I do understand what you're getting at, and I have had exposure to mental illness myself, if not to the thorough extent that you have.
Small children (pre-school age) do not reason as older children or adults do. Neither do people under psychosis. But they are also different in their differences.
Small children do not always understand the concept of things which are important for most forms of punitive correction: shame, sorrow, regret, that sort of thing. That isn't to say they can't, but that this is one of those things which is still developing at that age. As they get older, these things come into their grasp, and by the time they start school they should be effective tools in their own right, but for younger children, not always. This varies depending on the child, and for the same child depending on time, circumstance and mood. A child may be devastated by a telling-off at one point, then think it a wonderful game the next.
This is my experience: my 3yo is playful, and enjoys playfighting. (She'll jump on top of me and wrestle, and I will, of course, lose with great drama.) If she tries to run onto the road, after I stop her, she is just as likely to think it a game when I tell her off. If she doesn't, wonderful, job done. If she does, though, she'll try it again, to keep playing. She will start deliberately running onto the road to get a reaction. The second time she does it, she gets told off, more forcefully. This may well just be seen as escalation of the game, though. She tries it again, she gets retrieved and given one short smack on the well-covered bottom. It doesn't hurt, but it does shock. Now it is not a game. Now she knows that running on to the road is not a game, that it is bad.
Children of that age tend to react to punishments much more immediately than older children. An older child, you can take away a favourite toy or set a time out, and they will make the connection to their behaviour (even if they do chafe and curse). A small child will just scream for the return of the toy: they don't, to a great extent can't make the connection yet. It does come, but in the meantime...
Psychotic patients are different. While they are under psychosis, then slapping them is as pointless as is trying to reason with them: they are incapable of changing their behaviour, let alone understanding why it is bad, or else they understand but can't stop doing it anyway. restraint is necessary to prevent harm until such point as the meds kick in, or the psychosis passes and they can function again. There is nothing that smacking can change, and so it is pointless cruelty.
Schools, again, corporal punishment is uncalled for in any way. First, by the time children reach school, the mental attributes required for correction through reason are established. Moreover, the structure of the teacher-student relationship is set up such that students wouldn't dare try things on their teacher that they would pull on their parents all the time. So in that sense, the very aura of authority of any decent teacher is itself a tool which is not available to the parents, should they need it.
Re: the former Psych worker, here
Small children (pre-school age) do not reason as older children or adults do. Neither do people under psychosis. But they are also different in their differences.
Small children do not always understand the concept of things which are important for most forms of punitive correction: shame, sorrow, regret, that sort of thing. That isn't to say they can't, but that this is one of those things which is still developing at that age. As they get older, these things come into their grasp, and by the time they start school they should be effective tools in their own right, but for younger children, not always. This varies depending on the child, and for the same child depending on time, circumstance and mood. A child may be devastated by a telling-off at one point, then think it a wonderful game the next.
This is my experience: my 3yo is playful, and enjoys playfighting. (She'll jump on top of me and wrestle, and I will, of course, lose with great drama.) If she tries to run onto the road, after I stop her, she is just as likely to think it a game when I tell her off. If she doesn't, wonderful, job done. If she does, though, she'll try it again, to keep playing. She will start deliberately running onto the road to get a reaction. The second time she does it, she gets told off, more forcefully. This may well just be seen as escalation of the game, though. She tries it again, she gets retrieved and given one short smack on the well-covered bottom. It doesn't hurt, but it does shock. Now it is not a game. Now she knows that running on to the road is not a game, that it is bad.
Children of that age tend to react to punishments much more immediately than older children. An older child, you can take away a favourite toy or set a time out, and they will make the connection to their behaviour (even if they do chafe and curse). A small child will just scream for the return of the toy: they don't, to a great extent can't make the connection yet. It does come, but in the meantime...
Psychotic patients are different. While they are under psychosis, then slapping them is as pointless as is trying to reason with them: they are incapable of changing their behaviour, let alone understanding why it is bad, or else they understand but can't stop doing it anyway. restraint is necessary to prevent harm until such point as the meds kick in, or the psychosis passes and they can function again. There is nothing that smacking can change, and so it is pointless cruelty.
Schools, again, corporal punishment is uncalled for in any way. First, by the time children reach school, the mental attributes required for correction through reason are established. Moreover, the structure of the teacher-student relationship is set up such that students wouldn't dare try things on their teacher that they would pull on their parents all the time. So in that sense, the very aura of authority of any decent teacher is itself a tool which is not available to the parents, should they need it.
Am I making sense?