My children told the school I neglect and hit them

[Charliechaplin1988]

I got a call from a social worker after an argument with my daughter over her buss pass being lost again . They went to both my daughters who said they were scared of me and I wasn’t looking after them correctly (I am mid divorce and they are a bit older and I will say my standards have droppee ) but noyhing I can’t fix like more effort at dinner time and more effort with making sure they’ve taken the right equipment . Mt children were removed from me that day and given to my parents and are now being interviewed by police over claims I assult them ! I have pulled them apart and whacked their legs when they were going hell for leather on each other but I can’t believe it’s got here. We are so incredibly close and having them away from me is breaking me. Will I get them back ? I’m their only parent ?!! We’ve been together just us for 11 years as they weren’t close to their step dad and I feel like I’m dying inside. There’s much work I neee to do but everyone is agasijt me ( apart from my children ) who I saw at the weekend and still adore their mother as they have no gravity of the situation ) I’m so so scared

I was just asking, like many pp's have, if there was more. Was there a mark? Is there any more info /events that we don't know of? We can't give advice unless we know the full picture.

It's fucking depressing to read all the old reasons men used to give for hitting their wives being trundled out by the hard of thinking to justify hitting children. The ultimate in bullying.

Do you people advocate for other forms of domestic violence and abuse too?

Unless there is more to this I find this odd. I have friends in social work. There are kids not being fed before school, witnessing drug/alcohol dependency, wearing unwashed clothes, sleeping on filthy mattresses going to school everyday and are still with their parents.

I understand the stress of running a house, working full time, teenagers, depression, relationship break up. Yet again on MN some of the posters live in such little bubbles where nothing tragic happens.

It's not odd at all. As a social worker this is exactly what I'd expect to happen if two kids told teachers their mum hits them and they are scared of her! We would speak to the kids, hold a strat meeting with police, and either police would take police protection or if it didn't meet that threshold we would probably ask a relative to care for the kids temporarily while we investigated. In the majority of situations like this the kids go home after a few days either with the parent under investigation by police or not, but with safety plans/agreements in place. Usually a parent who has lost control this way is remorseful and wants to make things better which means the children are far less likely to experience further physical harm.

Children are not adults. They need socialising. They do not trail clouds of glory from the heavens and the stars, they can be unpleasant, cruel, vicious etc. Smacking a child's hand is not the same as me clipping my DH round the ear because he dropped the Dresden china. Some good dystopian sci-fi on what happens if a society is left with only barely socialised children in charge - not pretty but instructive.

I don't have to justify smacking my DC, I was justified. OP is in trouble for lashing out at her DC and not parenting very well. She needs to make sure she has a solicitor and that she complies as best she can with social services. OP is a bit over-centred on herself, too.

How is hitting a child 'socialising' them?

You're right that smacking a child isn't the same as you smacking your husband, a child is tiny, vulnerable and totally reliant on you whereas your husband could just smack you back.

I don't really think Lord of the Flies or whatever crap you're referencing is a representation of a society where children aren't assaulted because an adult is pissed off.

Hitting a child is ALWAYS about the adults temper at that moment and not about the child's behaviour.

She'd learn more by being run over!

@Grammarnut you need to actually do some academic research into "smacking" children and look at what the research actually says about it.

Your posts are actually making me feel sick reading them.

Well, Lord of the Flies had occurred to me (horrid book, never understand why young people are supposed to like it, badly written, too, IMHO) but I wasn't. I am into hard sci-fi which is full of dystopia.
I also come from what was obviously a more robust and realistic age in respect of children. I should stay off AIBU, I think.

No, you weren't justified.

Young children don't have the capacity to risk assess like adults do.

If your child was able to run into the road that was entirely your fault.

You hitting your child isn't socialising your child.

You hit your child because you failed in your duty to keep your child safe, and you took it out on them.

Your mindset is abusive.

Don't tell me what I failed to do in 1986. We were walking home on a quiet road, DD (3 - 4) holding my hand, past the reins stage. She pulled away and dived into the road. I dropped shopping, library books and handbag and dived after her. A car shot by just as I pulled her back. Yes, it was my fault she let go my hand - but she had been taught not to do that and I was a) frightened b) upset c) bloody furious. And small children do not understand rational arguments. Blaming mothers for the outcomes/behaviour of their DC is a misogynistic trope I would think other women would avoid.

