How can i stop hitting my child

Striking out: When parents hit

Story highlights

Even restrained parents lash out, but understanding why can help you make sure it doesn't happen again

Parents can become overtired, stressed and out of control, just like their kids

The risk of hitting a child decreases once you decide to pursue an alternative response to anger

Parenting.com —

Here’s a confession: I have hit my children.

I was angry when I did it – out of control, even. It scared my kids, and scared me too. It also filled me with shame.

This may be the worst of all the dirty little secrets of parenthood – worse than the times we’ve bought our son a candy bar to keep him happy at the supermarket, the times we’ve let our daughter watch cartoons all morning so we could talk on the phone. As much as we may share with friends our irritation over socks and toys scattered on the floor or our discouragement over piles of laundry that never go away, this is one trial of parenthood that many of us suffer alone. I believed for years that if I ever told a friend how I sometimes yelled at my kids – let alone that I slapped my son – she’d think I was a bad mother.

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It isn’t only our children who become overtired, overstressed, and out of control at times. We do, too. In fact, few experiences are more likely to bring about these feelings than the 24-hour-a-day job of raising young kids. But where we all recognize and accept that now and then our children are going to act out, few parents afford themselves any margin at all for similar frailties.

It’s been years now since I slapped my daughter or my younger son. I made a promise to myself, and to my kids, that I’ll never let it happen again. For me, a crucial part of learning how to avoid surrendering to that impulse has been to understand the way it develops, and – most important – to talk about it with other parents.

Surprisingly, nearly everybody I spoke with had at one time or another hit their child. And for nearly every one, it was a source of shame. The parents I’m talking about aren’t the ones who habitually smack their kids or who can’t make a trip to the supermarket without yelling at them, yanking their arms, and calling them names. I’m talking about the kind of parent who would look with horror and shock at those who abuse their children, the kind of parent who has probably even made a conscious choice not to spank.

There was a lot of comfort for me in the simple discovery that I was far from the only such mother who’d raised a hand in anger to her child. Most important, there was a lot of support in the experiences of parents who’d confronted the issue of hitting a child, and learned how to avoid it.

From the time he was an infant, my son Willy was the most challenging of my three children. My daughter, Audrey, would voluntarily send herself to her room when she’d misbehaved in some minor way (even as a toddler), and you had only to say the word “no” to my first son, Charlie, and his lower lip would start to quiver, he was so anxious to please us. But Willy revealed himself early as a fighter. Almost from the moment of his birth, he seemed bent on locating the boundaries we set and venturing past them. Tell him to keep his food on the plate or in his mouth, and he’d throw a handful on the floor. Tell him to stay away from his sister’s dollhouse, and he’d make a beeline for it.

I tried the calm, rational approach: two warnings, with consequences clearly described and carried out if necessary. When that failed to have any effect on his behavior, I decided to alter my no-spanking policy.

The danger with spanking, I learned, may have less to do with the act of spanking itself than with the spirit in which it’s done. In my case, it worked when I was totally under control and delivered no more than a couple of quick, firm pats on the bottom. But if I was upset, instead of being about regaining control and order, the spanking became another out-of-control behavior. He hit his brother; I hit him. Was that really the message I wanted to send? I decided it wasn’t.

But, of course, even when a parent makes the conscious choice not to spank her child, the kinds of situations that may bring it about don’t disappear. Neither do the feelings a parent may experience that moved her to lash out at her child.

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“I’d read many books on child-rearing and firmly believed it was wrong to hit a child,” says Shelly Whymer,* a mother of three, in Pasadena, California. “But the stress of hurrying kids off to school and myself off to work on time, or my anger over the children’s inability to play peacefully together for three minutes, sometimes made me into a monster.” One time, she admits, “I was so angry from trying to drive in heavy traffic while the three of them fought in the backseat that I broke my front tooth from clenching my jaw.”

Where that mother bottled up her frustrations tightly enough to hurt her mouth, many women find the opposite happening. “I used to hold everything in for a long time,” says Jennifer Catrell, a full-time mother of five, ages 2 to 8, in Nashua, New Hampshire. “But it kept building up, like water against a dam. One of the kids would start ripping wallpaper off the walls, and then the others did it too. All of a sudden, it was as if the pressure reached critical mass, and I’d just explode. That’s when I’d spank one of them.”

