Spanking vs. Child Abuse

I think I was at least 4 years old when the "spanking" first started. My punishment for being disobedient was either kneeling on the carpet facing the wall for 15-30 minutes, or a slap to both hands with an abnormally long wooden chopstick . Either way it sucked; with kneeling I would get imprints of the carpet on my knee caps and the slap to the hands obviously was painful. One day I realized, I didn't get "spanked" anymore and I asked my mother if she noticed that. She said to me that once I reached the age of 10, she no longer spanked me because it wasn't "right" to "spank" an older child. I guess she thought it wouldn't be as effective as it used to be. I don't think the way she punished me would be called child abuse; I'm sure most of you would agree. I have met some people whose parents never used any physical punishment and instead commanded that they be obedient just by using their authorative voice. I would have definitely wished for the latter of course if I had the choice, but it was my mother's parenting style.

Spanking is a touchy subject among parents; some people swear it works and other people think it's cruel to even lay a finger on a child just once. There's a fine line between spanking your child to reinforce a rule and physically beating your child just because he/she irritates you. So what do you do when you witness a parent punishing their child/children? I ask because that happened to me today.

I was out running errands with my daughter when I saw this lady with her two sons approximately age 2 and 5 at the market. I returned to my car when I noticed that she was parked next to me. I was in my car trying to make a phone call to see if my mother in law wanted me to get lunch when I hear her yelling at her 5 years old son. The boy was crying and obviously afraid of his mother. She yelled at him to get into the car as she was putting her 2 years old son into the car seat, but before she buckled him in, she got even more furious and hit her other son which was in the seat still crying. From what I could see, he didn't say anything except cry. She proceeded to hit her son again, yelling at him to stop crying and that he was a disobedient child. Her toddler got out of his seat which ended up making her even more livid. She ended up hitting him too. What bothered me was that she didn't hit them in a "designated" area like my mother did; she was hitting them on the head and anywhere else she could reach. The look on her face looked more like an uncontrollable frustration, irritation type of anger. When she finally stopped hitting them; she realized that I had saw everything as I was starting to reverse my car to retrieve lunch. I think she was still so mad to really express the embarrasment/shame from having somebody witness her outrage even though it slightly showed on her face. I didn't know what to do. It wasn't my place to tell her to stop punishing her children, but I felt torn because I didn't like the way she was punishing her children. My mother never punished me in public physically; it was always reserved for home. I made a mental note of the color, make and model of her car and the first 4 of her license plate should I decide to call child services. I ended up not calling child services because I don't know if she does this regularly to her children and I also know what child services does to a family first hand. It's a very traumatic experience and I wouldn't want those children to have to go through that if this event happened to be the very first time her temper wasn't manageable. Although, I may be biased to think that this isn't the first time because I saw how she reacted when a man abruptly opened his car door and almost hit her. He apologized sincerely and she went on to make a remark about it without accepting the apology. From my perspective, she didn't seem really nice at all.

I'm glad my daughter isn't old enough to comprehend the event that took place today. I wouldn't know how to begin explaining to her what she may have seen. Being a first time mother, I'm not sure how I would punish my daughter. I think perhaps with the techniques frequently used on Supernanny taught by Jo Frost, but other than that, I don't plan on using physical punishment. I just hope my stern, authorative voice will do the trick when it's time to discipline her.