Just you keep reading and watch whatever you need to in order to justify the abuse of your kids I guess, let's not call child abuse a realistic way of bringing up kids though.

I frankly don't care what year it was. Your child was young.

You've just admitted that YOU were frightened, scared and bloody furious. This is a problem with your emotional regulation, and so you hit your child.

Hitting your child isn't justified. From other threads you strike me as someone who should be quite aware of child development with a keen interest in safeguarding so it's just a pity that you display such a lack of self awareness, and empathy for children.

Your sex also doesn't matter.

@Grammarnut was sadly abusive to her kids, but I’m not sure almost 40 years on she’s going to admit that. Who would? It’s hard to do

They didn’t really say one
just that the kids should stay wirh my parents and I can go stay over there but can’t be alone with them
kids we’re going to be interviewed by police and then I will be
meeting tomorrow at 4 to discuss the plan going forward

Right, I am fed up with this. In the 80s it was entirely acceptable to smack (not beat with whip, belt, thump, half-kill) a small child. To accuse me or anyone of my generation of abusing their DC if they smacked them (and most - even middle-class MNsy-type parents - did) is moral anachronism.

You cannot judge actions in the past by the criteria of the present. E.g. I can think Edmund Tudor morally reprehensible for having sex with his 12 year old wife and getting her pregnant in 1455, because people at the time thought it morally reprehensible and condemned him. I can agree with Roman Christians in the first century that raping your slaves was wrong, because men who converted to Christianity pledged not to do this any more - i.e. it was not generally thought wrong, but Christians and also Jews who had strict rules on the treatment of slaves, did consider it wrong and this idea increased in acceptance as Christianity spread. I cannot judge Medieval magnates for marrying their children in childhood because this was considered fine at the time and consummation waited (unless you were of the ilk of Edmund Tudor) until the couple were of age to bear healthy children, which was between 14 and 16 for a girl. I cannot judge Henry I for marrying his widowed daughter aged 25 to a boy of 15, this was considered ok in c. 1120s and a political necessity for the king who had no legitimate male heir. I cannot judge Oliver Cromwell for selling the enormous Van Dyke of Charles I to someone in Spain (I think), because he was head of state and thus owned the picture and people thought this at the time - that someone then looted the picture and took it to Germany where it was acquired by the Duke of Marborough whose descendant then passed it on to the National Gallery is something I can think about - loot has always been a tricky question and when last in Venice I did wonder why Italy has not been asked to return the four horses of St Mark's to Turkey, from where they were looted (not in any way paid for or traded) in the fifteenth century.

From c. 1750 people in some parts of Europe came to the conclusion that slavery in general and the Triangular Trade in particular was morally reprehensible and also not in keeping with Christianity. I can agree with them. What I can't do is judge merchants in the early 1700s who bought shares in the Africa Company (which traded in slaves bought from e.g. Dahomey, as well as other items such as textiles and fruit) as being morally reprehensible because at the time the entire world thought slavery an entirely natural part of human life. We swim in the atmosphere of our times, and it is a rare being who suddenly sees iniquity where most do not see it - so all praise to people like Wilberforce - and we later generations can only judge those people by the morals of their own time, not ours.
Do you see where I am going? I hope so. You cannot judge what people did in the past using moral criteria they themselves did not have.
In the 80s no-one thought it wrong to smack a naughty child and they cannot be judged for agreeing with their time. That's how it was. Now it's different.

@grammarnut there's no way I'm reading all that.

If you feel justified in assaulting your child because all your mates were doing it then why the need to come on and repeatedly defend the choices you're clearly comfortable with?

The 80's wasn't that long ago and no not everybody thought it acceptable to physically punish their children back then. There is absolutely no good reason to assault a child. Ever. You wouldn't do it an adult, hitting a small vulnerable child who can't defend themself is a million times worse, it's just bullying pure and simple because you know the child won't retaliate like an adult would/ could.

