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

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.