Views please on MIL's bizarre smacking habit

[Lovecat]

This is probably a poorly-worded title but it's not a situation that's easily summarised.

Let me first and foremost state that I am 100% against smacking. I was smacked as a child and rather than the pain I remember the burning humiliation and sense of injustice it engendered, and I am determined never to do it to my child.

So how would you deal with this?

Whenever dd trips/falls over/wanders into something without looking and bangs her head/hand/leg etc, if MIL happens to be about, she will go over and repeatedly smack the object that dd has banged into and go 'Naughty table/whatever! Naughty to hurt dd!' and tries to encourage dd to give it a smack as well.

Now, while I can kind of see where she's coming from, given that our ethos is 'mummy doesn't hit, daddy doesn't hit, dd doesn't hit either', it flies in the face of everything we're trying to teach her. Plus I think there's something distinctly odd about hitting an inanimate object...

I'm not sure I can say something without it coming over as humourlessly pompous - although I have a very good relationship with MIL and she is excellent with children (she used to work for Barnados in their nurseries and is fantastic with all her GCs), I've never disagreed with her on parenting before because we've always been on the same wavelength, so I'm wary of causing friction over what may seem like a very minor thing.

However, equally I don't want dd to think it's okay to hit out at whatever hurts her (esp, as she's prone to tripping over the cat!).

Worse still, went out with a friend last week and she did exactly the same thing when dd walked into the chairleg! (Naughty Chairleg!!)

Have I lived a sheltered life or something? I've never come across this before and I find it very weird...

absolute bollocks nightynight

my 6 year old has distinguished between reality and fantasy since he was 3

'that's just a story'
'its not really magic its a trick isn't it?'

absolute bollocks, twiglett

they are not consistent, and giving them mixed messages on violence is fairly dumb, imo.

really .. oo show me the research that children cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy at an early age? go on

They can distinguish in many circumstances but not in others, and they don't understand the difference in the same way that we do. Children's concept of fantasy and reality is fundamentally quite different to that of an adult's before the age of about 8.

dont be sad, twiglett - just accept that we disagree about just bout every single aspect of parenting

Cross posts Twig - haven't time to go web trawling now but this is relevant from something I was reading the other day:

"Investigating children's understanding of the reality status of television programmes is far from easy. A major problem for researchers is that young children may not always be able to explain what they mean by saying that events on television are 'real'. Aimée Dorr (1983) found that children were only consistently able to do so by the 6th grade (around 11- or 12-years-old). Frustratingly, the most dramatic advances in children's understanding of television occur before this age. Children's systems of classification do not always match those of researchers. Some commentators (pace Hodge and Tripp) have noted that distinctions between fantasy and reality may not always be prominent in a child's way of interpreting television (Morison & Gardner, 1978). Susan Howard notes that in her study of primary school children, children judged some programmes as realistic simply because they liked them (or unrealistic because they didn't), whilst for others the funnier the programmes, the less realistic they were regarded as being (Howard, 1993, pp. 44, 49 -50)."

Most of what I have read on this subject is about the difficulty, for children, of being able to distinguish reality from fiction in TV programs.

oh I'm not sad nightynight .. don't know how you read that I am .. I'm actually relatively amused and more concerned about my crispy clothes

there's one thing I do know

kids survive all our mistakes and as long as they are brought up within a loving environment they'll manage just fine so I won't be too upset if I tell off a pavement for skinning my child's knee and my child laughs instead of cries

I have done the "poor pavement, is it damaged?" thing to avert public hysteria, but wouldnt blame or hit it.

Message withdrawn

Twiglett, that's my point though, telling it off is one thing, and good for diversion, but smacking it is an unnecessary step too far IMO

I have never smacked a chair (or similar) but I have occasionally told an object off in a joking type way to distract dd. Surely this is not a terrible thing to do? I mean, seriously. I wouldn't encourage smacking the chair/object but I don't think some gentle joking is damaging!

63 posts on smacking innanimate objects.

Can I say, at this point, only on MN ladies?

and while we are not in full blow 'kick off' mode I will engage in a little light smugness

Virtually everyone I know of my parents' generation does this. I think it's daft, and don't encourage it myself, but I think it's 'just one of those things' and should be ignored. It's not worth jeopardising a good relationdshi[p over this. Besides, you are your dd's main influence and she'll soon pick up from you that it's not sometyhing you do, it's gm's 'thing'.

By zippitippitoes on Sun 15-Apr-07 13:08:36
gosh isn't this all taking life incredibly seriously?

You betcha!

Message withdrawn

i always say naughty chair, table, ect but don't smack it, i say it and it always seems to stop ds crying

We all need to get out more.

I should go out, but if I do I will see that the lawn needs to be mowed [

and I don't want to get off my fat arse and do it!

I'm watching the lawn being mowed !

Message withdrawn

the problem with saying 'naughty chair' of course it that only an action can be naughty surely and not a person / object

this thread is pmsl

DS kissed a table better yesterday. I blame the parents. DH's parents. My MIL does this - is yours from the north west by any chance?

maybe all these children who are taught to blame inanimate objects grow up into the drivers who jump out of their car and blame the otehr party whenever they are involved in an accident....

I'm with Twiglett and Zippi on this one.