She always regretted it. “Hitting only made me feel worse,” she says. “I hugged them and apologized afterward and spent extra time with whomever I lost my temper at. ”

Dennis Fielder, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, says the one and only time he hit his son, now 7, came when he was putting his aging mother in a nursing home and selling her house. “Tim made this comment to me about how he didn’t really like being around his grandmother, because she was always complaining and telling the same stories over and over,” he says. “I didn’t even think – I just smacked him. It only came to me after that Tim was actually saying, out loud, all the things I’d been feeling myself, things that I felt incredibly guilty about.”

Of all the parents I’ve spoken to about this, none have done any real, physical harm to their child. The damage lay in the feelings that surrounded the violence and in the potential terror to a young child of seeing his parent and primary protector turning on him.

We all know our children are going to exhibit inappropriate, frustrating, and even crazy-making behavior now and then. (In other words, they’re going to act like children.) So the questions parents need to ask themselves are: What do I do when that happens? And which situations are most likely to precipitate an inappropriate response from me?

“Every time I’ve hit my son or daughter, they’ve been wired up and out of control, and I’ve been under unusual stress,” says Clara Rechnitz, a mother of two, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. “Realistically, they’re going to be wired up and out of control now and then. And I’m frequently going to be under stress. So what’s to keep me from behaving the same way next time?”

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There’s no magic solution, of course, but the risk of hitting a child is substantially diminished once you’ve made a conscious decision to pursue an alternative response to anger. When my own children were small, and I’d feel myself becoming dangerously worn down (usually at the end of an afternoon), I’d announce I was having a quiet time. For me, that meant sitting in a particular chair in our kitchen, with a cup of tea. Maybe because I used quiet times sparingly, and saved them for when I needed them most, my children nearly always respected them.

Another mother actually sits in her closet with a cordless phone and calls her sister. “She and I have a code we use with each other,” says the full-time at-home mother of two preschoolers, in Pensacola, Florida. “I dial her number and say ‘red alert,’ and she goes into gear. It’s not that she has anything new or surprising to tell me – it’s always ‘Fix a cup of tea and put on some soft music.’ But just hearing the sound of her voice and getting to talk about how I feel is usually enough to calm me down.”

For some parents, putting distance between themselves and the child or children who’ve been driving them around the bend is the essential element in regaining control. Others head for the eye of the storm, embracing their child rather than separating from him. One mother says she takes a walk with her son and daughter when she feels she could lose it. Another gets in the tub with her daughter or takes a nap with her. One father of two says that when he senses he’s in danger of losing control, he piles everyone in the car and heads to the children’s room of the town library: “I guess what I’m looking for, when I do that, is partly the calm that comes from reading books together. But partly, I want to be surrounded by witnesses.”

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One of the most helpful things I did with my son Willy was to stop everything (which once meant abandoning an overflowing cart in the supermarket and heading out of the store) and get into our car. Not to drive – just to sit there, in a quiet, familiar, controlled environment, removed from all the stuff going on, with nothing much to do but sit there, catch our breath, and look out the windows. Sometimes, we’d end up talking. Other times, I’d hold him. Other times, we’d just sit there. I’d close my eyes. He might wail. But sooner or later, maybe out of sheer boredom and lack of stimuli, he’d quiet down. Then we’d get up and resume our lives.

Realistically, even the most sensible strategies won’t always work. I slapped my daughter two or three times when she said things to me so deeply disrespectful I felt as if I’d been stabbed. I slapped my younger son twice, both at moments when, more painful even than if he’d defied me, he ignored me altogether.

The times I’ve struck one of my children have taught me why I don’t ever want to do so again. I want them to grow up believing they can trust me. When a child experiences the sensation of his larger, stronger, more powerful parent raising a hand to him, he may not feel wholly safe with her.

There’s another unfortunate thing that happens when you strike your child in anger: You significantly undercut your ability to challenge inappropriate behavior effectively. Each of the times I’ve struck one of my kids, my actions have come in response to actions of theirs that did, in fact, deserve to be challenged. But each time I’ve ended up apologizing, instead of extracting the apology their actions warranted.

