To think hitting someone else's child....

[pinkballetflats]

is NOT ok?

Acquaintance of mine is today boasting online that she hit a 5-year-old last night because of his bad manners while ToTing. Yes, the little angel needed to be told it is not okay to barge through everyone else and knock a smaller child over in the process, but hitting? She was pulled up on it but her attitude is her house, her rules and a slap on the hand is appropriate.

This isn't the first time she's boasted about hitting stranger's children. She did it at a restaurant once too because the toddler was pulling on her hair...fair enough, something needed to be said...but instead she turned around and slapped the child on the hand.

Am I just being precious in thinking this is the completely wrong way to handle either situation?

A bit cross sparkly.
I wonder if it was from the stress that you get when your DC is sacred, just misdirected IYSWIM.

Thanks . I think it can go either way can't it? You either think it's fine and "never did me any harm", or can't imagine how they could have done it. I waited till I was older to have my dc as well and so had already got quite a lot of distance and insight into how dysfunctional it all was. There was a lot of muttering from them about no rules or discipline and how "naughty" he was when my ds was only a year old . I knew I couldn't have that so stamped on it hard. It still rears its head though and my dc are 10 and 7 now.

Sorry. What I mean is if you are dishing out physical punishment, (probably a manifestation of your anger and frustration) then your child tries to protect themselves, it slows it all down, you get to see their fear, it becomes apparent that you are hurting them, and I think that can make people more angry IYSWIM. The child is "making you" recognise their hurt and your "wrongdoing" and that makes a person feel guilty and frustrated. I think.

I think it was about control with my Mum.

And yes. I think it can go either way. You are obviously an insightful and thoughtful person. Your DCs are all the better for that.

I've had certain people who i'll keep nameless recommend I bite my baby (8 months at the time) to teach him a lesson when he bites me

I have heard that too 2tired (although no one's ever dared say it to me.) and I have also seen police action taken against a woman who bit her baby and left a mark.
Biter beware.

I just don't get it, even if it wasn't assault It wouldn't teach then anything positive.

Biting babies? That IS indeed treating your child like the enemy before they're even old enough to know there own name. My little sister was a biter and my Mum used to bite her back, leaving big nasty teeth marks on her little arm .

Their not there

Thats so sad

Apparently everyone did this though. It was the seventies so I am not sure how true that is.

Sorry sparkly

My 8 mo dd is a biter. She's teething.
I could no more sink my teeth into her beautiful skin (omg, just the thought of it makes me shudder) than eat a herd of elephants.

I didn't arrive until the 80's so im not sure on that one

It was not uncommon.
I know someone who's ds is now 20 and her health visitor advised biting him as a response to his toddler biting.
I think that was not best practice at the time tbh, but that was the 90s, so she was likely to just have been out of date.
Shocking though isn't it really?

OP YAdefNBU.

Truly, God help the person who saw fit to hit (or any of the other 'nicer' euphemisms for the same act...) one of my children.

And to those who say it i: causes no damage; & ii: that when they do it ('it' being 'Common Assault Upon A Child if it is someone who is NOT the parent who dishes it out; or IS the parent if it is enough to leave a mark &/or another few quite specific impacts) 'it' is done mindfully; deliberately; etc etc; AND with full capacity.....

You are, bluntly, nuts. And pretty vile. And a pretty poor parent if you don't possess other parenting skills to discipline and guide your child.

And no, before anyone leaps in with the (so oft used excuse/'reason') "It did ME no harm" - then I would suggest you seriously DO look at the sheer MASS of peer reviewed research that says otherwise.... INCLUDING those surrounding those who HAVE been impacted by it; and it then playing itself out in many subtle and unconscious forms when they theselves become a parent... I.E. the PRECISE population of people who form the "It did me no harm..." brigade.

Very lastly, I DID hit my eldest child once when I was heavily pregnant with DC2 and I was under the most enormous of stresses (NONE of which were to do with him) and it would be total BS to say I did that as he "deserved it" or that I had done it "mindfully" and as a form of discipline. That would be PURE bollocks. As - quite simply - and no, I am NOT proud of this, but it IS the total truth) - that sole time I 'tapped'/'hit'/smacked' my 3 year old PFB was because I was in the most enormous of distress and I just lost it.

I just lost it and thus did that due SOLELY to that.

And even now, many many years on, I - very very genuinely - can still see his huge brown eyes staring up at me in utter bewilderment; fear; & just total confusion; and as tears rolled silently down his face. I was instantly in tears and felt UTTERLY neauseated.

And it nauseates me even now.

Just as those of you who state you see it fit and appropriate to physically hurt a child to 'teach it a lesson' etc etc also nauseate me.

Apparently everyone did this though. It was the seventies so I am not sure how true that is

No, not true. My children were all born in the 70s and among our peers, we knew one family who smacked. One. And even they didn't bite. I didn't smack my four, and they don't smack their own children.

And for the very few posters who think corporal punishment is a good thing, and teaches children a sharp, memorable lesson...you were probably not at school in the 50s, when teachers happily belted little children day in, day out, for such offences as forgetting a book, or damaging a school jotter (notebook?) by rubbing the eraser too hard. They used the same line - "That's what you get for...etc etc...you won't forget next time, will you?"

The victims in my school tended to be the poor kids, the neglected ones, the unwashed, under-slept, under-fed ones - those with no-one to defend them. Bullying, inadequate adults taking their anger out on the weak, that's all.

If it worked as a deterrant, or as a "lesson", why was it always the same children? It was cruelty, plain and simple, and the bloody injustice of it still breaks my heart.