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

But clearly a child cannot be expected to behave as would be expected of an adult in the workplace. Children are not mini-adults, they are emotionally immature individuals who are learning to navigate society and the world. Beating them is not going to help them become well-adjusted adults who meet behavioural expectations in the workplace.

No, indeed. Which is why comparing this subject to what you’d do to an adult doesn’t make sense. They are different relationships.

Not necessarily. Our DS is neurotypical, has never been smacked, and was violent until about six and a half. Our home life is pretty stable- he has everything he needs, DH and I have a stable and loving relationship, he gets plenty of love and quality time with both of us.

I don’t think it’s necessarily logical to say that children will only be violent if they’ve either been exposed to it at home or have a neurodevelopmental condition. Violence is a pretty natural urge in children- just watch a group of toddlers, you’ll see plenty of kids willing to thump each other and most of them won’t be being smacked at home. Most children will be socialised out of it, and for many of them, firmly telling them no and lots of talk about gentle hands and how it hurts people to be hit is all it takes.

This didn’t work for my DS, he needed a much stronger deterrent to put him off. Because we were very wedded to gentle parenting techniques when he was little, it took us getting to the absolute end of our tethers with the violence and moving to quite long, boring time outs in another room the second he hit us or threw something. This solved the problem, which was extreme, in a couple of weeks. He’s now a very well-behaved and kind child who can’t believe he behaved like that. But before, because he wasn’t getting strong enough push-back from us, despite all our natural consequences and talk about feelings, he felt it was something that really wasn’t that bad. Especially as we were validating the emotion that led to the hitting, he got the impression that it was not great but justified in some situations.

I’ll never be in favour of smacking and would never do it. But we were told by several people that they thought our firm, time out approach was bordering on abuse. So if gentler approaches don’t work and anything firmer is unacceptable, it’s not hard to see how neurotypical children from stable backgrounds can end up being quite violent for longer than is normal, because parents really have no recourse beyond techniques that just don’t work for their kid (none of this is a general criticism of gentle parenting btw. I know plenty of delightful gently parented kids. But it was totally ineffective for ours!)

I’m really relieved to read this as I am having a horrendous time with mine and I have never felt so utterly wretched as I do just at the moment!

Id have made her sit with me for a short period and if she did it again I'd have carried on removing her from the situation. I have had the same experience but my child was a biter. Id have to watch them like a hawk but if they did bite they were taken out of the soft play etc and sat on my knee for a few minutes. I totally recognise how difficult it is to try and contain a wrestling toddler, they are the strongest thing in the world. But they soon realised that if they behaved in a certain way there was a consistent consequence. I can't see what a smack would have added to the situation? If it was a shock thing I found a loud no was pretty effective.

We all parent different but I don't think smacking is the magical solution people seem to think it is

So you’d have used physical force to ensure she sat with you. You’d have had to have wrapped your arms around her middle very tight as she writhed and screamed, repeatedly grabbed her as she twisted away and pushed her into a sitting position.

I am pointing out with that that with that you are using quite a lot of physical force (it’s one of the reasons I don’t like doing it actually as I worry it’s easy to unintentionally and without meaning to injure a toddler.)

And that is superior to a slap? I don’t personally know that it is (fyi I used neither.)

Disgusting, she needs to be on the breadline, how dare she claim the title professor when she is obviously a child beating quack.

We don’t issue corporal punishment to our worst criminals in prison, so the idea of having to use it to punish the smallest and vulnerable in society (children) is ridiculous to me. Sign of poor parenting. Physically restraining violent adults or children is of course acceptable but meting physical punishment is barbaric.

And sorry, I know that sounds like I’m being really irritating and splitting hairs. But I do think the ‘just remove them from the situation / make them to a time out’ underestimate just how much physical force this takes if you have a toddler in the throes of a tantrum.

Why isn't it 'beating'?

If you're going to resort to hyperbole, why not go the whole nine yards?

We just let ours roll about screaming until they tired out. Maybe tossed them a pillow or stuffed toy to ravage. kept our distance until they were calm enough to understand our words and respond to gentle instructions.

Mostly we’d watch for the flags of an impending tantrum and head it off before it got that bad.

Yes I would have physically removed them. If it was getting to the point where I couldn't hold them safely without hurting them then we would have gone home. I can't equate that with hitting a child.

I managed to parent my autistic DC without physical violence. Surely you can parent NT kids without losing it and resorting to violence? We really need to talk about lack of resilience in parents.

Wholeheartedly disagree, in the vast majority of circumstances you should be able to.

How on earth do you think nurseries have a whole bunch of 2 year olds stop play to eat when it’s lunch time, go to the toilet on command, coexist with relative order? They don’t go around smacking them all.

Picking up a toddler and even carrying them away while they are screaming is not at all like hitting a child.

I wasn’t smacked by my parents, but educated at a time when corporal punishment was occasionally used. The threat was usually enough to nip poor behaviour in the bud. I’m not sure if I’d want to go back to those days, equally teachers seem to have it tough.

@SomersetSausage

Your comment on insufficient pushback and the unintended but actually very predictable effects of validation of emotions behind violent behaviour perfectly articulated everything that is wrong about the gentle parenting approach.

Thank you.

children behave very differently in childcare settings than home. It’s fairly well documented.

@AmberTigerEyes but whatever you do, in that situation you’re using physical force to overcome a toddler - otherwise she’s definitely getting straight back on that climbing frame! So I guess my question is: it’s acceptable to pull her off and to pin her down and to grab her and manhandle her and all of that is firm boundaries but smacking her is abuse?

As I’ve said, I didn’t do either, so please don’t anyone interpret that as me being in favour of smacking. I’m not and never will be. Just the same, I can see why people do it in a way that once I’d have been appalled at.

This topic needs some nuance. I'm not condoning smacking and don't do it but it's obvious that there are a lot of miserable parents being treated like crap by their kids in a way that they would not have dared to do with their own parents.

Are you trying to claim that no parent has ever squeezed a child harder than strictly necessary when doing that? Or carried them or set them down pretty roughly?

There are some posters suggesting that a slap is better for the child than restraint. how? What does this teach?

Agree. The mental health of parents is at rock bottom. Not only are standards ridiculously high and expected to be ‘in character’ 100% of the time, the general duties of parents is MASSIVE compared to even 20 years ago.

I regularly see the following on here:

1. Parents asking for clothing suggestions for their 20 something year old child
2. Parents asking to how to get their basement dwelling, non-rent-paying, universal-credit-claiming violent adult child out of their house
3. Parents phoning their adult kids multiple times a day and expected to be available for ‘emotional support’ day and night
4. Parents driving their 18 year olds around everywhere as ‘getting a bus after 6pm is so dangerous’
5. Parents wanting to know the ins and outs of their child’s degree modules and scoring - wtf?
6. Parents asking whether they are being unreasonable not to let their 14 year old’s girlfriend/boyfriend stay over

I could go on. Fucking madness

They do a good deal.of shouting at the whole group and a good deal of making examples of unruly children by singling them out for individual shouting, that's how.

Children are also picked up physically and toys wrested from their hands if they are refusing to follow the instructions.

The"study" and smacking = lower GCSE results is the biggest correlation evidence going.

IME parents who smack their children as a regular form of discipline generally also have other problematic parenting traits and generally have very chaotic home lives- involvement with addiction services/ regular monitoring and reports to SS/ very low conflict resolution abilities/ in contact with police or prison services. All this chaotic environment does not bode well for GCSE achievement.

Sometimes small children do need to be restrained for safety reasons and I agree, in that situation I would drag them off a climbing frame and hold them tightly if they wouldn't sit still.