Line in the sand

[ailbhe]

I've decided that I am just not going to accept "hitting children" or "physically assaulting children" as something grownups can't help doing. If I'm losing my temper that badly, I need help. I have a list of excuses, reasons or triggers as long as anyone's arm, but that doesn't make it ok, and I am allowed to insist that no-one persuade me that it's actually ok to hit children sometimes.

I really, really don't want them to grow up thinking it's ok to hit children "if you're cross enough" or something. I don't want them to fight the same urge to hurt I have to fight.

Also, I want everyone to breathe properly so I can get some sleep, please.

Comments

[serene]

I like your line in the sand. I like your willingness to call yourself on your shit. I like you.

We all fuck up. Not all of us (cf. my own mother) have the courage to say to a child, "what I did was wrong, and it's always wrong, and I never should have done it, and I'm going to get help so I won't do it again."

[sfred]

I agree with this comment.

[rmc28]

I agree. Ailbhe, you are wonderful.

[gool_duck]

This is a hard thing to do and you are doing it. That will take courage and effort and hard work. I like you and I am rooting for you.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I think this is a wise and necessary line in the sand. It's not okay to hit children, full stop -- now you have the task of picking up after doing something not-okay and figuring out how to fix the situation. (As you know so do I).

I'm thinking of you.
*hugs you supportively*

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that it's not okay, and that your children shouldn't grow up thinking that it's okay.

I think you are a good person, despite fucking up, and I worry about you. I worry about you more than I worry about your children, actually.

And yes on the breathing. I found the video terrifying; I can't imagine what it must have been like in real time in the middle of the night.

[ailbhe]

That video is the breathing that wasn't so scary. The scary bit was bad enough that I didn't even consider not waking her long enough to video anything.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[ailbhe]

Yeah.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Good for you. I made a similar decision a few months ago when I ruled out spanking even in extreme situations because I could not honestly explain to them that it wasn't OK for them to hit, but it was OK for me to. So I called the family together and told them I was taking spanking off the table, and I was sorry I hadn't made that decision earlier.

I can't say I've never hit one of my kids since then. But it wasn't OK the time I did, and I said so, and apologized, and I continue working on it. I admire you for working on it too. It's not always easy, but I'm increasingly certain it's the right way.

As a side effect which tells me I'm on the right path, my kids, while they still argue incessantly, don't hit each other nearly as often as they used to.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I should add that I said, and absolutely meant, that I admire you for working on it, because in some ways the hard part isn't refraining from doing wrong. The hard part is doing wrong, knowing it's wrong, and living with the knowledge that one has done wrong without trying to justify it. You're doing that, and you're trying to stop the hitting, and that's a valuable lesson for your children itself, since whether or not they make the same mistakes you do, they'll inevitably make their own mistakes, and do wrongs they have to live with. Congratulations on facing your own wrongs honestly and unflinchingly -- and please try to give yourself as much praise for that as you are giving yourself blame for hitting. You've earned it.

[jexia]

I appreciate this viewpoint. However, "not accepting" isn't the same as "forever blaming yourself for having done it".

*hugs*

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is what I think, too. *also hugs*

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I think the point of having a boundary like this, where you say, "I am not coping and I need help", is that you set it where the behaviour is bad but not something that either hurts your children irreparably or that you can never forgive yourself for. The way you respond to it - that it demonstrates to you that you are not coping, that you ask for help and put things in place to make sure it doesn't happen again - is the important stuff.

Lots of love. Is your mother coming today? I hope that makes it all seem easier.

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

This.
and more hugs and love.
I'm struggling to forgive myself for the way I treated my kids - but they seem to have forgiven me.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

My mum spent my late twenties thinking of things she'd done wrong and needed to apologise for! They were always things I'd completely forgotten, and not the things I genuinely remembered as making a big impression on me!

(The things that made a big impression on me weren't necessarily things she did "wrong", but looking back I suspect they were throwaway comments to endless streams of questions that for some reason I picked up on as deadly serious and important and it was years before I was old enough to put a context to them. You never know what your kids are going to remember as significant!)

[ailbhe]

I'm not, really. But the other times it's happened I've kind of been talked into "It happens, I'm still a good parent," and actually, no, it's not good enough, and I want to make sure it doesn't happen again. I deserve better than this.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Correct. It's not okay. Which means that doing so was a mistake. Not a sin, not a mark of Cain, not a sign of being a bad person.

