I am totally opposed to hitting a child. What gives any adult the right to hit another person just because the person they are hitting is younger, weaker and smaller. Hitting a child is nothing more than physical bullying.
How would adults feel if their boss hit them because they were insubordinate...or a store clerk hit them because they were caught shoplifting in their store...or a spouse hit them because they had a fender bender that was their fault.
There is no justification for hitting a child. The only thing a child learns when they are hit is that violence is how you deal with people and issues.
My mother spanked me. I haven't killed anyone. Not yet, anyway.
Seriously, when my mother had to resort to such, she made it clear that she hated doing it but a point had to be made. I knew that when I got spanked, I'd left her no choice.
On rare occasions my dad spanked me. My mom hit me twice. The second time (I was 4 or 5) I defended myself by stabbing her in the hand with a Bic pen. From that time on she never hit me again but instead gave me time out in the corner.
doglover wrote:I am totally opposed to hitting a child. What gives any adult the right to hit another person just because the person they are hitting is younger, weaker and smaller. Hitting a child is nothing more than physical bullying.
How would adults feel if their boss hit them because they were insubordinate...or a store clerk hit them because they were caught shoplifting in their store...or a spouse hit them because they had a fender bender that was their fault.
There is no justification for hitting a child. The only thing a child learns when they are hit is that violence is how you deal with people and issues.
For the purpose of this debate, I would suggest thinking about how abuse of power in the workplace, most likely not physical, but deeply psychological, can be far more damaging to an adult than a light slap on the bum to a child.
I had a boss who was just a bully with many on staff but she used to berate this one poor man, old enough to be her father, something awful and in front of the whole staff. It was a painful thing to witness and more than obvious that she had very little respect for him and the more he allowed her to bully him, the little respect she had for him grew less and less. 1+1=2.
eoe, I have found from experience that many people should not be supervisors of humans - no less animals. They have little or no knowledge of supervisor responsibilities.
Well c. i., they may know the responsibilities but they just don't possess the skills. This woman was a terrible boss, an ego run amok, and we did manage as a staff to oust her later on.
Sometimes the desire to succeed, or on another level, feel powerful, overwhelms common sense, and sensitivity. This can come from childhood trauma, and could possibly create a child murderer, or on the 'lite' side, an incredibly horrible boss or bully. The difficult question, legally, is and always has been, where do you place the blame when a charge has been made? This is something that is still in transition, and still being battled out in the courts.
Even with adults, when you are privy to their history as abused children, it's difficult to place the blame solely at their feet. It doesn't seem fair and it probably feels like just more abuse.
eoe wrote:Even with adults, when you are privy to their history as abused children, it's difficult to place the blame solely at their feet. It doesn't seem fair and it probably feels like just more abuse.
Well, I would agree there, but sometimes people in the throes of this kind of experiece don't really know that they are becoming the abuser they were tortured by. Intervention isn't necessarily abuse.
