I’ve smacked 4 year old and feel terrible

[Cantwait4summer94]

My son who is four is playing up a lot for me recently, he is absolutely brilliant for everyone else who looks after him but for me he is becoming more challenging.
he kept pushing his baby sister who is nearly 11 months and wouldn’t stop even when I asked. He then threw something heavy at my face and I’m sure I’m going to have a black eye tomorrow. I got up and slapped him but it wasn’t just once. he has since said ‘I’m so sorry mummy’ but my behaviour was out of order

I did not say you were a terrible person. I replied directly to you, in a very measured way. I was very clear you are not the world's worst mother.

You did hit him though. Multiple times. That is child abuse. Don't minimise it, own it and get help. Your actions now define what kind of a parent you are. A good mother would take this as a serious wake up call, acknowledging that they need help. A bad one will say "I only smacked him". There is no only when it comes to abusive behaviour. Be the good mother.

Many an exhausted parent has lost their rag and done something they regret. Many a parent has snapped.
It's massively different from those who do it routinely or deliberately.
OP. Reflect learn & move on

@Cantwait4summer94
It's very easy to judge. I don't agree with smacking. I see that hitting a child sends all the wrong messages. Teaching kids to lash out is never good.
BUT., have I done it?
Yes.

Oh, OP, please don't get wound up by those comments. Anything you post on MN, it's open for some sort of attacks by some people. Unavoidable. Have to know when to shrug off.

You are absolutely right. One occasion like this can no way define what kind of mum you are! We are no perfect person and our flaws make us learn. Our little ones also are capable of teach us and push us to learn and to "grow" with them. Keep going! You are doing alright and just try to have a plan for this kind of situation so to reduce the chance of reactive choice.

Good quality one to one time is important. It affects how my 3yo behave no doubt. They need to know we love them and they can have our full attention when we can afford it. Good luck!

Haven't rtft but OP, what stands out to me is that you said "he'd never dream of behaving that way with his dad".

I think you try to do maybe too gentle parenting, and by the time he makes you snap you're so frustrated and angry that you have to let it out.

So my suggestions to you would be to not let his behaviour get to the point where you snap in reaction.

Violence is unacceptable so if he hits his sister (or anyone else) you don't just ask him to stop - you tell him it's unacceptable and he's going to be sitting alone in his room until he is able to play with others without hitting them. And follow through. Give him a few minutes in his room, then once he's calm (and you are calm too), ask him if he understands why he was punished. If he doesn't, explain again. Tell him you trust he won't do it again and hug him, and tell him he is to apologize to whomever it is he hurt.

You need to control his behaviour, rather than react to it.

"Where I am from a child would be removed from your care if it came out that you hit them, regardless of leaving marks or not. It is honestly not OK to treat people like that."

I was smacked as a child.

Considering the outcomes awaiting children in care, and the trauma of being removed from their family (much worse than the momentary shame of being smacked), thank god no one had the brilliant idea to remove me from my family.

"Protecting" children by inflicting a much greater trauma on them, and putting them in situations where they're extremely vulnerable, is not actually helping children.

I shudder at the thought of the damage that well-meaning fools like you would have caused me if they'd seen me be smacked (I must point out it only happened when I'd behaved abysmally).

Abuse is inflicting long-lasting and/or significant harm. Punching a child in the face is abuse. Smacking their bums isn't. I'm sure most sane people can tell the difference between the two.

There's also a lot of people comparing this situation with a husband hitting his wife (but conveniently forgetting the part where the child was harming both his sister and the OP). So let's compare :

Wife throws heavy object at husband's face, giving him a black eye
Husband smacks her bum a few times, not leaving a mark

Who perpetrated domestic abuse (i.e. caused significant long-lasting harm) ? Go on, I'll give you three tries.

Now can we go back to the real world rather than compare situations that really can't be compared ? No, smacking a child isn't great parenting, and OP should take steps to not do it again. She knows that, she doesn't need to be drawn and quartered repeatedly. What she needs is tools and advice, no need to throw in the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, gleeful finger wagging. I'm not suggesting we should congratulate her and say there's nothing to worry about, but surely there's a middle ground there (that only a few posters have found, unfortunately).

OP, I stand by the advice I gave earlier, you need to manage your son's behaviour before it reaches this point. If the advice on here is insufficient, I'd suggest looking for professionnal advice on how to manage poor behaviours.

Personally I haven't found ignoring (which someone else suggested) to be helpful. Either the behaviour IS attention-seeking (and then it will just escalate until you have no choice but to react), or it's not (and then by ignoring it you're giving the child free reign to do as he wishes).

I think strict management works best (so don't wait until he's totally out of control, intervene as soon as the undesirable behaviour appears). This way you're handling the situation while it is still quite minor, and while you are still calm (and the child hasn't worked himself into a frenzy yet).

At 4, for him to understand, the reaction must be immediate (else he won't link it to the offending behaviour). Time out works great for me but it can also be removal of a toy (if he throws anything at you I'd remove that object from him for the foreseeable future) or the end of an activity (if he can't draw nicely or sit quietly in front of the TV, then it's the end of the drawing/watching TV time).

Slapping/smacking/hitting doesn't teach children why they shouldn't be doing certain behaviours, it just teaches them to be afraid of the consequences of doing it in front of you. The people saying he probably won't do it again are right, he probably won't. Because he is scared to (in front of you), not because he knows it is wrong.

