Not listening

April 14, 2014

not listening girlResearch presented at the Royal Economic Society’s annual conference last week has suggested that shouting at children and giving out punishments could make their behaviour worse rather than better.

No kidding. Many parents have known this for years. Unfortunately many have not though, so it’s nice to see this recent piece of research reported in the mainstream media.

Interestingly, however, all the articles I’ve found on the subject only mention shouting in the headline, even though the report from the London School of Economics also warns against punishing and ignoring children.

Certainly, shouting is the only part picked up on by Telegraph journalist Rowan Pelling in her article which she may as well have titled, “I was shouted at and I’m fine”. Dismissing the research, in favour of her own minimal anecdotal evidence, she paints a great picture of how said shouting and punishing really doesn’t help, and in doing so does a great job of defeating her own argument.

She and her husband shout all the time, she is happy to reveal. So guess what? Her kids shout too. Surprise, surprise. Furthermore, her attempts at punishment to control said kids leads to cheeky back-talk. There’s a lack of cooperation, a lack of respect.

And yet, instead of trying to address this, Ms Pelling seems to assume that this is simply the way family life is. It may have been the way her family life was – she’s also happy to reveal, again no surprises here, that she was shouted at regularly as a child.

Shouting is necessary? Kids won’t listen to reasoning? I wouldn’t listen to or respect someone who shouted at me, or tried to use their power to control and manipulate me. I’d push back against those attempts at control. I’d be very disinclined to cooperate with them or respect their wishes.

Shouting won’t do any harm? Unless, by harm done, you include teaching kids to shout at you, at others, and eventually at their own kids, and the daily harm that does to family life. The harm that this does to family relationships, to the connection our children need to feel with us in order to be inclined to cooperate in the first place. And actually there’s plenty of evidence of the emotional harm that regular, frequent shouting can do. It’s been placed in the same league as smacking.

Yes, we all lose it and shout at our kids sometimes. But this latest report isn’t talking about the occasional loss of control. It’s talking about parents, apparently like Ms Pelling, who think it’s OK to do this all the time, every day, and to be so unashamed about it they’re happy to write an article in a major national newspaper dismissing any evidence that it is in fact not OK, not helpful, and counterproductive to boot.

When are we going to learn to stop being so defensive about our parenting to the point that we can’t take on board new information or reflect on where our parenting assumptions are coming from? When are we going to learn to use our own childhood experiences to make changes for the better, instead of blindly carrying on with the worst? When are we going to start listening?

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Posted by Jo

I was smacked and I’m not OK.

February 10, 2014

Late last year the Australian prime minister made some unhelpful comments, in response to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child report that calls for a ban on smacking.  The Children’s Minister, Maggie Atkinson, also made some remarks shortly after, this time supporting a ban in the UK.  However, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, reckons “You chastise children when they are bad, as my parents did me.” The Guardian ran a poll asking people their opinion on the subject. Depressingly, the majority were against a ban. The accompanying comments were the usual mish-mash of the three basic sentiments:

smack-child-doll“I was smacked and I’m fine.”

“Children need discipline.”

“No-one tells me how to raise my kids.”

Have you noticed how it’s always the people who were smacked, like Mr Grayling, who are making these comments? I have never seen or heard, “I was not smacked and therefore have decided it’s a good idea.” No. It’s never that way round, is it? Why is that, do you think?

What amazes me is the remarkable lack of self-reflection evident in the ‘I was smacked and I’m fine’ camp. Come on guys, take a harder look at yourselves. Clearly you haven’t learnt about respect. You’ve learnt that using violence, power and fear to control another person is OK. You think smacking is OK because that’s what you were taught. Has it never occurred to you that maybe you were taught bad parenting? Sorry, but it seems someone does need to tell you how to raise your kids because you haven’t yet reached that level of self-understanding and self-awareness to break the cycle.

But the problem is, smacking is just one part of a bigger picture, an attitude towards children, an approach to parenting that fails to grasp the difference between fear and respect, compliance and cooperation, that fails to recognise the importance of relationship. Even if we banned smacking, there’s a whole host of other inappropriate methods at parents’ disposal: time-outs, threats, punishments, shaming, bribery. How can parents that still see the need to use these methods be expected to understand why smacking’s a bad idea?

It’s not just a ban on smacking that’s needed, it’s an education, a major paradigm shift.

In the meantime, stop telling me you’re fine. If you think it’s OK to smack your kids then you’re not fine. Think about it.

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Posted by Jo

My child, not yours.

April 11, 2013

Mother Holding ChildI have just been reading about the recent story of how a shop worker smacked a three year old girl, who she deemed to be misbehaving, without the permission of the parent. Needless to say, I am outraged (although it seems not everyone is). 

I could of course write a good deal on why I think smacking is wrong, and have a good rant about this. But the story also made my blood pressure rise for other reasons. It evoked that all too familiar feeling of extreme annoyance and affront that I feel whenever someone takes it upon themselves, uninvited, to speak to my child in a way I feel is not appropriate. 