What’s to be done, if that happens? What does a parent do when she’s hit her child, and she knows she shouldn’t have, and she’s sick with guilt and regret and shame about it?

Talk to your child about it. This won’t undo the experience. But where hitting him tears the two of you apart, hugging him, telling him you’re sorry, and letting him tell you how he feels can bring you back together.

My son Willy was 7 the day I slapped him hard enough to leave a red mark on his cheek. Afterward – after the angry words, the apologies, the tears – we lay on the couch together, just holding each other, not saying anything for a long time. I knew I wanted to promise him it would never happen again, and I wanted more than words to seal my promise. So we went outside and took a walk. We went down our street to a stream where some wildflowers grew, where we sailed boats a few times when he was younger. We still didn’t talk. “Let’s always remember this moment,” I said to him, and I froze it in my head: the sound of the water, the sun on the trees, the smell of the air, the memory of my son’s tears and my own. Because sometimes, I think, the best insurance you can have against repeating a mistake is to remember how it made you feel the first time.

I do remember. And I’ve never hit my son again. He remembers too, I know. And he believes my word is good. He knows his mother makes mistakes sometimes (what else is new?), but he also knows I learn from them: He’s seen me change. And he has changed his behavior too.

I know he may always carry, in his head, a picture of me slapping him. But he will have another picture too – a picture of the two of us, vowing to do better in the future.

* All names and identifying information have been changed.

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How Can I Get My Child To Stop Hitting?

Question:

I have a son who will be 4 in two weeks and a 13-month-old son. The oldest has been through a series of hitting phases since the spring. I have read 3 of your books, and was relieved to learn that I already use much of the positive discipline style. He will often hit or push his brother, myself, dad, or other children. He has excellent communication skills so I try to remind him to use his words; however sometimes it is not from something specific. He is often tired (as he no longer naps). I stopped using timeout about a month ago. I did this because I felt it was fostering too much frustration for him. When he hits I ask him to stop, or I go directly to the hurt child and he then follows me and apologizes. I think the hitting is beyond normal, but I can't figure out the reason behind it. While I feel I follow "positive parenting" I know maybe twice a month I make mistakes and yell and do not deal with certain situations in a loving manner. He is a thoughtful and bright boy, but I fear he will alienate playmates and not too mention I am concerned for his younger brothers safety. Please help!

Answer:

You will find several answers on hitting that I think you will find helpful. I hope you'll take time to read all of them. Below, I'm included an excerpt from Positive Discipline A to Z on hitting, but the questions that have already been answered, give even more insights.

One other point I want to make is that your four-year-old may be getting a little too much attention for hitting. You might try "keeping your mouth shut" while you kindly and firmly remove him from the situation. If you say anything at all, it might be, "Let me know when you can tell me a better way to handle this problem." Then be quiet, or even go to the next room and give him time to think about it. Be careful about comforting the younger too much, so you don't create the "bully/victim" syndrome. You might want to search the web site for "sibling" issues so you will understand why your four-year-old is still feeling "dethroned" by his baby brother. I would like to assure you that it is probably very "normal" when you understand sibling rivalry and mistaken goal behavior such as "undue attention" as explained in all of our books.

I'm glad you stopped time out. Did you know we have a book called Positive Time Out and 50 Other Ways to Avoid Power Struggles in Homes and Classrooms?

Also, on the website you'll find an article on why time out (even positive time out) is not effective for children under the age of three.

So, now for the excerpt on hitting:

Hitting

"I have tried everything I can think of to get my child to stop hitting her little brother. Sometimes she hits me. This really makes me angry. Punishment doesn't seem to work. I have spanked her and made her say she is sorry, but the next day she is hitting again."

Understanding Your Child, Yourself, and the Situation

How are we ever going to teach our children it is not okay to hurt others when we keep hurting them? We are reminded of a cartoon depicting a mother spanking her child while saying, "I'll teach you not to hit someone smaller than you. "When a child is hitting, usually his or her feelings are hurt. Your child needs help from you but may feel frustrated because he or she isn't getting the help needed. You probably feel frustrated, too, because you want your child to treat others respectfully and may even worry that your child's behavior is a reflection on you as a parent. Perhaps you are over-reacting and treating your child disrespectfully out of shame and embarrassment, trying to prove to the other adults around that you won't let your child get away with this behavior.

