Jonsaba with her youngest child.
“My parents hit me, and I turned out fine.”
If you talk to someone who supports the physical discipline of children, chances are that this will be at least part of what you hear. Yet research is consistently clear that corporal punishment like spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, humiliating or insulting children does more harm than good, especially when it happens at the hands of a parent or other primary caregiver - and especially under age 5.
So what’s the alternative? That was Jonsaba’s biggest question.
“Whenever my child made a mistake, the first thing I would do was beat them,” she remembers. After all, that’s how her own parents raised her. She didn’t know there was another way.
Responsive parenting: The uphill battle
Jonsaba lives in a rural community in the center of a small West African country, The Gambia. Here, life is based around the rhythms of agriculture. The change of the seasons dictates when to plant and when to harvest crops like peanut, rice, millet and sorghum, and most families depend on the land for their livelihood. As is traditional in many parts of the world, raising children is seen as women’s work.
But with so much to do on the farm and in the fields, small children – especially their misbehavior – can add levels of stress that busy mothers have little time or patience for. Abuse and neglect are commonplace.
“Even creating time to breastfeed our infants, for instance, used to be a problem, because we are always under pressure from our routine domestic work,” says Sira, another mom in Jonsaba’s community. “But since this program began, now we realize that we are making a big mistake by neglecting our babies.”
In May 2021, ChildFund The Gambia won a grant from the World Bank to start a responsive parenting program in the area. The program, launched that July, aims to supply 1,000 parents and other caregivers in the region with the tools they need to give young children a strong start in life.
Responsive parenting is exactly what it sounds like: the ability to respond appropriately to a young child’s needs for health, mental stimulation and protection.
Lamin Ceesay, a community leader who supervises the ChildFund program in four different communities in the region, says it is organized into regular training sessions on responsive parenting for parents of kids 5 and under. All the parents and caregivers in the community come together to learn about different topics on their children’s health and well-being. If a parent misses a session, the program facilitators come to visit them at home to make sure they’re getting the information.
“We began with the introduction to early childhood development,” Ceesay explains. “We also trained them on the importance of child attachment, play and communication, which is very important – for parents and children to be playing.”
Lamin Ceesay (in yellow) sets up for a responsive parenting session.
From there, the training sessions have covered the ins and outs of positive discipline, an alternative to corporal punishment endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. This approach to discipline focuses on reinforcing appropriate behaviors, setting limits, redirecting children and setting expectations – and science says it’s much better for the architecture of developing brains.
But is it more effective in terms of improving the relationship between parents and children? According to a similar ChildFund program conducted in The Gambia in 2020, the answer is a resounding yes. 62% of parents and caregivers who participated in the program reported that the methods it taught them, like making time to play with and talk gently to their children, sparked “a lot of change” in their households.
As for Jonsaba, she had her doubts about these methods, but these days she feels differently.
Embracing responsive parenting at home
“We are now closer to the children, both mothers and fathers,” Jonsaba says. “I have stopped beating them. We are communicating with them using our new skills.”
Participants say that another big benefit of the program is its inclusive nature – the fact that it’s for moms and dads, not just women.
“Before, our husbands played a minimal role in caring for infant children, but now they also help us women by playing with them and making toys for them,” Jonsaba says. Some men even change diapers now.
For Adama, a participating dad, the program has opened his eyes to the power of his own role in caring for his children. “Before, even if we [men] were busy doing nothing other than chatting at the Bantaba [the community hub] or brewing attaya [a locally made tea], when the kids would cry or need some urgent care, we would call their mothers to come and take care of them.
“This attitude of ours used to disrupt our women’s work. It put the burden on them and caused lots of inconvenience for the children. Now, we don’t call the women anymore. We attend to the children [ourselves].”
The weight off the mothers’ minds is palpable, and children are reaping the benefits. Imagine being a toddler whose dad has begun to take an interest in them, and whose parents now speak to them gently instead of yelling or beating them.
Ismaila, 3, smiles for the camera.
“This project could not have come at a better time,” says Khadija, another dad in the program. “It is like a dream to us to learn these new skills on how to raise our children better.”
We find over and over again that when parents have the tools and information they need to make positive choices about their children, they do. These tools can help them build stronger, healthier relationships with their kids that last a lifetime.
Learn more about the measurable difference that responsive parenting and other early childhood development programs can make in our new Impact Report. And next time you hear someone advocating for physical violence against children, tell them about Jonsaba’s new tradition.
