Anahera Herbert-Graves says she and husband Doug Graves have vowed to raise their 8-year-old grandson Siagogo Herbert-Williams without using physical force. Photo / Supplied
The Herald is running a week-long series on the smacking debate. On Saturday we looked at changing smacking habits, today we cover parents' stories. To tell us your stories, go to the Your Views discussion. Or you can follow the debate on our facebook page.
A Maori leader in Northland says the law banning force to correct children gave her the impetus in a private battle to stop smacking.
Anahera Herbert-Graves, chief executive of the Kaitaia-based Runanga A Iwi O Ngati Kahu, says she was hit regularly as a child and has been determined to
break the cycle.
She "thrashed" her daughter when she was 14 but resolved to avoid any kind of physical or verbal abuse four years ago after she and her husband became whangai parents of her now 8-year-old grandson.
"Yes, I've slipped a couple of times, but ... the whole climate has changed for us and that has strengthened our determination," she said.
In a posting to the Herald's online forum on smacking, she wrote: "I can't explain the alchemy of it. Somehow the debate about and subsequent repeal of section 59 [of the Crimes Act] gave public sanction and muscle to our private struggle to change."
Mrs Herbert-Graves, 53, said she was hit by her father "because he was frustrated, he was angry".
"He had been hit much worse than I was. He stuck to his hand. His parents had used implements."
Mrs Herbert-Graves tried not to hit her own daughter but found herself "doing pretty much the same verbally" as her father had done physically.
She realised what was happening and fought against it, helped by a spiritual conversion when her daughter was 4. From then on, "I really consciously became gentler".
But when her daughter was 14, an incident occurred and she "lost it".
"I physically thrashed her," she said. "It shook me terribly. I realised that I had slipped back to the old patterns. It was awful."
She resolved never to do it again.
"I knew from my own experience that hitting - even smacking - if it's done with anything like exasperation, it teaches kids other things," she said.
Mrs Herbert-Graves and her husband Doug took on the parenting of her grandson Siagogo when her daughter remarried four years ago. "From the start we tried to be non-abusive in every way," she said.
"We've had our moments of slipping - being exasperated with him and have smacked him," she admitted.
But she said she would have been "more prone to slip" if the law had not changed to ban physical force for correction.
"I'd like to think we would have been able to change without the law, but it gave a public face to what we were trying to do privately."