Suggestions

Take the child by the hand and say, "It is not okay to hit people. I'm sorry you are feeling hurt and upset. You can talk about it or you can hit this pillow, but people aren't for hitting."
Help the child deal with the anger.
Ask, "Would it help you to go to your time-out spot now?" Time out is not helpful unless the child has helped create a positive time out spot in advance. Also, time out is not helpful if the child does not see the benefit and chooses it. If you "make" your child go to time out, your child is likely to see it as punishment and may rebel.
After the child has calmed down, ask what and how questions. "What is upsetting you? How are you feeling?" See if you can get to the bottom of what is really bothering your child and then help the child discover what other things he or she could do besides hitting to deal with the problem. (Children under four years of age do not understand abstract reasoning. This is one reason why lectures are not effective at this age. There are other reasons why lectures are ineffective at any age.)
With children under four, try giving them a hug before removing them from the situation. This models a loving method while showing them that hitting is not okay. Hugging does not reinforce the misbehavior.
Even though toddlers don't fully comprehend language, you can still use words (while removing them) such as, "Hitting hurts people. Let's find something else you can enjoy doing."
When babies hit you, put them down and leave the room immediately for a minute or two without saying a word. At this age, they will understand actions better than words.
When your preschooler hits you, decide what you will do instead of trying to control your child. Let her know that every time she hits you, you will leave the room until she is ready to treat you respectfully. After you have told her this once, follow through without any words. Leave immediately.
Later you might tell your child, "That really hurts" or "That hurts my feelings. When you are ready, an apology would help me feel better." Do not demand or force an apology. The main purpose of this suggestion is to give a model of sharing what you feel and asking for what you would like. People don't always give us what we would like, but we show respect for ourselves by sharing our feelings and wishes in non-demanding ways.

Planning Ahead to Prevent Future Problems

Teach children that feelings are different from actions. Feelings are never bad. They are just feelings. What we feel is always okay. What we do is not always okay.
Help children brainstorm ways to deal with feelings that are respectful to themselves and others. One possibility is to tell people what you don't like. Another possibility is to leave the scene if you are being treated disrespectfully.
Get your child involved in creating a Positive Time Out area. Teach her that sometimes we need time to calm down until we feel better before doing anything. Let her know that she can use the time-out area any time she thinks it will help her feel better.
Find ways to encourage your children with unconditional love and by teaching skills that help them feel capable and confident.
Show that hitting is unacceptable by never hitting your child. If you make a mistake and hit your child, use the Three R‘s of Recovery to apologize so your child knows hitting is not acceptable for you either.
Take time for training with your toddler. Help her practice touching family members or animals softly. This does not eliminate the need for supervision until she is old enough to understand.
Look around and see if there are ways you are hurting your child without realizing it. Are you sending your child to his or her room frequently, scolding and criticizing regularly, singling out the child when a problem occurs? If so your child may be feeling really hurt and upset and the hitting is a way to strike back at the world. Be more encouraging and positive and stop the hurtful behaviors and see if you don't notice a change in the hitting behavior.

Life Skills Children Can Learn

Children can learn that it is not okay to hurt others. Their feelings are not bad and they are not bad, but they need to find actions that are respectful to themselves and to others.

Parenting Pointers

Be aware of the discouraged belief behind the misbehavior. A child who hits usually is operating from the mistaken goal of revenge with the belief, "I don't feel like I belong and am important and that hurts, so I want to hurt back." Children will feel encouraged when we respect their feelings and help them act appropriately.
Many people use the biblical admonition "spare the rod and spoil the child" as an excuse for spanking. Biblical scholars tell us the rod was never used to hit the sheep. The rod was a symbol of authority or leadership, and the staff or crook was used to gently prod and guide. Our children definitely need gentle guidance and prodding, but they do not need to be beaten, struck, or humiliated.
Toddlers are short on both language and social skills, and when they play together they can easily become frustrated. When they lack the ability to express what's wrong in words, hitting and other types of aggression sometimes result. It is developmentally normal for toddlers to hit. It is the parent's job to supervise and handle toddlers kindly and firmly until they are ready to learn more effective ways to communicate.

