Dialogue: Stay the hand and ruin the children

The we-must-do-something-about-child-abuse bandwagon is gathering momentum, and not before time. But, as the Herald said in an editorial on Tuesday, it's time to stop talking and to get into action.

There never has been any need for talk. The evidence that our society has a dreadful problem with violence against children has been sickeningly hammered into our consciousness almost all year.

Now that it seems that at last something is really to be done about it, it is only to be hoped - and it is a pretty faint hope - that the whole thing won't be hijacked by a host of politically correct ideologues, who will find answers where there are no questions and ignore the real problems and solutions that are staring them in the face.

You can bet, for instance, that the question of smacking children will lurk on the fringes of this campaign to deal with child abuse. After all, no less a person than the Commissioner of Children himself proposes that parents be legally prohibited from smacking their children.

Which has really - if my mail and the editor's are any indication - upset a large number of people. One of them, who shall remain nameless, wrote to me at some length. It is a cry from the heart of a man who is beside himself with worry as he watches one set of his grandchildren turning into "little monsters."

"Roger McClay tells us," he writes, "that he has changed his views [on smacking] since becoming a grandfather. Well, I have strengthened my views, not changed them like Mr McClay, since I became a grandfather.

"We have five grandchildren, two from our daughter and three from our eldest son.

"My daughter's elder child has just turned 8 and is developing into the nicest, most likeable and well-mannered boy imaginable. He is an absolute delight to have around and fits in well with any company.

"Our daughter, a solo mum, has raised him with firm discipline including, when necessary, the odd sharp smack reinforced with tonnes of love and affection.

"On the other hand, our eldest son is in a good, old-fashioned, stable marriage. He, and more so his wife, do not believe in smacking children to discipline them. Love them as I do, their three boys can be right little monsters and I firmly believe it is because they do not clearly understand right from wrong.

"Trying to explain to pre-schoolers why something they do is wrong is like trying to teach a budgie to programme a computer. Yet this is how these three terrors, aged from 1 to 4, are corrected. Consequently they have no sense of respect for anything or anyone else because they don't understand.

"The older two are defiant, scheming little liars and the eldest is already showing signs of becoming a really rebellious recalcitrant. He sees nothing wrong in jumping on his younger brothers, or throwing his bike at them or a brick at his mother in one of his raging tantrums.

"Punishment? He gets put in his room to think about what he has done while his distraught mother wonders what on earth she can do to make him understand that what he has done is wrong.

"At 4 years old he still soils and wets his pants day and night. Even though his parents know within minutes when he is going to do it, their attitude is that one day he will understand them telling him it's not the thing to do.

"My wife has often expressed her belief that the eldest of this trio has the potential to grow into the kind of teenager who could well commit murder. Seriously, I think she's right. And the other two boys are turning out the same.

"So it's not a case of one disturbed, unruly child going off the rails. Three out of three indicates that there is something basically wrong with the way they are being reared.

"Meanwhile, our daughter, who has had a pretty hard row to hoe and has every reason to resent her unplanned son, has chosen to bring her children up as we did ours - with as much affection, physical and emotional, as possible; real, honest love; and clear discipline, which includes a smack on the hand or clothed backside.

"She, unlike so many woolly-headed drongos in high places in our country, does know the difference between discipline and violence.

"If I could receive just a smidgen of reassurance that someone out there empathises with a little bit of what I feel, it would be such wonderful therapy for me."

Well, I am happy to be able to tell this dejected grandfather that there are literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents out there who agree with him 100 per cent. And a vast majority of them proudly preside over families who are living proof that they're right.

garth_george@herald.co.nz