I yesterday told you how normal it is for children to get hit by their parents here in India. We have written about this problem before and also mentioned that even verbal violence is just much too common. Now however, the issue seems even much more important to us and the reason is clear: now we have Apra.
It has always been our wish to reduce violence against children, which is why one of the main principles of our school is a violence-free environment in which children don’t get beaten. We know also that most, if not all, of our school’s students get hit at home and we see that this is very normal in Indian families when we visit friends. We have even had Indian visitors at the Ashram who expressed such a view for the kids at the Ashram.
Children do nonsense and play around, it is normal, and once an Indian man watched this happening and said to me ‘These children are spoilt!’ The general idea is according to the principle ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ – children get spoilt if you don’t hit them. They don’t learn discipline and you have to beat them to better them. The joke is that I have seen many families in which the children get hit but where the children are the worst when it comes to manners or discipline – because children one day just don’t care about what their parents say anymore if they know they will only get beaten.
The problem is that they don’t realize what is different in children as compared to adults. Children obviously do nonsense because they are children! If you did the same, it would be strange and wrong but they are children! You think that they are dumb, stupid and they would not understand even if you explained them because they are ‘just’ children. The reality is that you are stupid if you expect them to act like adults! You are the one who should realize that they are children and thus have every right to do nonsense. They explore the world and it is your responsibility to tell them what is dangerous and what is not.
We lately had several children of Apra’s age at the Ashram and obviously when these boys and girls are playing with each other, one or the other parent has to watch them. They talk to you, you need to answer, you can show them games and how to play, you have to deal with their little fights for different toys and keep them from doing anything that could hurt them. Our baby is among these children and I would not want anybody to hit my child – which is obvious – or hit any of the children she is playing with! More than that, we have additionally placed a complete ban on violence of any kind, even verbally. Nobody should tell my daughter or the children she is playing with that she or they would get hit by anybody!
We want our child to grow up in a safe and violence-free environment where she won’t have to fear getting hit by anybody and where she won’t be under the constant threat of this either. Our employees had to, have to and will have to learn not to scare children, to respond to their needs, to explain them why they should not do something instead of just shouting at them, ordering them not to do it and most of all to just show some more of their love when being with them.
For our child, for our children.
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Absolutely agree with the points raised above. Of course, children will and must behave like children. If I saw a child behaving like an ‘adult’, sitting quietly on a sofa, smoking a pipe and flicking the channels of the TV, then I would be worried.
My view is that if a child isn’t presenting a risk to his/her self or any other child, then they should be allowed to have the freedom to play and develop naturally. A quote from a book that I recently read: ” To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course.” So, this “nonsense” is a treasured thing for a child, so parents must never take that away from them!”
Now, I fully appreciate that there will be times when a child’s behaviour is ‘wrong’. In such cases, a parent can simply explain why the action wrong. However, to lose sight of the action itself, and focus on the punishment (e.g. hitting them) will do more harm than good. For example, a child throws a stone at a window so the parent hits the child. Will the child stop picking up stones? Will the child throw something else at the window instead? What lesson has actually been taught here?! Now if we assume that, instead of raising their hand, the parent explains to the child that it is wrong to throw things because (always include the because) it can be harmful to others and it can get you into trouble with the law.
Using a rational argument to promote the consequences of bad behaviour is informative, factual, and, in my opinion, more effective than using violence.