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

[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.