Hi OP, my DS is nearly 30 and I was, and still am, totally against smacking. However, on one occasion I was changing his nappy and he kicked me hard in the face and I smacked his bottom. It was a reaction (an over reaction).

I was devastated and shocked that I'd hit my son and shed a lot of tears. I never did it again but, like you, it was never my intention to hit in the first place. I was run ragged and stressed, working full time, husband working away, money issues, etc, etc, etc.

You know you shouldn't have hit your wee one, I shouldn't have hit my wee one. I doubt you'll ever do it again because it's obvious from your post you know hitting is wrong and you are questioning, not defending your behaviour.

When it happened to me it made me stop and think and my solution was to find ways to reduce my stress. I doubt I've have reacted so badly if I hadn't been so stressed.

I hope you feel better about this soon, it's a horrible, horrible feeling.

You can justify it to yourself to make you feel better but in my book hitting a child (repeatedly) does make you a terrible person.

There is a reason it is illegal.

It's not illegal, though, in England.

Neither was raping your wife til the mid nineties. Doesn't mean it's ok to do.

Witnessing and experiencing a parent who is out of control in a moment is really frightening for children. We can't underestimate the impact of that.

She is not failing her son

Oh that's ok then. Beat away.

And where in any of that has anyone said shes a fantastic mum and to carry on? (I cant find your other post so am paraphrasing)

And there has been minimal advice in a long thread essentially piling in on a mum who knows she did something wrong. She hasnt justified herself once, not once.

I've never smacked mine but honestly some of my worst parenting fails where I've ended up losing my shit have come immediately after a gentle parenting attempt. The sort where you ask them very nicely and politely to do something because that's what the books tell you is best except in real life you just get ignored or laughed at or both.

Piling on doesn't help, the fact is many of us have to parent with little support. OP ignore the pile on, focus on the suggestions of strategies to make things easier and this situation less likely to happen again.

I didn’t say “to carry on” or “fantastic”, I said:
“Yesterday 19:20
Yes we do because there are tons of DV apologists on here telling the OP it’s perfectly fine, she’s an excellent mother, to put her feet up and not worry about it. 🤷‍♀️”

and yes, all that is in the quotes I posted from the first two pages of the thread. It isn’t “made up” as you alleged.

There is more on every subsequent page but then my post would have been hella long. There hasn’t been “minimal advice” either pffft.

But yeah, you’re the only one not reading the thread, then making up shit and acting like the OP is a victim of some sorts.

''@BounceyB · Yesterday 18:51
In a few years he won't remember the one time you slapped him.''

This is not true.

My mother hit me once (hard slap over the face) when I was a toddler simply because I was struggling to fall asleep while we were on holiday and fussing. I never forgot that event.

My father hit me several times throughout my childhood: smacking on the bottom and then out of the blue he attacked me and hit me across the face when I was a teenager and sitting down reading a book and sent me flying off my chair and hurting my face and ripping an earring off my ear in the process because he thought I was ''looking at him the wrong way''.

I believe the early normalisation of smacking/slapping me by both parents when I was a child led to that incident which is was nothing but unprovoked physical assault later on.

I never forgot or forgave any of this and had little then no relationship with my parents as an adult.

My point is never try to justify an adult slapping children. There is never any justification for it.

Nobody was beaten 🤔

@Cantwait4summer94 you hit your child numerous times.

Dictionary definition of 'beating': a punishment or assault in which the victim is hit repeatedly.

@Cantwait4summer94 You obviously are siding with and thanking the people on here who are saying ‘he’ll forget it’ or ‘it was only once’. People who say ‘it didn’t do me any harm’. But these attitudes are what help normalise smacking children to be ‘ok’ if a one off. And it really isn’t ok to hit anyone, no matter what they have done. Children have rights and one of them is to be safe. Please reflect on this incident and think about how you can keep your child safe in the future from your anger, even if you think this was a one off. What would you do next time if he throws something at you. Also, he has said sorry to you, but have you said sorry to him?

Shame on England then.

You posted here for a reason - do you want to find a strategy where you never hit DS ever again?

I was beaten as a child. I always swore that I would never lift a finger to my own. But, once I did - a single light smack with my hand on the back of 3yo DS's leg after he had repeatedly tried to run off in a busy shop. And I cried for hours that evening over my failure to keep to the one vow I made as a parent. Not going to lie, 7nearly 8 years later I still feel my face go hot with shame over it. DS doesn't even remember it.

Anyway, here's the thing. It didn't stop him legging it. It wasn't a teaching moment for him, or even a decent discipline strategy. If I am honest, the only reason he got a smack was because I was more out of control than him.

So I worked on a different strategy, suggested by my colleague that happened to work a charm. I read up on different ways to try to communicate with regard to behaviour. A big part of it was also looking at why he plays up when he does.

Not all methods will suit, but you try and find the ones that work on your kid. And you kind of keep doing that as they grow. The techniques at 5 to address behaviour is very different to the ones I use at 10 and when he's 14 it'll be different again.

This won't turn out to be a teaching moment for him, but it could be for you.

You slapped a 4 year old, across the face I assume, several times

Why are you assuming it was across the face? The OP never said that.

I really appreciate this reply.
I have been too soft with him in the past so I’m definitely going to try methods such as time out and no treats until he can behave better. I think not being strict enough will cause more damage. Obviously I won’t repeat what happened yesterday.

I can’t believe that some people are suggesting he should be removed from my care and some are accusing me of beating him when it was nothing like that. I agree with everything you said so thank you so much for your advice x