Children and parents

This is something that i noticed from the clinic session in KL today on psychiatric disorder. Parents sometime do not seems to know how to handle their child when they throw the tantrums, more so if they are so-called "mentally challenged" children. They can be so hard to handle that even the pediatric doctors can surrender themselves.

Oftenly, most parents will acknowledge the behaviour of the child even when it's something naughty and bad. This sometime can serve as a reinforcement to the child. As children know that they are getting their parent's attention by repeating the same bad behaviours and applying the same tricks on their parents, they will probably get more excited and do it more often. thus, sometime the best way is just to ignore the child.
However, sometime i believe that earlier education should be carried out in telling the right and the wrong to the children. Reasoning is probably the best way of them learning on how to survive in this world. This is more so happening in the Asian countries whereby they are still using their teaching way of using "Cane". I cant doubt the effectiveness in handling the children. BUT, IS THIS THE BEST WAY? Instead of telling everything only with "NO",please do explain to the child why they can't simply perform something so that they actually understand what they are doing. Well, the truth is, it's not applicable to those who are mentally retarded as they sometime do not understand reasons.