Booster Thought No. 1

   He: "There are times when it is necessary to spank my children to teach them important lessons.
For example, I spank my two-year-old to teach her not to run into the street."
   She: "After you have spanked your two-year-old to teach her not to run in the street, will you let her play unsupervised by a busy street?"
   He: "Well, no."
   She: "Why not? If the spanking teaches her not to run into the street, why can't she play unsupervised by the street? How many times would you need to spank her before you would feel she has learned the lesson well enough?"
   He: "Well, I wouldn't let her play unsupervised near a busy street until she was six or seven years old. "
   She: "I rest my case. Parents have the responsibility to supervise young children in dangerous situations handle that situation. All the spanking in the world won't teach a child until he or she is developmentally ready. Meanwhile we can gently teach. When we take our children to the park, we invite them to look up the street and down the street to see if cars are coming and tell us when it is safe to cross the street. Still, we don't let them go to the park alone until they are six or seven."

Studies show that approximately 85 percent of all parents of children under twelve years old resort to spanking when frustrated, yet only 8 to 10 percent believe that it is dignified or effective. Sixty-five percent say that they would prefer to teach through consequences and encouraging improved behavior, but they don't know how. How often we resort to the familiar instead of learning a better way.

Booster Thoughts No. 2

Above all, I believe that there should never be any violence. In 1978, I received a peace prize in West Germany for my books, and I gave an acceptance speech that I called just that: "Never Violence." And in that speech I told a story from my own experience.

When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking--the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with.

The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, "Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that you can throw at me."

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.

By Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking

Booster Thought No. 3

When you set one toddler down to play with another, neither is particularly sure of what the other is all about. Watch them eyeing one another and you can guess what they might be thinking. What is this creature? Does it break? Can I taste it? What happens when I pull its hair or examine its eyelashes?"
Walking up and hitting another child may be just a primitive form of saying, "hello."

Still, children under the age of two need to learn that pulling hair, poking eyes, and hitting hurt people and cannot be allowed.

At this age, the best discipline is to simply remove your child from the situation, kindly and firmly, and redirect her attention to something else. When children are very young and don't have language skills, we can't teach them through language. Sometimes we need to accept that a child who has a habit of hitting simply needs close supervision so you can catch her and remove her when she looks ready to
hit. Toddlers often comprehend action better than words.

How to stop lashing out at a child, hitting him and screaming?

Often adults see no other way out of a situation than to beat the child. For disobedience, whims, a broken cup, a deuce brought from school. The list is endless.

How to stop screaming, spreading rot, hitting the buttocks? To make sure that children listen and hear their parents? Return joy to the family?

It depends entirely on the desire of the parents to correct the situation. For the child's psyche, physical violence from loved ones is very dangerous. Having decided one day to try how not to raise a hand, not to yell, not to hit a child, many moms and dads are enjoying a new approach, starting to enjoy life.

Why is it scary when children are beaten by relatives? The pain will subside, but the memories of humiliation will leave a mark on the soul. Do you think the children will grow up, forget, understand? Moral trauma can manifest itself in different ways throughout life.

Consequences of situations where parents hit their young child, not knowing what to do with uncontrollable outbursts of rage:

The concepts of "punishment" and "education" are being replaced.

The purpose of education is to help learn new skills. Punishment - to exercise external control instead of internal.
The little man experiences pain, fear of his parents, whom he trusted, feels betrayed.

Later, as he matures, he continues to resolve conflicts in this way. Parents justify themselves: "I beat him so that he learns his lesson, grows up as a man." What kind of personality will he grow up to be?
Beating can cause physical injury and permanent damage.

When you realize and say to yourself: “It's about me, it's me who takes it out on the child and beats him,” you will see from the side how other parents beat children. Understand how fragile the little man is, and do everything so that pain and fear leave your baby's life.
Violence in the family will lead to the same course of action in kindergarten, school.

The child or teenager will repeat the behavior pattern adopted in the family. Take out your negativity on others.

Corporal punishment is a method that “works” faster than others, so parents use it more often than others. When an adult beats children, he also inflicts mental trauma, as a result of which the mental and physical development of a small person decreases, craving for creativity, emotions fade.

