Impressions on actions...
Tomorrow is my anniversary with the boy, so I'm at his house early for hang-out time. This brought a couple of questions to my mind. Here's a situation:
I was rudely awoken this morning by a loud cry of "STOP IT!!" and the sounds of the ensuing tussle. Yeah, that's just the kids again, just like every time that I've been over here for the last year. This time, though, it came with actual punches. I was forced to get up, as I was the only other person here or awake (boy was still asleep, everyone else was at church) and put an end to it, which involved putting one on the floor and forcibly dragging them apart, pushing one of them into another room.
This spurs the question - at what point is it okay to fight violence with force?
I mean, it seems that forcing children not to fight while using what could be misconstrued by an outsider (or even the person who is doing it) as return violence seems like it would only enforce the negative behavior - like belting or spanking a child and saying "That'll teach you to be violent!!!!" (Which it does - every parenting book written in the last two decades will say so). So what is the best course of action in a situation like this? There isn't much room for other options - I could let them fight it out, which could lead to serious injury and breaking of household items, but that's it. Surely there's another way, when they refuse to stop fighting, to convince them to cease fire...isn't there?
Really, I feel that there is no way to help them at this stage - psychologists say that the majority of a child's behavioral coping mechanisms have been learned by the age of eleven, and it is ridiculously hard to overwrite them after that. The older of the two kids that continue to do this is almost twelve, and the younger is nine. I think that if anyone can convince them to change they seriously would deserve a Nobel Prize.
Last night I was kept up until after five by the eleven-year-old, because he wanted to talk about what he doesn't like about himself. I asked him why he continued to act that way if he didn't like the way he was - he responded it was because he was stupid, he couldn't control himself, and everyone hates him, anyway, so why should he bother? I think this has to do with the fact that when he does something against any authority figure in this house, he is threatened by them. "If you don't stop, I'll go get my belt"; "If you don't go to bed right now, I will spank you;" or "SHUT UP, OR YOU WILL REGRET IT!!"...or anything to that effect. There is no way that I'm going to try and talk to his parents about this - I've asked the boyfriend, and he continues to tell me that it's "normal", and "not emotionally scarring", or "not abuse" so I shouldn't treat it as such, and I really shouldn't bring it up with his parents, because it's not my place to tell them how to raise their kids. At the same time, it just seems like I should say something - as a child with a father who could very easily be considered abusive...how is this not abuse?
This has been a continuing battle with him. He agrees that he would never let someone lay a hand on his children, but at the same time he also justifies the action of harming someone as a punishment.
I just don't think it is considered okay for a child to respond only to violence.
I was rudely awoken this morning by a loud cry of "STOP IT!!" and the sounds of the ensuing tussle. Yeah, that's just the kids again, just like every time that I've been over here for the last year. This time, though, it came with actual punches. I was forced to get up, as I was the only other person here or awake (boy was still asleep, everyone else was at church) and put an end to it, which involved putting one on the floor and forcibly dragging them apart, pushing one of them into another room.
This spurs the question - at what point is it okay to fight violence with force?
I mean, it seems that forcing children not to fight while using what could be misconstrued by an outsider (or even the person who is doing it) as return violence seems like it would only enforce the negative behavior - like belting or spanking a child and saying "That'll teach you to be violent!!!!" (Which it does - every parenting book written in the last two decades will say so). So what is the best course of action in a situation like this? There isn't much room for other options - I could let them fight it out, which could lead to serious injury and breaking of household items, but that's it. Surely there's another way, when they refuse to stop fighting, to convince them to cease fire...isn't there?
Really, I feel that there is no way to help them at this stage - psychologists say that the majority of a child's behavioral coping mechanisms have been learned by the age of eleven, and it is ridiculously hard to overwrite them after that. The older of the two kids that continue to do this is almost twelve, and the younger is nine. I think that if anyone can convince them to change they seriously would deserve a Nobel Prize.
Last night I was kept up until after five by the eleven-year-old, because he wanted to talk about what he doesn't like about himself. I asked him why he continued to act that way if he didn't like the way he was - he responded it was because he was stupid, he couldn't control himself, and everyone hates him, anyway, so why should he bother? I think this has to do with the fact that when he does something against any authority figure in this house, he is threatened by them. "If you don't stop, I'll go get my belt"; "If you don't go to bed right now, I will spank you;" or "SHUT UP, OR YOU WILL REGRET IT!!"...or anything to that effect. There is no way that I'm going to try and talk to his parents about this - I've asked the boyfriend, and he continues to tell me that it's "normal", and "not emotionally scarring", or "not abuse" so I shouldn't treat it as such, and I really shouldn't bring it up with his parents, because it's not my place to tell them how to raise their kids. At the same time, it just seems like I should say something - as a child with a father who could very easily be considered abusive...how is this not abuse?
This has been a continuing battle with him. He agrees that he would never let someone lay a hand on his children, but at the same time he also justifies the action of harming someone as a punishment.
I just don't think it is considered okay for a child to respond only to violence.