Smacking Laws

[ailbhe]

So, the should you be allowed to smack your child law thing has come up again.

I think that this would be a good law. I think that outlawing smacking would make it much easier to police abuse.

I wrote here that:

One reason that the state is imposing so many Good Behaviour laws - like the drinking in the street laws that have recently come into effect all over Reading - is because the population is generally irresponsible and unwilling to become responsible. Most of the adult population I have encountered in this country need a nanny. afpers and their ilk are a minority. Many adults think that TV and PC are a new spelling for Babysitter and Education. People will sue because it rained on their wedding day and the Met Office got the long-term forecast wrong ("It was supposed to be mostly dry in August!").

How should the govt, whose only authority stems from the ability to arrest and detain, make the "adult" population more willing to accept responsibility? It's the only way I can see to avoid the necessity for nanny laws.

I do believe that a no-smacking law would reduce the severity of abuse many children have to experience before it becomes possible to do something about it through the official channels. I also believe that most instances of smacking are not abusive. I think that making it necessary for parents to find a different way of last-resort disciplining their children is less damaging than allowing ordinary abuse (parents who hit their children too much or too hard) and/or the other problem I have seen - parents who believe that ordinary smacking is enough to discipline a child, because look, when I hit her, she stops doing it! (I have seen parents who do this consistently and don't actually succeed in teaching their children anything at all except "stop when they hit you").

It would be lovely if Free NHS Parenting Classes were offered to everyone who got pregnant, along with regular support group meetings until your last child has left home (so about age 26 nowadays), but I can't see people agreeing to pay for this. People already complain about the high costs in this country. I suppose they do that everywhere; certainly they do it in Ireland now, and they used to even five years ago, when living in rural Ireland was cheaper than living in London.

I should use another rant for "you have an NHS! Have you any idea what it's like to live in a country that has no NHS?!" so I'll stop now.

Comments

[artela.livejournal.com]

being not too unlikely hyothetical situation

very small child
plug + metal pointy thing [or] very hot object
intention to experiment/explore

Do you
a) yell at small child who possibly won't understand what is wrong or
b) smack hand to prevent harm occuring

Under the new proposed legislation b would be illegal

[ailbhe]

When it has happened in my presence, I've (c) lifted child up and carried it away from electrical appliance. I have also (d) pushed / knocked child out of the way of extraordinarily sharp oncoming blade.

The major advantage of the law would be the elimination of the grey area, IMO.

[megabitch.livejournal.com]

hmmm...

(c) this has no effect other than to remove the child from the immediate area, and does not stop the desire of the child from doing it again with the next plug - when you're not looking - BTDT "The plug _bit_ me"

d) ah, shoving the child, knocking it down/over/away, or using physical force of some description to stop the child from harming itself. You realise that if you push the child and it falls and hurts itself, that's also classed as abuse under the current legislation, except that with the "reasonable use" stuff that you don't like, you would have an acceptable defence to the charges.

The world is NOT black and white, it is all shades of grey and no amount of PC legislation will make the world black and white.

I'm sure that all who know me well have heard/read my rants on this subject before, so I won't subject you all to them again.

[ailbhe]

I'm not sure that physical prevention which may or may not lead to injury can be classed as the same as discipline, honestly. I'd need to look into the existing laws to find out; ISTR from reading about First Aid that they are covered by seperate laws. But yes, I regret having struck that child. However, I also blame its parents for allowing it to run free in a restaurant kitchen in high tourist season at lunchtime.

I understand that it seems like an oversimplification - by removing the grey area in legislation, the grey area in practice should get bigger. The bit I don't understand is that it seems to work. Swedish children are generally well behaved in public places, at least (and they don't get strapped into pushchairs and fed crisps the way they do hereabouts, which infuriates me), and have a lower child injury and death rate than British children. It's all there on the WHO site.

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

You have to be careful quoting statistics like this out of context. I suspect there is no evidence whatsoever that the lower child injury rate is directly due to a ban on smacking, or any other law - it's probably just as closely correlated with the number of TVs or cars per family.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

C) Use plug guards in all plugs that aren't currently in use, even ones that are high enough that the child can't reach them even when standing on a chair. Use a stove guard to prevent children pulling pots off the stove top and make it harder for them to reach elements. If necessary use a gate to keep children out of the kitchen while parents are cooking.

Prevention counts for an awful lot here. I know some kids are going to get into stuff no matter what, but there's no need for it to be easy for them to do so.

[liadnan]

But it wouldn't eliminate the grey area. It would move the grey area from the current situation where the grey area is recognised and broadly defined in law to one where the grey area depended entirely on the discretion of the CPS officer in charge. And frankly I'm not keen on that, though there are plenty of areas where this is true anyway (in most areas the CPS have a discretion whether or not to prosecute, and of course the tribunal generally have a discretion on sentence). Life is full of grey areas, I think it's right that the law should recognise that explicitly, rather than pretend the grey areas aren't there formally but informally, out of public view, acknowledge that they are.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I successfully taught all of my children not to touch hot things or stick their fingers in plugs by using the word "no", which they all understood before they could crawl, combined with physically removing them from the object in question. If they have developed enough to learn to associate a slap with an object, they have developed enough to learn to associate the combination of "no" and removal.

I have smacked them for other reasons, most recently about three years ago, and I am ashamed of it and will never do it again. I don't think any adult misbehaviour justifies non-consensual corporal punishment, and I don't see why children's rights should be any less.

I will add, incidentally, that in my experience of occasions when I did smack my children, it was less effective than a calm verbal intervention, because it was more distressing and the distress got in the way of the lesson.

smacking as "discipline"

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i don't have children, but i have basically reared my two younger siblings for years because my mother was out of it, i've taken care of a friend's toddler and infant for a year and a half, and i've trained lots of animals, including stray and abused ones.

i have yet to have smacked any of them. training can be done without punishment altogether, if one is smart enough to learn how. humans are damn well smart enough.

there are three main things i do: prevention, danger training, and praise. prevention means to make really deadly dangerous things around the house inaccessible to the really young and not-yet-very smart ones -- put things out of the way, lock them up, use guards, and when out and about in dangerous places, use leashes, harnesses, enclosures. i have no problem with young kids on leashes; i think it's a bigger issue for dogs, but dogs grow up much faster. :)

danger training basically means to introduce a word or sound that means "do not do this or you will hurt yourself". "no" is a fine word for it; short and sharp and attention-getting. i use it right from the start, especially immediately before i see the child/animal is about to hurt zirself a little on something. that associates the word in no time flat, really. and of course it can be extended to cover other situations, where danger is less the issue, but destruction of something is, or other things that are undesirable (i try to keep that category small though; i am not bigtime into forbidding things just because i wouldn't do them, and i give creatures on leashes a lot of leeway as to where they want to walk, instead of just dragging them along with me).

i also like age-appropriate analogous demonstrations for kids -- seeing what a car does even when it drives only very slowly over a previously beautiful orange makes an impression.

along with that goes loads of praise for everything they do right.

and by the time kids are smarter than animals they can be reasoned with. the best animal trainers i know, the ones who get really superb results and sometimes astounding performances from animals, tend to be those who don't punish. that ought to tell parents something about their young children.

*whew*, this got long. what can i say; as a formerly abused human i have a very clear opinion on the subject.