No wailing if you’re sent to jail for smacking kids
FROM March if you smack your kids in Wales you could go to jail.
Parents will not be allowed to hit, smack, slap or shake their kids.
If they do they could face criminal prosecution.
When I first saw this I thought, how is there a need for this, how could you hit your child?
But not too long ago we were at the mercy of the wooden spoon and thanks be to God these days are long behind us.
Of course tempers flare but there’s no excuse to raise a hand to a child.
We all got the odd slap as kids and older folk say, “Sure what harm did it do you?”
But it never made us realise the error of our ways , it simply served as a punishment that never taught us discipline only shame.
When I delved into the world of getting kids to behave I learnt there are two ways to go about it, proactive and reactive.
You’d need a degree in this stuff but it’s fascinating.
Discipline focuses on instructing and training our children in a proactive way, while punishment focuses on inflicting blame, shame, or pain for a past offence in a reactive way.
If I yell at my girls, I’m reacting, I’m not getting down to their level and the one who really hurts is the parent as they feel shame for losing their cool. Being reactive isn’t a great way to address the root
cause of a misbehaviour; nor does it stop a misbehaviour from reoccurring.
Being proactive, on the other hand, helps target the source of the misbehaviour.
There are three reason why kids misbehave so say the child psychologists:
1. Lack of impulse control: In our Banksy case, our Eila could not differentiate between drawing on the wall or the page.
So instead of roaring at her the next time we told her we needed her to draw on the pages, so we could save them as memories and she accepted that.
2. Attention: Was Eila repeatedly doing her wall art to get our attention? Be it good attention or bad, kids often don’t differentiate.
3. Power: Apparently children crave power as much as adults. They get a great buzz out of pushing our buttons and seeing us lose our cool.
I know I’m in shock, how could they?
Covid has stretched us all, there’s no office and so losing our cool is normal. One day I started hitting the carpet in my bedroom out of sheer frustration.
I was struggling mentally as the deadlines were looming, the kids were screaming and the split focus got too much.
I was trying to be all things to all people, mother and worker and cooker and entertainer all in the confines of our house and I felt broken, depleted of energy.
I mean, two years of lockdown is a big mental health feck up for mams.
Men are better at ignoring the madness and blocking it out, whereas us women seem to absorb it and we almost take too much on.
I wish I was a man sometimes, my John seems to take it all in his stride, with the patience of a saint.
It’s why I reckon women are leaving the workplace in their droves and choosing to mind their kids rather than try to do it all.
We just can’t have it all I’ve decided.