not allowed to smack kids and we had people marching on the street for the right to be able to hit them.
‘‘We go from thinking children are beautiful, cute, and innocent ... but somewhere along the way, [when they get into trouble], we look at them as delinquent little bastards that need a good kick up the ass – yet it’s the same child.’’
Mikaere-Wallis said this way of thinking is widespread – and not limited to New Zealand – but it has a detrimental impact.
He understands why we need a youth court, but we can’t hold children to the same account.
‘‘Literature says that if you punish a teenager, punitively – if you lock ’em up – there’s a 75 per cent chance they’ll go to prison as an adult.
‘‘But if you pay a foster parent to look after that child, there’s a 75 per cent chance that they’ll never go into the system again.
‘‘It would be cheaper to pay a foster family to look after that child than it would be to lock them up.
‘‘But we don’t do that.’’ New Zealand doesn’t spend enough on intervention strategies, he said.
‘‘Very little of our money is spent on healing them – most of it is on trying to punish them or scare them into compliance, which is not what any of the literature says works.’’
In other countries, such as Denmark and Scandinavia, they have a more holistic approach to a child’s formative years, something Mikaere-Wallis thinks could be applied here in New Zealand.
‘‘Scandinavia has a version of a New Zealand Plunket nurse, but they visit homes for the feeling of warmth and comfort and nurturing.
‘‘They also give parents ideas of how to pose things and furnish things to maximise that warmth.
‘‘There’s a much more active concept about the home having to have a warmth to it.
‘‘For young children to be nurtured appropriately, it’s not just feeding them and [clothing them], someone has to be at home, to keep the home fires burning.’’
Mikaere-Wallis said children also need a relationship-rich environment to compensate for parents not being at home.
‘‘If only our culture was aware of how crucial that was to the outcome of their children as young adults, because generally everyone wants the best for their kids.
‘‘It is difficult for parents because we’ve found ourselves in a society where both parents need to work, sometimes both parents need to work overtime but someone has to pay the price of it and it’s often the children.’’
‘‘We changed the law to say we’re not allowed to smack kids and we
had people marching on the street for the right to be able to hit them’’.