At what point is it OK to intervene with someone else’s child? This question could lead to an endless debate about what is and is not acceptable behaviour from children, but I think that misses the point. 

Sarah Ditum’s article in The Guardian, whilst expressing her disapproval of the incident, concludes by saying, “… there are so many ways of dealing with another person’s child in the act of naughtiness that don’t involve physically attacking them‚ like, say, talking to them gently but firmly.” 

True. But I would go further, like, say, talking to their parents. Anyone ever think of that? It’s not like the mother wasn’t there. 

And that’s what really gets me. I would always favour talking to the parent first, rather than to their child. 

It’s the parent’s job to choose their methods of parenting, of disciplining and limit setting. And it’s the parent’s job to decide what they think are reasonable limits to set. If we disagree with these limits and feel there is a problem then it is surely more appropriate to discuss these with the parent than to take matters into our own hands with their child. The parent is also the one with intimate knowledge of their child, of the sort of language and methods they will and will not respond to, how they’re likely to respond, how they’re likely to be feeling, where their behaviour is coming from in the first place, what has gone before. 

And yet so often I find people talk to my child inappropriately. Don’t misunderstand. I do not let my child just run amuck. I don’t think it’s OK for my child to charge round a shop knocking things over and breaking them. Nor, I’m sure, did Angela Cropley. I’m right there, ready to deal with the situation as I see fit, and yet so often it’s taken out of my hands before I have the chance. 

And it’s not just issues around behaviour that bug me. It bugs me when people comment to my child on how dirty he is when I don’t mind him getting dirty if he’s having fun, and I don’t want him to be worried about it. It bugs me when people use language like ‘naughty’ and ‘not very nice’ around my child. It bugs me when people try to distract or cheer up my child when he’s crying, or worse, mock or belittle him, when I would rather validate his feelings and let him have a good cry if he needs to. 

I recognise that much of the problem for me is that others’ perception or definition of what is bad or normal behaviour are often not on a par with mine. Couple that with the fact that my methods of dealing with behaviour are not on a par with theirs, and the result is, well, lots of difference of opinion, and perhaps I’m over-sensitive about it. But the thing is, I spend a great deal of time biting my tongue or turning a blind eye to parenting methods that I strongly disagree with, and that I often find quite upsetting to witness. Children being smacked, children being left to cry, threatened, bullied, talked down to, disrespected and humiliated. But I say nothing because I don’t feel it’s my place to interfere. So it would be really nice to feel other parents could extend me the same courtesy. 

So as well as raising the issue of respect for children, this recent incident of the child being smacked by a shop keeper raises the issue of respect for parents. 

Please stop assuming that everyone uses and approves of the same old dated parenting methods. If you want to use them with your child, that’s your business, but my child, my methods are my business. Butt out.

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Posted by Jo

David Lammy’s comments on smacking.

February 1, 2012

In wishing to respond to the ill informed and ill considered comments made by MP David Lammy on Sunday regarding smacking, it is difficult to know where to start.

His comments show such an astonishing degree of ignorance, not just of the facts, and what the overwhelming evidence of research regarding the effects of smacking now shows, but also of the possible alternatives to smacking available to us as parents, that it is difficult to imagine why a man in his position has taken it upon himself to speak publicly on the subject.

Not only has he clearly failed to grasp the basic concept that smacking models and therefore teaches violence, but in making repeated references to his ‘deprived constituency’ and the difficulties facing the parents living in it, he perpetrates the ludicrous notion that disadvantaged parents have more need to smack because they do not have ‘other disciplining techniques’ available to them that middle class parents have. In elaborating on what he means by these middle class techniques, he merely mentions private schools and tennis lessons.

He paints a picture of parents in a ‘tough part of London’, their hands tied by legislation, totally unable to discipline their children or teach them right and wrong. Oh, please. It amazes me that he is unaware of the many other, more effective, parenting tools and strategies available to parents of all backgrounds, that cost nothing.

The argument against smacking is not based on a ‘liberal middle class assumption’, but on evidence and research – something Lammy seems to have skipped.

He seems aghast at Iain Dale’s suggestion that smacking is violence, and later claims “This is not about abuse, not about hitting or about violence…”.  Erm, yes it is.  That’s exactly what it’s about.

Smacking is violence. Let’s not pussy foot around trying to draw lines, talking about ‘reasonable chastisement’ and ‘reddening of the skin’, which Lammy himself is pleased to point out would not be a good indicator for non-white children in any case. Such quibbling over what does and does not constitute violence also misses the wider issue of emotional harm.

Smacking, in whatever situation, to whatever degree, is unnecessary and wrong. If Lammy doesn’t know any other way to raise a child then he needs to keep his ignorant remarks to himself, crawl out of Victorian times, and enrol on a basic parenting course.

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Posted by Jo