Would you smack your friend’s child for being naughty ?

I’ve just been interviewed by BBC Radio Birmingham  discussing this article where an assistant in Boots tapped a 3 year old child who had been knocking  bottles of bleach off from a shelf.

I know myself falling out with a friend on holiday who let her 3 year old spit at his Dad and was allowed to rub his Spagetti Bolognaise into his hair withour reprimand ! I spoke out as a teacher I just COULDN’T let him behave soooooo badly ! She never forgave me 🙁

I came home early with 5 mouth ulcers & an eye infection !

The friendship didn’t survive.

Here’s the article in The Daily Mail

“There are many ways to put the kybosh on a  good friendship. But, trust me, nothing does it faster than smacking a child  that is not your own.

The moment I came close — about an inch too  close — will for ever be etched on my mind.

Not because I regret almost falling foul of  the greatest parenting taboo of them all. Far from it. The  child concerned did, after all, have my dog’s tail clutched firmly in her sticky  little fingers and — despite being warned repeatedly — was dragging the poor  creature backwards across the kitchen floor.

She deserved a short swipe on her bottom — verbal reprimands were clearly falling on deaf ears. But did my friend move from  her coffee cup or, indeed, exercise any parental control over her mini  tyrant?

No she did not. She turned a blind eye. Which  is, with hindsight, exactly what I should have done, too. But when my lovely  gentle labrador looked up pleadingly with his big brown eyes, I was up off my  chair and across the lino in an instant.

And that’s all it took. My hand didn’t even  make contact with the child’s bottom — although it was itching to — and stopped  an inch short of the target.

But it came close — too close, as it turned  out — for the friendship to survive.

The look of utter shock on my friend’s face  said it all. I had crossed a line that must never, under any circumstances, ever  be crossed.

This week it was reported that a Boots  pharmacist had ‘disciplined’ a three-year-old girl by smacking her on the bottom  in a store in Spalding, Lincolnshire.

According to Angela Cropley, 27, her daughter  Lora had accidentally knocked several items off the shelves, causing a bottle of  disinfectant to break. She says the 50-year-old pharmacist reached down, smacked  the child, and told her she was a naughty girl.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2303632/Shona-Sibary-If-stranger-smacked-child-naughty-Id-thank-As-mother-protests-Boots-assistant-slapping-daughter-provocative-response.html#ixzz2PUADRa3C
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