I am too allowed to hit my children

[ailbhe]

Today, after a morning of fruitless, tedious, grownup errands, Linnea stopped as we passed a bus-stop and decided she was staying there until we got a bus home for lunch. I asked her to come on a few times, then picked her up.

"That's more than I'd do," said the sweet little old lady waiting on the bench. "What he wants is a good smack."

I didn't respond.

"But you're not allowed to smack them any more, are you?"

"Oh yes," I said, "I'm not allowed to hit adults but I'm definitely allowed to hit children. The law says I can. Of course, it doesn't do any good."

"That's not what I'm always hearing," she said. Then she went into a complicated mutter about children and smacking and the law, and finally started addressing Linnea directly, telling her not to slouch, not to pick her nose, not to be naughty. When she called Linnea a bad child I snapped.

"At least she doesn't criticise random strangers in public."

We walked off, me shaking. I wish I hadn't felt I had to stay and listen to her for so long. Some sort of politeness filter stopped me walking off mid-conversation. But a woman further along the row of bus-stops smiled at me.

Comments

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

A woman whacked her 3 year old across the back of the head in the nursery cloakroom last week because he didn't respond to her immediately. I thought he was behaving perfectly fine & I cringed at the unexpectedness of it.

[k425.livejournal.com]

At the pool a couple of weeks ago OldBloke came up to me and asked why another father had just smacked his son on the bottom - neither of us could see any behaviour that warranted smacking. Mind you, it was the same dad who kept shouting at his lad to leave us alone, but didn't actually attempt to entertain his son himself.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

TBH, I was more concerned at the reaction to the child's very normal behaviour (ie ignoring mum when she shouted at him to stop playing with his friends) that shocked me more than the whack.

[ailbhe]

My top favourite of these is the boy who was repeatedly being smacked for hitting his father. "Don't hit me!" *smack*. Over and over again. SURELY it must become obvious it's not working, after the first few iterations?

[allyphoe.livejournal.com]

Some people have no sense of irony, either.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Ugh, just reading this makes me livid. I don't know what I would have said to this person, but I would have said something far angrier than what you said.

I once watched a toddler throwing a tantrum on a bus. He was loud, but his mother and grandmother were both being amazingly calm about it. As a result of their calmness, I think, a couple of idiots on the bus started loudly admonishing them to smack the child, shut him up, etc. The mother reacted angrily and the whole thing turned into a shouting match between the adults (very unusual for an English bus, I must say). It was ironic because the shouting adults were making as much or more noise as the child had been (he had actually shut up by that time out of astonishment). There was also a rather ugly race dynamic because the mother/grandmother/child were black and the people shouting at them to smack the child were white.

I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to say in such a tense environment, and I was very tense by that point myself, but finally, as the child and women were disembarking, I said to them, "Please do ignore ignorant people who tell you to hit your child". Or something like that. I was holding Charlie in my arms. The women smiled and the idiots glared at me for the remainder of the trip.

These rude strangers were elderly as well. I know it's partly an issue of generation gap, but as an adult who still bears the mental scars of childhood physical abuse, I still find it hard to excuse them on those grounds.

[ailbhe]

Oh, because smacking a tantrumming toddler is such an effective measure!

Actually, it might have been in that case, because a child who isn't used to being smacked will likely be terribly shocked by it, and rightly so, but the indignant, hurt aftermath wouldn't be worth it. And a child who is accustomed to being smacked is much more likely to escalate a tantrum than to stop it. Jeez.

Well done for speaking up. It's hard. It makes me horribly shaky.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Sadly, not. But it's why I don't want to use hitting as a punishment. What does it teach, exactly? "I'm bigger than you so I can hit, but you can't hit people you're bigger than"?

[tchemgrrl.livejournal.com]

I can't help but wonder if smacking her would be as effective as she thinks smacking children is.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Between the complicated muttering and the extended "correcting", I wonder if the old lady in question hasn't gone a bit dotty.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I witnessed the classic of "Don't *whack* hit *whack* your sister!" *whack*

I was so boggled that I just couldn't say anything.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Oh, because smacking a tantrumming toddler is such an effective measure!

Yeah, ethics aside, it is a stupid tactic for purely practical reasons.

Well done for speaking up. It's hard. It makes me horribly shaky

Thanks, but I'm sure I was only able to speak up because my child and I weren't the subject of the criticism. Had my child been the focus, I probably would have ended up babbling and in tears, which is my usual method of dealing with unusual stress, and makes me very annoyed with myself.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

indeed :)

[dozydormouse.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you weren't on a bus with my grandmother? Were you in SE3?

It always puzzles me, if someone hit your demented elderly mother in a nursing home because she was being irritating and made them lose their temper there would be a public outcry and quite rightly assualt charges. So why is it considered socially acceptable to hit a child.

Mind you I speak as an adult who has been slapped only twice in her life both times as a toddler after terrifying my parents:

Once when I stuck my fingers in the electric socket - to see what would happen... The second time I set fire to the wastepaper basket in the back garden also to see what would happen. I was removed from my childminder after that and went to a Montessori nursery to see if they would engage my inquiring mind a little more. Fortunately they did...

One of my fellow pupils still a friend now was there because she had pushed her nanny into the duck pond and another because she had locked her au-pair in the kitchen. We were allowed structured 'what will happen' at the Montessorri but it was heavily supervised.

Of course I am not a parent so I am told by other parents my views on hitting children are worthless. I do know I have worked with other peoples and would never dream of it.