“There’s a difference between discipline as abuse”… Um no hate to break it to you but violence against a child is inherently abusive. I don’t understand how people can process and understand that it is never okay for a husband to hit his wife and make very progressive comments about abuse in relationships that involve adults… but as soon as its parent and child, there’s apparently all these loopholes that make it totally okay for adults to be violent towards children.
My parents hit me when I was younger and it was abuse, I love my mum but her hitting her 7 year old bcs she messed up her crayons eventho she was told not to, or hitting me bcs I went outside to play eventho I was grounded, is abuse. I told them that and they’ve apologised to me about it, even my mother can look back and reflect that her hitting me was not good parenting, I was a child… it was lazy and wrong but it’s just how people are encouraged to parent in Nigeria… it’s sickening.
The playing field was not even, I was a child making mistakes bcs that’s what children do, when they hit me, even if they explained “why”… all it did was instil fear in me and make me resent them. Hitting your child is abusive behaviour. It’s that simple. People will say, if a child acts up, you have to hit them bcs that’s the only way they’ll learn. But adults act up in public *all the time*. Working in retail, adults were just as disrespectful and disruptive as the children were, yet everyone knows you can’t just go round hitting adults in an attempt to make them learn bcs gee, that’s assault! But apparently, children, who actually should be afforded more leeway bcs they’re children and are still growing and learning and need the support and encouragement from adults to become well rounded individuals.. are the ones who just need a good smack when they act up. It’s disgusting and when you put it like that, you realise it’s abuse, that’s really all it is.
Stop defending and normalising abuse against children. Stop trying to find loopholes in which it is okay for you as an adult to lay your hands on a child, stop pretending that violence is ever a good learning tool. Stop promoting unhealthy tactics as a means of parenting and do better. If you wouldn’t someone to be violent towards you every time *you* make a mistake or do something problematic, how about you afford that same level of respect to children who are legit growing and learning everyday of their lives.
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