gene@datacube.UUCP (03/17/85)
I am reposting my response to a note requesting insight as to
why Americans hit their kids. Our net link was one way in at the
time and I'm told it never got out.
About hitting the children. I and my wife had a child and
we decided not to hit the child unless we needed to teach him about
life threatening situations (cars, stoves, etc.) and talking was too
slow or not working out. We separated and I became the full time
father of a three year old. I'd come home from work and the last thing
I wanted to do was dishes, laundry, toilet training, etc.. It was all
too much and I began spanking him on the bottom as a way of enforcing
certain things that I wanted to happen. He would cry for a minute.
I felt like I had to hit him to teach him. My son and I were at the
beginning of a life deadening spiral of action/reaction where moderated
violence was being substituted for high quality communication.
One day, about four months into the corporal punishment mode, I was
giving him a few loving whacks "for his own good" mind you, when he
turned around, screwed up his face with more intensity than I had ever
before seen in him and he pasted me a good one in the eyeball.
I was shocked and outraged. I told him that he could not hit his
father. He told me that Daddy could not hit him either then. I did
not take this lightly. I thought about it alot. Is this double standard
which I had fallen into, due to various pressures of life, justifiable?
Did I need to resort to corporal punishment? Were there better ways
of teaching little children about the ins and outs of life than hitting
them?
I decided that if my three year old was smart enough to tell me about
an unfair and destructive behavior which was being directed at him then
he was smart enough to learn about life through words not violence. I
stopped hitting him. I started talking to him. It was VERY VERY hard
at first, to change his not so nice behaviors by using words. In extreme
cases I had to confine him in his room for five or ten minutes. Gradually
he learned his limits without having to be hit. Now, five years
later it is very EASY and very rewarding
to be able to work out behaviors, problems, scehdules, etc. with him rather
than to be in the untenable situation of having to impose my ideas of
what a solution is on him. We start with my idea of what should happen
and after a few minutes of talking we always come up with a really
wonderful solution (which is usually just as easy to implement)
that has elements of my ideas and AS WELL AS his.
So having experienced both sides of the coin I feel that Americans
(I'm refering to the largely European invaders who call themselves
Americans myself being one of them) do not
know how to honor the WISDOM OF THE CHILD and
are even threatened by it. I feel that it is very difficult for us in
this culture to look at our actions with any objectivity and god forbid
someone should point out one of our activity modes which is less than nice.
That's grounds for an adult to have a temper tantrum, something we hit
children for having. Hitting children is just not knowing enough about
ourselves and our children and it is just not caring enough to take the
time to learn.
EOL --- end of lecture.
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