Why adults use force

It's not the behavior of a small person, but the inability of an adult to get out of the situation with dignity.

Physical violence, even harmless pokes, slaps on the buttocks, slaps on the back of the head, speak of one thing - mom or dad does not know that it is possible to behave differently, do not want or are not able to change their behavior.

Why adults want to beat a child:

They came home from work tired, irritated, and a bored child falls asleep with questions: when will we read, when will we play? With explanations quickly break into a cry.
They apply the principle “everyone was beaten as a child, me too, and I will be”.
Want to show who dominates in the family.
It is believed that beating children is the most effective way to educate. So the child will most quickly understand what can be done and what cannot be done. He will grow up educated and hardworking.
Take out the irritation accumulated during the day. The offender often cannot be hit, but a small person can.

Also, many women make shocking confessions like "I want to beat him because he reminds me of my husband who left." And the kid is beaten for the fact that his mother is mentally ill.

Behind all these reasons there are problems in the head of an adult, which he is not able to immediately solve, often without even knowing about their existence. To clarify the situation, it is necessary to clearly understand that in any case, you can do without physical violence against the baby.

There are calm, safe parenting methods.

If you want to know how to stop yelling at your child, spanking him, then first of all take yourself to interesting things. Become calmer, and the children will feel it for themselves. Let it gradually, but the result will be - the child will stop "pestering" (in your opinion), find hobbies, pull you to his business, and peace will reign in the family.

Shouting in anger at a child and hitting him is contraindicated for education

Use tips tested by other parents to stop. Read carefully and think about each item. Don't worry if you recognize yourself. Worse, if you want to leave everything as it is, continuing to get bogged down in this swamp.

Start with yourself

Can't help but scream and hit the child? There are few parents who are actually cruel and take pleasure in the physical abuse of their children. The vast majority of mothers and fathers are very sorry about their behavior, often crying along with the offended child, asking for forgiveness.

You have a lot of work ahead of you. Each time, you will resist the temptation to solve the problem of disobedience in a quick, familiar way. But over time, feel that the abolition of physical violence evens out the situation, makes children understanding, obedient, and establishes peace in the family.

What do you need?

Stop telling the little man how to behave. It doesn't work. He resists you, you rush at him with pokes, slaps.

Show by your behavior what to do. After all, children are our reflection.

Do you teach order? Do you put everything in place?

Children don't let them rest after a working day? Do you do this when they come home from school or kindergarten? Or do you load them with things, so long as they are constantly busy, do not play on the phone, do not ask you to solve a problem?

In any situation, look at yourself and ask one question: How do I act in the same circumstances? It hurts you if your own child attacks you with fists, trying to take something by force. Why do you show that only physical violence produces results?

Accept your anger and work with it

Many parents complain: “I yell and beat my one or three year old child, I can’t help it, what should I do?”

The negative emotion "anger" takes place here. While the children are small, the mother spends more time with them. She is very tired, she does not have the strength for positive experiences. She knows and uses various soothing techniques, but still complains that “At a certain moment I break out in anger, scream, and now I beat him . .. What should I do?”

First, we need to understand that we often take out our anger on those we love. Especially on those who are weaker or silent. Emotions exist separately from our love. They originate in the brain. It is necessary to share them with feelings.

Take time to delve into yourself, notice when you start to feel anger, clearly realize - do you need it now? Will it help improve the situation or, conversely, only worsen it?

It's better when a child is not beaten for a broken cup, but quickly put together, kissed, hugged, said "it happens" and happy go on to do their own thing. Everyone's mood improves.

Kiss and hug him. He will not grow up from this pampered person. On the contrary, having received enough warmth and affection in childhood, in adulthood a person will not look for a “nanny” for himself, but for someone to whom he can give his care.

Take care of your mental balance

You are tired during the day. I want to say: "leave me alone, let me rest. " Better do the following.

While preparing dinner or doing the dishes, play calm games with your baby, such as words. Or give him a sheet of paper, pencils, let him draw his mother, sitting next to him at the kitchen table.

Did you turn on the TV, lay down on the sofa? Draw with your child. Play with dolls, constructor, cars. Little is needed from you - just help, you can lie down. 20-30 minutes of quiet activities, and a contented child will go about his business, and you will have a little rest.