@Charliechaplin1988 please just have a real think about what has gone wrong in your household and what steps you are going to take to put it right, eg if the house is a mess show evidence that you've started clearing up. Be honest about how things have reached this point and don't minimise or try to justify. Your kids saying they are scared of you as they have is serious and you need to be open minded as to why that is.

Also, this thread has become the most self indulgent derail by some posters I've ever seen.

It’s true that social norms change over time, and we often reassess past practices with new knowledge. However, just because something was widely accepted in the 80s doesn’t mean it wasn’t harmful. Many things that were once considered "normal" like leaded petrol, smoking in restaurants, or children not wearing seatbelts are now recognized as dangerous, not because society is "soft," but because we have a better understanding of their effects.

The idea that judging past actions by today's standards is "moral anachronism" only applies if there was no awareness of harm at the time. But even in the 80s, people debated whether smacking children was necessary or beneficial. Psychological research has since shown that physical punishment increases the risk of anxiety, aggression, and strained parent-child relationships. It’s not just a moral shift. It’s an evidence based understanding that smacking doesn’t achieve what people once believed it did.

The comparisons to child marriage or Roman era slavery are misplaced. Those were acts that some people at the time did condemn, just as there were always people against hitting children. More importantly, just because something was accepted in the past doesn’t mean we shouldn’t re-evaluate it. Society progresses by learning from mistakes, not by defending them just because they were once common.

Hitting children is, has always been, and will always be abuse whether you want to accept it or not.

Imagine being a 3-4 year old who had eloped, because that's what she did, she eloped for whatever reason, into the road, getting yanked back, car whooshing past, scared out of your wits and then to top it off your mam cracks you because she is not in control of her emotions. How terrifying for her.

Also I'm no stranger to children running off. I have an autistic child who is significantly speech delayed who has eloped. He is a young child, yes, he has limited understanding for logical and rational communication, but I'd never hit him because he has a limited capacity for understanding words, or because of my own emotional upset.

Everybody else with young children manages to understand their children's developmental capacity for understanding danger at the roadside without resorting to assault.

Stop using false equivalence to continue to justify hitting your child.

I was a child who was smacked in the 80s. I did not think it was ok, and being smacked myself was the main reason I chose not to smack my own children.

It might not have been socially unacceptable, but it was not ok. If I could see that as a child, I am sure that adults could.

I'm the same.

I actually don't know anyone who was "smacked" as a child that is thankful for it or thought that it made them a well-rounded adult and taught them something.

We are all resentful of it and would never inflict the same on our children.

I actually hate the word "smacked". Because it minimises abuse, which is exactly what it is.

I was very occasionally smacked as a child in the 1970s and 1980s. I believe that my mum had undiagnosed adhd and she struggled with emotional dysregulation. I don't believe that it damaged me.

Having said that, I always knew that smacking was fundamentally wrong, not least because my mum would be so upset and apologetic afterwards. She absolutely knew that it wasn't right for a parent to smack a child and she made no secret of that. I understood it to be a loss of control on her part, and not something that I had "deserved" in any way. Perhaps that's why it wasn't really damaging?

Dear OP,
You are getting a lot of emotional responses here, as you probably expected to get.
Some facts. ( I have a safeguarding background)
Moving forward , there will be a plan put in place for your family. This will probably mean meeting every few weeks, likely at your children’s school to discuss targets for you moving forward. This is designed to be supportive not punitive. For example you may be expected to attend parenting sessions. Strongly recommend you engage with this process.
The support plan will be graduated down if SS feel confident you are making positive progress. You may end up being supported by school based staff, such as the safeguarding lead or the SENCO, or pastoral staff. They may work with your children too.
If what you said happened is true it is highly unlikely your children will be removed from your care, but there may be stipulations as to some support needed for you from your extended family or supportive circles such as your friends.
It sounds like you have a lot going on with your divorce and SS May be asking for information as to how you are going to move ahead with this in a way that lessens the impact on your children, Again you need to remain calm as it will feel intrusive but you can’t afford to get angry about it.
See this as a line that’s been crossed, but an opportunity to get help and make positive changes. Wishing you the best.