friend smacks

[veritysims]

I have a friend who smacks her son who has just turned two. Sometimes she he does it over really trivial things. I know its none of my business but I've noticed he's started hitting my liitle boy a lot. Her way of dealing with this is to smack him. Surely this gives the wrong message. I was round her house yesterday and within 2 hrs she had smacked him five times. Is this normal?

[B00]

Yes it is the wrong message, but woe betide you if you tell her this!
Not sure how you can get round her little boy hitting yours i'm afraid, but you need to be careful your little 'un doesn't start walloping you in turn!

I used to lightly tap my tots hand if she was doing something wrong, but I quickly realised that this was backfiring when she started hitting me back, can't say I blame her, she was copying me!

[l/essexlads]

As kids, we were never smacked. We were always either sent to our rooms and/ or had a toy taken from us. A tap on the hand/ back of the legs is fine. Too many people use that their child is 'so bad' that they need a smack. All this does is creates a vicious circle. If a child is naughty they should be punished, but they should also be told why what they did was wrong.
Perhaps you should mention to your friend that you 'saw a programme about smacking children and the harm it can do'. By doing that, your not accusing your friend anything and jepoardising your friendship...

[noxlumos]

Terrible, terrible uninformed parenting which as you have observed results in kids which understandably think it's ok to belt people. Why and how can anyone hit a two year old?What possible good do they think it'll do? I've never hit my kids or even significantly raised my voice to them and they have grown up doing likewise, not hitting or yelling at people but doing as they are politely asked quietly for the most part. If it resulted in her kid hitting mine then I'd have a word with her about it and point it out.Most people smack out of exasperation because they feel they should do something about something negative that their kid is doing. The trick is to find something to replace the smacking. Maybe you could ask her to join you in an experiment whereby niether of you smack your children for say a month ( might be a way to get her to pack it up for a bit, but you'll need to help her find different ways of dealing with him when he misbehaves), other than that I'm at aloss as to how you can help without offending your friend.

[burnhal]

I agree that there is no real way to bring this up tactfully- but just as an interesting aside. I am not one to smack- we occasionally smacked our children- and I mean very occasionally- when nothing else worked. Normally the deprivation of some treat, going to their room etc was enough. Now most people are like this I would imagine. But then again most who are my age- 50- were brought up in the days when our parents used smacking as the primary punishment. I got some real smacks in my time!! So logically I should have been belting other children when I was a kid and should have carried on with my own kids. But I didnt- neither did my siblings and neither did many thousands of others. I can't tell you why- I cant really remember but I get the impression that us kids thought it was the accepted form of punishment and thats as far as it went???

[Ms.Hijinx]

i believe in smacking but strangely enough have never actually whacked my kids i find time out works when they are put in their rooms.i was wondering if the mum concerned in the thread had thought of this as you cannot actually reason with a 2 year old and if she cant control him now what will happen when hes older! I hope it all works out for her

[veritysims]

thanks for all your answers. I have never really made my mind up on the smacking issue myself but I haven't ever smacked my kids (although Ive felt like it sometimes!!). My friend has older kids who are a bit of a handfull - I suppose she just does what she thinks works as we all do. Her little one is starting nursery in September and to be honest I think he'll get into bother if he hits the other kids there. Maybe he'll just have to learn as he gets older that it's not appropriate to hit other children. Thanks again for the posts.

[Dolly1308]

verity children do as you do not what you say and as long as his nother hits him he will hit other children and if she can't control herself she should get help. One day he may even hit her back when he's older and that's ok as far as he is concerned because this is what people do ,isn't it ) .I thought it was against the law to hit children these days ?

[veritysims]

I didn't think so but then someone told me that a man had recently been arrested for hitting his son in a supermarket. He has been sentenced to 6 months. The law seems a bit hazy with regards to smacking and surely that's no use to anyone. I'll look into it and try and clarify whether it's now illegal to smack kids under a certain age.

[prosehag]

Well gosh. Isn't hitting assault? WHOA! NOT NORMAL!!! The more civilized we are the less we should NEED to resort to whacking one another. Those of you who said kids learn by example are right. If we hit our kids or each other, kids are learning that a good whack is a way to deal with dissatisfaction. That mother is going to be creamed by her kid, eventually if she keeps hitting him to make a point.

You need to talk to your friend and tell her you read something somewhere, or saw it on TV: smacking children is not only dangerous for the parent's relationship with the child, it is simply not acceptable as a way of disciplining children any more. Look up "Dr. Phil." Until you friend deals with the problem of her child hitting yours, you should not let the children be together. You really need to be firm about that.

I think I DID hit my kids when I was a young mother, not often, and not hard and always on their bottoms, but MY parents used physical punishment as a way to "get our attention" when I and my siblings were young, so MY hitting was learned behavior. I got "enlightened" by reading and living among people who DID NOT hit their children, ever. Your friend CAN learn better behavior.

Talking works. Depriving children of favorite things, like toys or entertainments works. Witholding LOVE is WRONG and barbaric. My children were raised to be good citizens, to have compassion for others and to eschew physical violence. Their more agressive tendencies were channelled into sports like fencing and soccer. They are both acclaimed good citizens, happy individuals.

Didn't mean to write a book.