Imagine small joys for yourself. Understand what you enjoy. Maybe it's a big teddy bear you can hug, or a walk in the park in the rain. Museum, dancing, fishing, flowers - make your list and indulge yourself from time to time.

This will be good for everyone, but the question of how to restrain yourself from hitting a child will leave you. Calm parents - calm children.

Mistakes are part of life

Teach your children this idea. Mistakes are an integral part of the learning process. Admit to yourself: "I beat my child." Hug him and tell him straight out that you made a mistake. What to do? Ask for an opportunity to fix it. Children will understand that adults also make “blunders”, but everything can be corrected. And then apply the same approach in another situation.

Some will argue that this is a long way to go. You can achieve something much faster if you use physical punishment from time to time.

But children remember the attitude towards them. The next time they will behave well, not because they want it, but in order to avoid scolding their parents, not to feel pushes and slaps on themselves. Or for a fee - toys, attractions, an extra hour at the computer.

And then they will give the same upbringing based on fear and profit to their children.

Mothers often ask their friends and specialists: “Why am I hitting their older child, what should I do?”. Because the little one is still weak and fragile, his parents do not raise a hand against him. Bye. Later it will be his turn. In the meantime, the baby sees that the mother does not know how to restrain herself and not hit. He is happy with only one thing - well, I didn’t get it.

But this method will help to educate a weak being who will try with all his might to avoid punishment, to be cunning, to dodge. A child whose parents do not know how to stop yelling at a small child and hitting him on the pope will begin to take revenge on his parents, take out his anger on those who are weaker (younger children, animals). Chain reaction. So physical violence is a dead end.

Do not hit - advises Dr. Komarovsky

He himself admitted that at least once, but his children got a "soft spot". Sometimes this is the only quick way to stop a little person from making a wrong move. The main thing here is not to hurt, but rather to stun the child, to protect him from, for example, throwing himself on the road or hitting his mother.

When asked by parents to help them, to teach them how to stop beating their children for disobedience, Komarovsky answers briefly: “Don't touch it with your finger. Under no circumstances. Only in emergencies, but it doesn't hurt."

So, put yourself in the place of a little man, look at the world through his eyes. If it doesn’t work out right away, try again and again until you can completely refuse physical punishment.

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Published: 13.01.2021

I hit a child: three stories about how to deal with anger

When we talk about parents who hit children, we imagine monsters with a belt. Everyone, even the most humane person, can break loose, especially if fatigue and anger roll over. We asked three mothers, on condition of anonymity, to tell how it happened that they beat their children and how they were able to cope with it. And psychologist Ekaterina Markova advised what to do in similar situations.

Stress aggression

When a person, for example, a woman on maternity leave, is under stress, his limbic system begins to work actively. This is an ancient system in the human brain, the purpose of which is to ensure safety and survival. A mode that is activated in situations of increased risk, which is stress. That is, in stress, the limbic system enters an active mode. And aggression or fear begin to prevail: a person can see danger everywhere, perceive everything in an exaggeratedly negative way and respond aggressively to all these imaginary dangers.

Anna (name changed):

“My daughter is 3.9, she is persistent, vulnerable, sensitive, she knows exactly what she wants. Two months ago, my husband and I had our second child. Naturally, patience has become less. I started yelling at her and at these moments I imagine how I beat my daughter. Sometimes I see how hard I pull her by the ear, pour the soup on her head or lower her face into a bowl.

Sometimes we dress on the street, I need to do everything quickly and clearly, and she needs to jump and run away after every thing we put on. First I speak, I explain, then I speak sternly and menacingly. But mentally I imagine how hard I kick her.”

A new mother often has a heavy burden. Due to prolonged stress, she becomes irritable and aggressive. Therefore, first of all, she needs to pay attention to herself, relax, switch. In situations where she feels like she can’t stand it and begins to imagine how she kicks a child, it’s better to just leave the room and find something for yourself: go out onto the balcony, drink wine, lie down, turn on the music, watch one episode of the series, turn on the TV for the kids. Let the children sit alone in the room, the main thing is that they have a safe environment.

