#tw smacking

[18thcenturythirsttrap]

Michael Caine and Alan Shearer urge for smacking to be banned in England

Good for them. It's abuse, and it damn well should be illegal.

[18thcenturythirsttrap]

Modern parenting is rejecting abusive ways of punishing children. Will England listen? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Older relatives might roll their eyes at this generation’s approach, but it is overdue in a country where smacking is still legal, says Guar

...As we speak, Rickman and I get talking about Italy, a famously child-friendly place where a crying child would be more likely to solicit the sort of solidarity I mentioned earlier, and how their child-centred Reggio Emilia educational approach arose as a direct response to fascism. In the context of the global rise of the far-right, perhaps it’s worth thinking about how anti-fascism begins at home, with the most vulnerable group of people of all, and how living anti-authoritarian values means not forcing children to be obedient, shouting at, or hitting them.

"Because I am the authority figure and I say so" or "because if you don't, I'll hurt you" are fascist means of discipline at interpersonal and state level. I'm honestly surprised that more people don't realise that.

[thehyperspacesystem]

[TW: for child neglect, smacking, parental criticism, etc]

As I was making a cup of coffee, I was hit by an intrusive memory in which I was about 7 and my biological mother was telling me that I was a wastrel for turning on a fan because I was hot. She had said the same thing about me turning on a heater if I was cold the winter past. In the winter time, her room would be heated. But my brother and I just had to be cold.

She was willfully ignorant of how much things actually cost, for example I was once smacked for opening the oven door without turning the oven off first. I was told we would get a huge power bill and wouldn't be able to afford any nice food because of the oven door being open for those few seconds.

Even at 7, I knew that consuming 100s of dollars worth of electricity in a few seconds with a 60amp switchboard violated the laws of physics[1], so she was just choosing to punish me for the sake of punishing me.

I see the effects of this today. I don't turn on the heater until I'm freezing and I dissociate temperature, so I'm not even aware I'm cold until i have the beginnings of hypothermia. I regularly wear a tank top on cold autumn days because I have not registered it's cold. I have to look at the weather forecast to know I should layer up. I feel guilty if I leave the computer on while I sleep because some program, like a backup program needs to run for a long time and I still turn off the oven before opening the door.

childhood neglect does things to you that affect you for life. I don't know why my brain decided to give me that memory now, while I was making my coffee. But I see that maybe it's OK for me to dress warmly and turn on a heater if it's cold, nothing bad will happen to me if I just turn on the heater in a tank top. I'm adult now.

Notes and clarifications: [1] I'm autistic. Electricity was one of my childhood special interests. I spent hours playing with batteries and torch bulbs and things like that and reading books about electricity. I knew about ohms law and calculating watts from voltage and current and that if you put a current that's too big through a wire, it makes fire and doesn't work any more even at that age. The concept of kilowatt hours (energy used over time) might have been too much of a stretch for my child brain. My childhood understanding was just that if you used more than 60 amps (14.4kw, NZ uses 240 volts) at a time, the power lines into your house would melt and then you wouldn't have power any more. With my adult understanding of electricity, the most power you could use in 15 seconds without blowing something up on that installation at 1993 prices would cost $0.18 so yes, she was being a piece of shit and telling lies to children and my child self knew that.

[natelove]

I’m gonna start physically smacking myself if I don’t leave the room right now

[sam-tries-their-best]

hot take: if you, as a parent, smack/"dap"/yell at your small baby for biting you (something that they do when teething and also to learn) you are shit