This is a sister article to: To Smack or Not to Smack? What is the Answer? Click here to read it.
If smacking another adult is assault, it may be beneficial to train our children early not to smack people. Smacking is a behavior that belongs with the tactics of power and control associated with the Cycle of Violence. To break this cycle, we need to find alternatives to physical punishment when all we really want to do is lash out at our children. Children never deserve physical violence and learn nothing positive from such action. If we model alternatives to physical punishment, we teach our children that there are alternatives to handling conflict. Physical violence does not solve conflict. Violence increases conflict.
I’m a parent too. I understand that there are days when we are pushed to the limit and a smack is the easiest and quickest way to regain control. These moments are the very ones when we really shouldn’t smack because the conditions are ripe for a smack to turn to abuse.
Some alternatives to consider on those days when you just want to smack:
• Stop. Think. Act like an adult. The age-old adage of count to ten before you act is well placed here.
• Count to 20, 30, or 100 if you have to.
• Take some deep breaths and exhale s-l-o-w-l-y. This buys you thinking time and opens your body up to carrying calming oxygen to your outer reaches of “I’m losing control”.
• Put your child in a safe place (cot, bedroom) and leave for a few moments. Bite your lip, say a prayer, what ever works to help you regain control over your reaction itching arm and hand.
• Walk around the outside of your house until you calm down.
• Phone a friend, a relative, a parent help line. Create an interruption to your desire to smack.
• Punch a pillow (in private, never in front of your child) to release your anger.
• Make yourself a warm drink – use your hands for sustenance, not bust an’ dense.
• Put on your favorite music/radio program,. Sing along or repeat what is being said. You will be creating a cognitive division between your angry thoughts and your emotional need to use behaviors of harm.
• Do some gardening, pull some weeds.
• Write a list of all the things you like about your child.
• Write a list of all the things you like abut yourself.
• Ask yourself, “Why am I going to hit my child?” You may just find that your truthful answer is about your inability to cope rather than the child’s bad behavior.
• Ask yourself if your tantrum throwing and taking frustration and anger out on the child will make things better. Will it help your child to act in a more appropriate way or will it teach them that conflict equals violence?
• Find an alternative that works for you. Use it until it no longer works. Find another alternative when the original one fails.
I once worked with a four-year-old-boy who had been beaten all his life. In play therapy, he would feed the dolls beer, shake them until they pretend vomited and then bash them for vomiting. During an art therapy session, I asked him what words he would like me to write on his poster. Out of the mouths of babes: this is what he said, “These hands for huggin’, not hurtin’.”
I have never forgotten those words. On the occasions that I am so stressed that I could lash out at my children, I remember the haunting words of that hurt little boy. He is my alternative to smacking.
These hands are for helping, not hiding. Using your fingers, type in the alternatives to smacking that work for you. Chances are that your alternative will also work for another parent. That other parent may be so stressed that their creative mind of thinking alternatives has shut down. Go on, give them a hand.
Related articles by Megan Bayliss in Mental Health:
How Children Learn the Cycle of Violence;
Do you get Angry with your Child? I do, because Anger is a Natural Feeling.
Emotional Intelligence and Clear Communication.
Related piece of bibliotherapy from Megan’s journal: My Dandelion Wish