A mistake.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

*hug*

you definitely won't get any argument from me.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Totally. Of course, you can forgive and move on. Once Linnea has done so too. :-)

She probably has already. :-)

[ailbhe]

Forgive, yes. Move on, harder. Need to make sure it's much less likely to happen again. Needs work.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Yup. Lots of work. We'll help where we can. :-)

Although loads of sleep might be better, first! ;-)

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

And, of course, there is the whole load of work that has nothing to do with Linnea. About you coming to terms with yourself, that you can act like this, when under huge stress. That you are, ya know, human. Breakable. Broken at times.

Big deals, all that. You deserve the have the time to work and process on it, with support from the rest of the human race.

:-)

[ailbhe]

Oh, she's fine. This isn't about Linnea.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

You're right, it's not OK, and if it's happening, the right thing to do is to seek help. It is, however, an understandable error that good people sometimes fall into - that doesn't make it OK, but it does make it not something that proves someone is a bad person. Chiefly, it is understandable because children, being children, don't stick to the social rules that (generally!) make it straightforward not to want to hit adults, who have learned to stick to those rules. I strongly suspect that the instinct to hit in certain extreme circumstances when children violate adult social norms is not something that's going to be eradicated from humans any time soon - in particular, I don't see any reason to think that someone who was never hit as a child will be immune to the instinct. Not following this instinct is a civilisation mark, and civilisation is not very deep!

I hope you will find it easier from now on. Reading these last few posts have reminded me that it's a very long time (years) since I felt the urge to hit C (no credit to me: C has become a pretty civil young man). I am sorry that I did give in to it a small number of times when he was younger, but I'm confident I'll never do so again. I don't think he remembers any of those occasions. I do remember several occasions on which my mother hit me - on the last I was 16, and she hit me when I came back from school because of something I'd said before I left!!

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Any child, even the nicest of them, can be utterly infuriating at times, and the urge to give them a sharp swat across the back of the leg can be truly overwhelming. One tries not to give in to it - but if you did, it doesn't make you a bad person! We all do things we wish we hadn't...!

I suppose the thing is to talk it over with her and agree on consequences next time her behaviour becomes unacceptable so that you can remind her of the consequence before she crosses the line rather than after. And if that provokes the response, "Don't care!" as it sometimes can - well, maybe she doesn't at that moment, but she might when you enforce it! Either way, you have a weapon that isn't smacking and she knows what the penalty will be.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Anecdotally, I'd say don't make more of a big deal out of this that it needs to be. It's a mistake. You're not some super important person whose occasional lapses in serenity, whose mistakes, have world shattering consequences. You;re a mom like all the other moms in the world, and you'd do better by your children by acknowledging and accepting that rather than by driving yourself to despair over a momentary lack of perfection.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh; and I don't for a moment wish to imply that hitting Linnea was anything other than a very serious mistake that you should try very hard to never repeat. It happened though, and at this point the best way of ensuring it sticks in her head as a bad incident is making a big drama out of it.

[ailbhe]

This was already a repeat, and it's very clear to me that something needs to change. I need something to alleviate the 60 hours a week, I need some way to make up the rest I'm not getting while A is ill, etc.

This is so much more about me than about L that it's difficult for me to see why people are talking so much about L. She's fine; from her point of view I flipped out, I was horrible, I apologised, we're friends again, it's fine.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

That sounds a lot better. "Something needs to change because I'm over-worked and miserable" is more reassuring to me than "something needs to change because I'm a terrible person who's done n unforgivable thing to my child". I guess I worry that you're beating yourself up counter-productively.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

PS I see from the thread that I'm not the only one who interpreted "I need help" as "I need a psychiatrist" not "I need a babysitter"... Personally I think a babysitter would be more help! And also coming out for dinner with me like you keep promising. xx

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

My children are 10 & 7. I get angry & tearful at times with PMT (& always have since the age of 14) but I have never hit my children or even felt the urge to want to.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I looked at this several times, and then got distracted for a week or so by my own health crisis, and now I came back to say that I honestly can't tell whether this is a supportive response or not. Did you intend it to be?

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

It's meant to be supportive.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Just wondering how you were, and how things were going, and if Astrid's all better. :-)