Parenting Professor says that she supports smacking children

[ThisAmpleCritic]

Quote:
Prof Ellie Lee, a family and parenting researcher at the University of Kent …supports the use of smacking, said: "It would be great if we could just be nice to children and think they would just be nice back. But the reality of it is, is that in order for children to understand the rules of society, and to learn how to behave in a way that is moral, and that is good, we have to have boundaries, and boundaries have to be backed up."

AIBU to think this is a disgusting attitude and her credentials should be challenged? Children deserve protection from
violence and aggression from their caregivers. Why should they not be given the same rights as adults, who are free to test boundaries without fear of physical assault?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2eyke83yz9o

Do you know why she screeched?

I think this is kind of the whole point @TheHateUGive : people tell you what you ‘should’ do and in the moment it either doesn’t work or isn’t possible or practical, but then you feel bad because it works, right? So you keep trying but it still doesn’t work. And then you feel like a failure. I’m saying I think it would be better if we dropped this pretence and accept some stages are very, very challenging and while there are strategies and approaches that help really it is a case of ‘don’t do that or I’ll tell you not to do it again.’

Or shift the goal from expecting immediate peaceful compliance from.a cranky 4 year old to laying a foundation where what you say goes, even if you're cranky and X aged.

100%
The idea that if explaining, times outs, punishments don’t work for something it’s just incredibly unlikely smacking them will suddenly mean they understand that X behaviour is unacceptable.

Sometimes children will exhibit unacceptable behaviour, sometimes that ‘bad behaviour’ will be developmentally normal, they need to learn societal norms, what we can do, how we treat others, that it’s not okay to tiredness or anger out on others etc. There’s simply no way hitting them does that.

@followtheswallow Or he didn’t outgrow the behaviour- your consistent approach (if that is what you did) which seemingly in the moment had a long term impact.

I see parents whose kids were wild at 2, at 5, at 10 and are disrespectful teens. They throw their arms in the air and go ‘but nothing works’. And I see those whose kids are mighty difficult and they hold the line and at some point it clicks. Maybe later than others but it does.

I remember one of DS1’s friends who was a bright but very lively child and her parents had to end her fourth birthday early (her own party!) because she was behaving so badly. Nothing they did worked. No de-escalation. She was hitting the other kids, screaming, out of control. They told us very calmly, listen maybe we should end the evening here. We quickly ushered our kids out. And they shut down the party.
She’s a delightful teen, not traumatised by this incident, and I know the parents have remained loving but consistent in their approach. Now at 4/5 years old many of her classmates had outgrown the toddler style tantrums (and graduated to the whining ones) and she hadn’t. But it was a phase and some very consistent parenting paid out in the long run.

I have a friend whose child was rude to her at 2/3/4/5 and would hit her and she would say ‘darling don’t do that’ and now he is 12 and swears at her regularly and she says ‘darling don’t do that’ and well…She also tells me her son has very few friends..

Possibly. I doubt it though. I just don’t think toddlers have any impulse control at all, but perversely they want to control others and their environment. I remember being really stressed with ds on one occasion just before he turned three, so similar age to dd now, where he just targeted this other little boy at a park. He was just minding his business and playing and ds just tried to chase him wherever he went andtried to stop him playing on whatever equipment it was, physically pushing him. (Obviously i intervened to stop and warned him we’d take him home if he continued, which I then did.)

When I look back at that incident with the benefit of hindsight and knowing ds is (mostly) a reasonable human who makes friends easily and can share and take turns (sometimes with bad grace it has to be said!) I think a lot of it was driven by anxiety and a need for control in particular situations. I really don’t think consequences of deterrents came into it at all. Of course, that absolutely doesn’t mean he should be allowed to hurt others or intimidate them: that was an immediate removal from the situation scenario. But not as a sanction but as a way to manage, if that makes sense.

Maybe that’s my (very rambly!) point; that some behaviour is just waiting to grow out of but doesn’t mean we have to sit back helplessly and tolerate (although occasionally yeah you do …!)

But you intervened! If you didn’t he would still be lashing out at other kids in the park every time he wanted to be in control. By removing him you showed him that this was not an appropriate way to express that anxiety/need for control.

Like I said I have another friend whose nine year will NOT let her mum talk to any of us if she’s around because in her mum’s words ‘she feels left out and doesn’t like her mum’s attention not being on her.’ She starts with some gentle hugs and throwing herself and trying to distract her mum and then proceeds to interrupting, saying ‘when are they leaving’ etc and being rude to us. And the mum is quite helpless. Now she could have nipped this in the bud a long time ago. And you would handle this differently at 2/3 and differently at 7/8 but you have to be pro-active.

I did intervene but I don’t think that made any long term difference.

