Hitting our kids smacks of an outdated attitude
BACK when I was a brand new mum I did something which, all these years later, haunts me still. I smacked my son.
He’s 24 now, 6ft tall and rolls his eyes when I tell this story. He doesn’t even remember it.
But I do. I remember every moment of the smack that landed against his chubby little thigh on a grey afternoon in our living room.
And each time the issue of corporal punishment for children is raised in the media the act comes back to me in horrible, technicolour detail.
It had been a long, dull day. The weather was foul, so we hadn’t been able to get outside. The baby had cried. A lot.
And my toddler – my son – had been playing up. Not badly, but consistently and enough to ramp up my internal tension gauge, bit by bit, like a pressure cooker.
He refused his lunch. He tipped over his juice. He wouldn’t settle to a game or colouring or even an hour of Teletubbies.
And when he hit his sister – because, when you’re two and a half, why the hell not – I smacked him back.
He cried. I sobbed. The red mark faded within minutes but the guilt and the shame remained.
I could give you all sorts of reasons to excuse my actions.
With a lively toddler, an unsettled baby and elderly parents, it was an exhausting time. I worked four days a week. I was weary and anxious and short of both sleep and of temper.
But for a brief second I lost control and instead of protecting this tiny person – my one job as a mum – I had instead hurt him.
I never did it again and, much like some people who give up smoking or gambling, the intervening years have seen me become evangelical in my opposition to physically punishing kids.
This week, Wales has banned smacking and slapping children. The change has come not a moment too soon.
Now it must be England’s turn to follow suit and put the rights of the child front and centre.
Of course, there are those who argue that this move infringes the rights of mums and dads to parent their offspring in the way they see fit.
‘It teaches them a lesson’, say some, while others trot out the old chestnut of ‘it never did me any harm back in the day’.
But ‘back in the day’ it was acceptable to send kids up chimneys. Ironically, this new legislation removes the defence of ‘reasonable punishment’, which has been in force since – you guessed it – Victorian times.
Those arguments simply don’t hold water any more, if indeed they ever did.
Children in England are now the only group in our society against whom physical violence is sanctioned. What does that say about us here in 2022?
We don’t accept physical punishment of adults or animals. Why should we think it’s OK for our kids?
Spare the rod and spoil the child? I don’t think so.