Smacking Children is Bullying says leading UK expert

The UK's leading expert on dealing with bullies and other difficult people, Nancy Slessenger, responds to the recent ruling on controversial subject of child smacking - claiming that it is a form of bullying. Nancy has just finished a new free 39 page guide on dealing with bullying and you can download it free from her website.

July 9, 2004 --The UK's Leading expert on dealing with bullies and difficult people expresses her concern for the recent legal changes on child smacking.

Nancy, who spends her time researching behaviour and coaching others how to deal with challending situations and people, is concerned that the changes may be a step backwards. She recalls a moment that shaped her thinking on the subject:

"People are suggesting that hitting children is an acceptable tool for disciplining them," says Nancy.

"In what other situation is it all right to hit someone purely because they happen to be smaller than you are? Should we widen this law to allow people to hit their aging parents if they are smaller? Where does this stop?

Many years ago, Sweden decided to make hitting children illegal.

At the time I thought this was ridiculous. Then I saw a TV documentary about it. There was an interview with a Swedish father.

He told the interviewer that he had been very unhappy about the law when it was introduced because he thought he should be able to hit his own children. However, the Swedes had provided help and support for parents who had been hitting their children. He told us that, as a result of this support, he had realised that the times when he wanted to hit his children were the times when he didnt know how to communicate with them.

He admitted that, in the past, he had just not tried to communicate or improve his skills in this area. Now he was ashamed of his previous behaviour because he realised it was much better to communicate effectively.

For me it was a turning point. I started to notice that what this man said was true in many situations. Violence occurs when people are not communicating effectively.

How does this translate to bullying? Lets look at what bullying is. Its any situation where one person puts their own needs first and imposes them on someone else, ignoring their needs.

Often someone who bullies others is completely unaware of the other persons needs. Bullying does not always include violence; it can take many forms.

In the 1990s I spent six weeks in Bali. My room was in the middle of a paddy field next to the room of a German woman with two horrid, badly behaved children of about four and five years old. Clara was constantly shouting at her children. They ignored her shouting and did all the things she told them not to. Her next move would be to chase them up and down the path, catch them and hit them. This would result in more shouting and lots of crying. It was a cycle that repeated itself every time she was with them.

Sometimes when they had gone to bed she and I would sit on the veranda. I would soak up the beautiful scenery while she moaned about her children. In her eyes their poor behaviour was the fault of their father. She would complain about him and then launch off into complaints about the rest of her life.

We were on a course together and had both arrived a couple of days early. She had booked a nanny for her children during the hours of the course. He arrived on the Sunday evening to introduce himself. He was a quietly spoken slight man. His movements were gentle and his smile was easy and kind. Clara was mortified. He spoke no German and his English vocabulary was in single figures (Hello, I nanny), and he was not a woman.

Unfortunately there was nothing she could do at this late stage.

The course started early the next morning.

After hed gone, she vowed to complain first thing the next day.

We arrived back to our little huts at about 2pm on Monday to find two spotless, happy and contented children playing with the nanny. They were completely captivated by the game they were involved in. These children were hardly recognizable as the monsters she had chastised and hit the previous evening. As she walked towards them the first word out of her mouth was Dont.

She started to tell them off, shouting out her angry words, and they started to cry.

As part of our course we had a lecture from the director of the local hospital, a large and friendly woman encased in a vast billowing dress. She told us how children are brought up in Bali.

This is my memory of what she said. Their belief is that, when it is born, a child is a god and becomes less of a god as it grows up. As the Balinese believe in reincarnation, there is an overriding need to be nice to gods. So children are treated with complete respect. Always.

Over my six-week stay I saw many Balinese children. I only saw one crying and that one had just fallen over. They children were,
without exception, polite, kind, happy and delightful. Just as the German children were whenever they were with their nanny.

Why is this? My explanation is that children copy the behaviour of the people they know. If they experience nothing but respect, kindness and love, thats what they learn. If they experience violence, lack of understanding and anger thats what they learn.

Most children learn quickly and are capable of learning new and better ways of behaving.

If we hit our children, what is the lesson they learn? They learn that, if someone does something you dont like and they are smaller or weaker than you are, you hit them. They do not learn understanding or effective negotiation skills.

I have been horrified to hear so many people talking about the need for discipline as though violence was the only tool a parent has of handling problem situations. There are plenty of other ways. Violence is the refuge of the bully. Its needless aggression. Allowing this behaviour in our society is a way of not only condoning bullying in its worst form, but actively encouraging it.

Lets help people to understand others and deal effectively with them. To say that this law would take police resources away from real cases of child abuse is ludicrous. Buy condoning the hitting of children we are actively encouraging abuse in many forms. Have the Swedes encountered this problem? I dont think so.

There is another reason for banning it. It doesnt work. If it did work you would only have to hit a child once and then they would behave properly. So why use a technique that is ineffective when there are others you can learn that work?"

If you would like to learn more about how to deal with bullying, Nancy has written a free 39 page guide on dealing with Bullies - use this link to download it - http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/smacking