Yesterday I had the fortune to spend some time with my daughter at a play barn. While we were there I noticed a child who was around a year old and she was trying to take turns on one of the toys. Her mother immediately leapt over to her and shouted “no, be nice” and gave her a light slap on the wrist. The child didn’t cease her activity and the mother picked her up and whisked her off to one of the seats and then repeated her shouting and gave the child three further slaps on the wrist, none of which appeared to hurt the child.

Now, I’m not often judgmental and luckily this wasn’t one of the times where I was, although I had to stop myself from calling her a bully! However I was able to ask myself the question “what this child is learning from this experience?” It struck me that probably the most important thing she is learning is that it is OK to hit other people if they are being naughty. Clearly I am not saying that it is OK to hit other people, but what other lesson can she possibly have learned from this? If your carer shouts, hits or gives any abuse of verbal or physical nature, then this will be the way the world works for you and you will teach it to your children whether you like it or not.

I had visions of this child at her school in a few years time, perhaps one of her friends annoys her in some way and she immediately gives the child a slap or hits them because she has learned from her carers that that is what you do when someone is naughty. Obviously the child has much less control over the strength of her strike than the mother did. Now my next question is this:

Who has the responsibility here, further down the line in the child’s life? Is it the carers who have taught the child that it is OK to hit or slap, or is it the child’s responsibility to behave nicely as their parent is so earnestly trying to teach them?

Indeed, how far back do we take this? In some cases it is generations of parents and carers who have offered the children in their care this idea that it is OK to hit or slap… At some point we have to break this cycle, perhaps simply by becoming aware of the ideas it creates in our children and realising that we are not achieving our objective by treating them in this way. Then when we become aware, we can begin to change our behaviours and help our children to find new ways of interacting in such times.

To me, there is no sense in blaming the child, the parent or indeed any of the generations before and if I’d had my time again with this event, my question for the mother is “What is this reaction to your child’s behaviour teaching your child?” I’m not sure it would be a welcome intervention!

I’m still learning as a parent and in many ways I’m grateful for the opportunity to observe these type of things in order to discover for myself what being a parent means to me.

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