Bibliotherapy is very good - read more and something interesting, or listen in audio format. Sports are very helpful in reducing stress and irritation: for example, turn on videos at home and do yoga while the children are sleeping.

Children often misunderstand instructions

If the child does not listen or hear and needs to be repeated many times, it is important to create some sort of anchor to effectively capture the child's attention. Sometimes children simply do not perceive audio information. Then you can come up, hold hands, sit down, look into the eyes and give instructions. Then the child returns to our world and begins to hear.

You can ask the child: “Did you hear me? Understood? Please repeat what I said." Children do not have all their perceptual systems sufficiently formed, so they often do not perceive instructions. This has nothing to do with the mother personally, with her inefficiency or behavioral errors. These are just nuances of the development of the child and his perception.

Lena (name changed):

“We usually do our homework together. It was the second or third hour... There were a lot of mistakes in the report. I said that if he did not copy correctly and try, I would have to tear the sheet and start all over again. He was in tears, then he began to get angry. He clenched his fists and started screaming that I was bad. I tore the leaf. He tried to swing, I broke and pushed him. He fell down and cried.

Unfortunately, we often have scandals precisely because of the lessons, or when he refuses to do something, and I have been asking for 20 minutes already. As a result, I can't stand it and break down. Sometimes the situation is superimposed on problems in relations with her husband. I'm nervous, and my son's refusal to obey and do his homework provokes a scandal.

Then I come up, apologize, say that I was wrong and had no right to touch him. He first turns away. She may cry from resentment, and then reconcile."

We in Russia live in a general parental neurosis. Unfortunately, children are also heavily overwhelmed. Three hours of homework is a lot for a child. Severe intellectual overload can cause depressive symptoms. Cognitive functions in general are impaired - attention, focus, memory, even motor skills. Most parents don't understand this.

The phrase "I'll tear everything you did!" is fundamentally wrong, because the child tried, and any effort should not be punished, but encouraged. Even if he made a mistake, but he tried, this should be noted. But it happens differently, because the mother herself is very tired and reacts emotionally.

In such a situation, you need to admit you were wrong and apologize. However, if this happens frequently and the parent is constantly apologizing, the child may copy the pattern of misbehaving and believing it's okay to just apologize later.

Feeling of guilt as a symptom of neurosis

A sign of high levels of stress in parents is an exalted sense of guilt for understandable human reactions and, at the same time, an inability to change these reactions. It is imperative to work through this feeling of guilt, ask yourself questions: “Why did I do this? Because I'm so bad and I can't control my emotions? Or do I know how to control them, but not always? I'm just a person, sometimes I can break loose.

Such questions can help you justify yourself and forgive your imperfection. This will also be useful for the child: by accepting her shortcomings, the mother can come up with new tactics for interacting with him.

Larisa (name changed):

“After the second birth, the third month, I am probably always irritated and tired. Daughter is 4.5 years old. We were going somewhere, and she didn't like something. Either a scarf or something else. It seemed to me that it was all too long and inappropriate. Then I pushed her away, the girl hit her back against the door. She was in a jacket, a hat, so physically everything was in order. I didn't even realize what I had done then. And that was the start.

When my daughter screamed back or said rude things, I allowed myself to crack her lips. She cried, I sometimes left, then returned and asked for forgiveness. Sometimes she immediately hugged me and apologized, saying that I was very tired. Then the moment came when, at my cry, she covered herself with her hands, she was frightened. This was a way out for me, I began to talk to her about why she was afraid and why I behave this way. Together we began to look for ways to convey feelings and thoughts to each other. I gave my word not to raise my hand against her. Six months later, I once did not keep my word, slapped my lips for rudeness. I admitted the mistake, my daughter forgave, "because you really stopped." Fortunately, it stopped, more than a year and a half ago and hasn't happened again."

Mom needs to set clear boundaries for herself. Obviously, she feels great guilt for corporal punishment, and she is embarrassed that the child began to be afraid of her. In these situations, she does not want to scare the child, but splashes out her emotions.

If she still couldn’t control herself at a certain moment and hit the child on the lips or pushed, then it is important to say the following: “I’m sorry! It's wrong to offend you. Nobody should do this." And then you need to explain why mom did it. For example: “I did it because I was angry.