Anger Management. Why we shouldn't hit Children

Yes we all want to lash out sometimes, physically or verbally, which is why we go to the gym or play sport or join a drama group.  There are lots of activities that can focus our energy that sometimes spills over.  If we don't have a focus  then we hit a child or kick a pet or shout at the neighbours because we have lost control.

The Independent's Anna Barbieri made the recent point 'A child will learn nothing by being hit', indeed all they will learn is how to hit out for themselves and that it is OK  to 'lose it'.  Children who have healthy, loving attachments at an early age, grow up with self esteem and empathy.  The brain understands empathic responses from birth and reciprocates from about the age of 18 months.  Barbieri again, 'If you hit an adult, you can be charge with assault, even if you don't leave a red mark'.  A red marks elevates it to Actual Bodily Harm (ABH).  However, legally you can hit a child providing you do not leave a mark and do not hit the child's head.  We actually have laws concerning degrees of hitting.  My own research with the Temiars of Malaysia, (who are currently being prosecuted for staging a peaceful protest about their eroding land rights) showed that peaceful and loving child-rearing brought about peaceful and loving adults.  The Temiars did not hit their children and consequently they did not hit each other as adults.

Yesterday on the Today Programme, someone 'in authority' stated that teenagers had to be prepared for living 'in a harsh and difficult world'.  Is this what civilisation has brought about?  I associate harsh worlds with the bleak steppes of Kazakhstan or the relentless poverty in India, not the comparative high economic standards of centrally heated western Europe!

Lets start again at least by realising that children are tomorrow's adults and deserve a good start - warmth, love and acceptance.  We are all very angry at the state of the world, the economy and most of all the uncertainty - but it does not have to turn into anger and violence!

Sue Jennings new book 'The Anger Management Toolkit: Understanding and Transforming Anger in Children and Young People' is published by Hinton House