No hitting August 8, 2008
Over at Babble, a blogger is asking whether you should intervene when you see someone hitting their kid.
My answer? Yes.
A few years ago, I intervened at a Target store when I saw a woman whacking her little child in the head. The mother was furious with me, and other shoppers who saw me speak to the woman were nasty to me. But I still felt good about the fact that maybe that child, for the first time, had the idea planted in her head that she didn’t deserve to be hit, and that there are people in the world who do NOT hit other family members.
If you read my writing regularly, you know that I believe a day will eventually come when the idea of adults hitting children when they are displeased with them will seem as outdated and inappropriate as men hitting their wives now does.
That took a lot of courage. Good for you.
Very awesome thing to do.
I’d be curious as to what “hitting” means in this context, Katie. My wife and I both will smack, lightly, our son on the cheek if he is sassy. Does that qualify as “hitting”? If not, what does?
Dave - Only you can decide what’s appropriate for your child.
In this case, however, I know you would have agreed with me that the woman was HITTING her child in the head.
Hi Katie, I am an AP parent, and I have spanked on a few occasions. I think there is a big difference between hitting as a way of life (abuse), and spanking because your child’s behavior is so over-the-top disrespectful, inappropriate or unsafe, that it merits a severe punishment.
That said, I totally support what you did. A parent who is spanking out of love and concern for their child’s upbringing, rather than taking out their rage on their innocent child, should have NO problem calmly explaining their rationale.
I’ll be an outlier here and say it’s more understandable to me when someone totally loses it and hits a kid in anger than when someone calmly does it as part of a planned discipline strategy.
I was “smacked” on the cheeks as a child, and at 49, I still remember that it was scary, humiliating, and painful every time. I’d have so loved for someone like Katie to intervene.
I’m a parent of three (ages 25, 13, and 6), and I can’t see *any* form of hitting a child as *ever* appropriate.
How horrible. I’m glad you said something, too, and I hope I would’ve done the same in that situation (but I don’t know if I’d have the guts). I’m not surprised that the security guys would have called the police on a man hitting his wife, but not on a parent hitting her child. People are more reluctant to be seen as meddlers than they are to protect a kid from being hurt.
I agree, it does make more sense to lose it & smack your child than to do it calmly–that’s creepy! Every parent has a moment they regret, but spanking as discipline is not effective or respectful. If someone is spanking in a store, what the heck are they doing when noone is looking?
I read the original post. one poster made a very very good point That is if the child is TRULY being abused, unless you can get the child out of the situation, your do gooderism will probably result in an escalation of abuse. On the other hand, if the parent simply has a different idea of discipline than you do, you are sticking your nose where it does not belong. I notice that Katie has several essays recently complaining about other people’s nosiness about her life. Why does she not apply that to others? How people discipline their kids is NOT your business. If there is genuine abuse going on, there are far far better ways to deal with this situation that speaking directly to the people or tattling to the police. If a child is really being abused, there is a very clear line of events you need to follow to make SURE that the situation is really dealt with and that it doesn’t simply tick the parents off and lead them to take their rage out on the child. There is a HUMONGOUS difference between real abuse and discipline. You would do well to MYOB if you do not have reason to believe it is real abuse. I seriously hope that anyone that would intervene in a situation simply because they think no child ever should be spanked has it come around back to them several times over in people butting into their lives in ways that are just as damaging. Ironic that this post is on the same page as the one about the totalitarianism and control in China. This is how it starts, is someone thinking they know ideologically what is better for someone else. And for the bazillionth time, I believe people should intervene in REAL abuse. But you better be DAMN sure its abuse before you wreck someone’s life. And if it IS real abuse you need to use your God given brain to make sure you go about it in a way that won’t just make the child;s life even more hellish while making you feel like you have done your good little deed for the day.
yeah Katie. What if because you have a lot of kids one of them darts away from you and some do gooder decides that you have too many kids to supervise and take care of them properly? What if this person decides that that qualifies as neglect? Probably if you had CPS called on you because someone was concerned about neglect you no doubt have the financial resources (not to mention being very well connected legally) to completely get out of it (even if say you WERE being careless). My pet peeve is when people have too many kids to keep a proper eye on them and they chalk up the inevitable to “just the way life is” when if they had a few less kids, they would have known what was going on. However, I would never ever consider that it is any of my business to tattle on them or go up to them to give them a piece of my mind. I think people are too busy minding other people’s business over stupid stuff and trying to tell people who are probably good parents what they are doing wrong. Meanwhile, there are methheads who leave their kids for days at a time and who truly beat and abuse their kids and expose them to all sorts of sexual predators and all this while somehow CPS is too busy with the stupid stuff to pay attention to this.
The only beings I am accountable to for my parenting are my children and God. I spank because I love them more than I love the idea of being a nonspanking parent. Judge away, I don’t anyone’s approval. I hope I am doing the right thing, and that one day my children will agree. If not, well, I did what I thought was right at the time, which is all any mother can do.
Regardless of whether people spank or not, hitting a child in the head or face is obviously abusive.
Where I live simply saying “No!” in a stern voice to an out of control child will garner disapproving looks–which gets a bit old since I frequently do just that– so I can only imagine what people would do if they saw some poor kid getting smacked across the face.