WALDEN’S WORLD

The disturbing rise in smacking children

One bleak Sunday in the midst of Lockdown 2, I was reading in my bedroom when I heard sounds of a squabble from the street outside. Nothing unusual about that. Only this was between a child and mother, who was calling her son every four-letter word under the sun.

I went to the window – just in time to witness this woman whack her child around the head so hard, I let out a four-letter word of my own. The window was locked, and by the time I ran downstairs and outside, they had disappeared.

I’ve thought of that little boy often since. The way he followed his mother, sobbing and holding his head, down the street.

And I thought of him again on Sunday as Sir Peter Wanless, the NSPCC chief executive, disclosed to this paper that the rise of physical violence against children during the pandemic has left him feeling “disturbed”.

This was one reason, he argued, that the “smacking ban” already implemented in Scotland should be brought in in England.

After what I witnessed, I agree. Not because I think every parent who has ever smacked their child is monstrous, but because the current laws are vague enough to leave me questioning my reaction that day.

I wasn’t sure whether hitting a child above the neck was legal (it’s not), how I should have intervened in a way that didn’t put the child in greater peril, or whether reporting her would have been the right thing to do. If she was comfortable doing that in the street, wasn’t her behaviour behind closed doors likely to be worse?