Parenting is multi faceted. It is far more than consequences (I know you weren’t suggesting this, but I do think that this point sometimes gets lost on MN amongst all of the And what are the consequences for this behaviour, OP?)

Sometimes consequences make little if any difference. It’s either a performance for other parents or it’s to stop a situation getting worse, like the park one.

I have physically restrained a six year old who was going berserk. It took half an hour, easily, and during those long minutes I was bitten multiple times on my arms, my legs were kicked, and clumps of my hair were pulled out. The child gradually calmed down. You can learn safe techniques for restraining children who are a danger to themselves and/ or others online. Learning the techniques makes you feel confident that you will succeed in the aim of calming the child so you won't do anything rash in a state of panic.
(This incident happened in the course of my work).

When one of my DCs in particular was a toddler, she had a lot of refusal behaviour and since I had no other choice but to get to school on time to pick up my older children, I did indeed fold her into sitting position using my forearm to keep her from arching her back, and slipped the straps over her thrashing head as best I could. We would then proceed to school with her kicking and screaming in the back seat. It took many months of this technique before DD decided that she had no use refusing the car seat. No bones were broken, nobody but me ended up bruised.

@mathanxiety i don’t doubt it. But I do maintain there is a difference between restraining a six year old and a toddler (I have both - well, a five and a half year old!) It would be very easy to hurt my toddler without meaning to, wanting to or any ill intent. Not so much when removing her from a situation: that’s a grab and go. But if I was wanting to remove her from something and then keep her with me, I would struggle to do so without having her in such a tight restraint it would risk harming her.

Some situations aren’t going to be perfect ones, just sort of ‘what’s the least worst situation here.’ I’ve learned through ds I don’t need to win every battle in order to win the war, if you like. I am reasonably consistent but I’m also a human, both in the sense that I will get things wrong but also possibly more pertinently that I can adapt and make allowances and adjustments. Yesterday was a very tough day (you can probably tell from my posts here!)

I would never smack my children and even the thought of it upsets me a bit, as I can imagine their hurt and bewildered and scared faces just before the tears. But I have shouted; I’ve said things I didn’t mean, I probably have been too rough in grabbing or trying to get in car seats etc. I am not perfect

There are techniques and methods and ways to manage and a lot of them are very effective. Some just don’t work for some children though. The ‘choices’ one has never worked for either of mine - even as an 18 month old ds seemed to twig what I was trying to do and would just shout no to everything. A photo came up on the TV earlier of ds about three years ago aged two and a half and while he looked angelic in the photo I remembered he’d refused to get off a bouncy castle when his allocated time was up and I’d had to drag him off it, eight months pregnant as I was, lurching around on a bouncy castle. Then contain him as he screamed the place down. (Yes, we left!) It was AWFUL! I don’t think anything would have worked and a few times he did twist away form me and run back … I actually think I’d blocked it out of my memory! 😂

Some stuff you survive, rather than manage I guess, I don’t think it’s done us any long term harm. He was just a bit of a bruiser as a 2 year old. Dd used to be a lot more chill but is getting trickier as she approaches three: defiant and territorial. It will pass, I am sure.

I would agree with what she said about boundaries, but you don’t need to enforce boundaries with violence towards children. “Smacking”, aka hitting and hurting your child just teaches them it’s ok to have violence enforced against them and it’s not k to be violent towards others.

YANBU. Of course it shouldn't be legal to smack anyone, let alone a much smaller and more vulnerable person who you decided to bring into the world. It's pretty disturbing that some people would even consider violently assaulting a child.

Forcibly picking up a struggling person of any age, removing them from a situation, restraining, subduing and confining them is a violent assault, and false imprisonment.

If you want universal rights across age groups you’ll have to outlaw all of it. Let alone offences of coercive control. If you think smacking is wrong just because it’s smacking, but you accept that other actions that would be assault and/or battery and/or other crimes against an adult are acceptable, then say so, and justify it.

My adult son's support workers are allowed to use restraint techniques including physical restraint and moving if the situation justifys it. They are not allowed to smack or hit.

Yes, there are situations where restraint, and even denial of liberty are lawful. Prisons are the most obvious example. There are also situations where striking, electro-shocking or even injuring somebody badly are lawful - police work or acting in self-defence, for instance.

I’m thinking of everyday situations in which a person - child or adult - is argumentative, rude or obstructive. I can understand the gut reaction to oppose smacking children, but I don’t accept that physical intervention of other sorts is necessarily better or less open to abuse.

No reason but the joy of making a loud noise when you are little. If she'd been in an open air space or at home I'd not have cared (and may well have joined in with making silly noises) and I think a lot of parenting come down to 'pick your battles'. I was (and still am) very much 'if you are not affecting anyone else do what you want, but when I say no that means no'. There's more discussion with teens around the reasons for 'no' now or as DD1 likes to say to me 'yeah, yeah, nuance, nuance'.