slap, crackle and a bop on the nose

My daughter has become a hitter. At 17.5 months of age, she has started to slap anyone, including me,  that offends her ever increasing sensibilities. Being a red head she is easily riled and she swings her chubby little arm back at the slightest provocation. She is at a point in her life where all her reactions are based on emotion, not reason, so her victims are mostly undeserving. Like the poor kid at the library who shared her packet of crisps with Amber-Jane only to have her cheek reddened by when they ran out. Or Mr Bear, perhaps just because he’s smaller.

She never used to hit. She went through a brief biting stage, an experiement she soon gave that up when she realised how little she gained by chewing on my arm in a fit of rage. The hitting thing is different though, because the hitting thing she learned from a kid at the park and things kids learn from their peers, it seems, stick like crazy glue.

This kid, a boy about a year older than Amber-Jane, took it upon himself to follow Amber around and slap her every few minutes. Having never been confronted with that kind of violence, my poor child just stood there looking confused and, even though I intervened on several occasions, telling this boy that it wasn’t okay to hit, that he should be nice, etc etc, the kid didn’t stop. Two days later, Amber-Jane loomed over Mr Bear in much the same way this bigger boy had stood over her, and shouted a stream of baby abuse before giving Mr Bear a hard slap.

I’m a bit pissed about this situation. I’m trying to raise Amber-Jane a non-violent way and I’ve never smacked her, though believe me, I’ve been sorely tempted at times.  Her red hair, though beautiful, comes with a temperament given to throwing spectacular tantrums. It also makes her willful and stubborn. (As you can see, we like to blame that part of her genetic make up for everything bad because it lets us off the hook). Instead of giving in the urge to throttle her, I breathe deeply and count to ten because I’m an adult and I’ve learned to control my base urges, and also because I’m a parent and we teach by example and I want her to learn to resolve conflicts without her fists. That though, isn’t the reason I’m pissed.  I realise that the hitting stage is inevitable, we don’t live in bubbles and other kids are going to teach your kid to do things you don’t like.  I’m pissed because I asked the boy’s father to speak to his son and make him stop hitting Amber-Jane. Dad refused. His view: In the park, Amber-Jane was part of a pecking order and, being smaller than him, was going to get smacked until she could stand up for herself.

Since then I’ve been thinking of the kind of society we’d create if we let our kids run around beating up on smaller kids without admonishing them and teaching them it’s wrong. I thought of William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ where a group of young boys is shipwrecked on an island without any adults. Savagery ensues, and Piggy eventually gets it. Perhaps this dad thinks that a society where the fat kid dies because he’s not strong enough to fend for himself is okay , but what he fails to realise is that the damage extends beyond the Piggys of the world. For the most part, the Piggys survive. They survive and cowboy up because their parents help them devlope coping mechanisms that equip them to deal with the horrors of being Piggy on the playground. But what of the Rogers* of the world?  The boys whose parents don’t care enough about them to teach them right from wrong? How are they equipped to cope in a world where they will become increasingly unpopular and unwanted?  Nobody likes a bully, but the sad truth is that bullies, more than anyone else, need to be loved because they grow from a place of neglect.

Then again, perhaps the dad is right. After all, in a society where violence is acceptable, I’d have had the satisfaction of punching him on the nose.

* Roger is one of the most savage characters in Lord of the Flies: he releases the boulder that crushes Piggy.