Hitting?

Honest question: If a woman is being rude in the grocery store, should I be allowed to hit her? If a sibling of mine is being generally disrespectful, should I hit them? Say there’s a belligerent old man who insults me when I walk past his house. Is striking him an appropriate response?

Is there literally ANY circumstance in society at large under which another person behaving in a way you don’t like can be appropriately responded to by hitting them?

Then why the hell do we hit kids?

I get it, I get it. You were spanked as a kid and you turned out just fine! But here’s the thing: If part of your core philosophy about how you treat others is that hitting people is good because it makes them better people, maybe you didn’t turn out as respectful and upstanding as you think you did.

If you believe kids “need” to be hit in order to learn respect, then you’re not doing a very good job of MODELING respect for them. If the only way you know to get a person to listen to you is to hit them if they don’t, then you haven’t EARNED respect from them. And believe it or not–and this may shock you–kids count as people.

If you honestly don’t know how to handle confrontation with someone 1/4 your size (or less) without hitting them; don’t know how to command attention without hitting them; don’t know how to engage with them when they are upset or acting out without hitting them; don’t know generally how to interact with a child on their level in a way that they understand; then there is a problem much bigger than whatever you think makes your kid deserve to be hit.

And I don’t care how you spin it–spanking is, literally, hitting your children. I don’t care if it “comes from a place of love.”

And it DOESN’T teach them respect. It doesn’t teach them why they should follow rules (aside from “I’ll be in physical pain if I get caught breaking them”), let alone why those rules are in place to begin with.

You know what DOES teach kids respect? Well, a lot of things, but here’s a short list:

• Showing them respect, and showing others respect in their presence.
• Modeling appropriate behavior in other ways, such as showing kids proper emotional responses.
• Helping kids understand their emotions, which helps minimize outbursts and tantrums.
• Giving kids language to describe their emotions, which helps with the above.
• Maintain consistent rules so kids know what they are.
• Help your child understand why rules are in place (and remember, if they’re too young to understand that reason, then they’re probably not going to understand the reason you’re hitting them either).
• Listening to your child when they object to rules, to either help you explain them better or to help make rules more fair and consistent to them.
• Make sure any punishments you enforce make sense based on the rule that was broken. (Hitting pretty much never qualifies as a situationally appropriate response.)
• Treating your child like a person. Because they are.

Is all of that hard? Yes. Is it a lot more work than spanking a child as the “need” arises? Of course. But parenting isn’t just about handling situations as they arise. It’s about ongoing behaviors. It’s about raising a good person, and learning to be a better person, at all times–and yes, you have to put in the work to that too.

Because parenting is a 24/7 thing. It’s not just a thing you do when a child Needs To Be Parented. You are a parent all the time, and this should affect what kind of PERSON you are. Your child looks up to you, and you need to put in the work to SHOW them how to be a good person, and that is a constant, never-ceasing job.

Otherwise you’re not teaching your child respect. You’re teaching them obedience. And personally, there are more important things I’d like my child to learn–like for one thing, to never let someone lay hands on them.