4 - Sunday, December 20, 1987 - North Shore News

Bob Hunter

strictly personal ®

I SEE that a move is afoot in Canada to make it illegal,
as it already is in Scandinavian countries, for parents to

smack their children.

Hm.

This opens a can of worms,
doesn't it?

I have a funny feeling that
there isn’t going to be any
legislative change for a while yet.
The idea that parents shouldn’t
lay a finger on their God-given
little tads except to love them and
serve them has been around for a
while, after all.

A.S. Neill, the founder of the
Summerhill ‘‘free school’? system
of child-rearing, who had. the

| crazy notion that there are no
such things as problem children,
only problem parents, argued
strongly that for a parent to hit a
child was utterly barbaric — and,
more to the point, unnecessary.

T-tried to raise my first set of
children according to Neill’s
ideal. However wonderful the
ideal, the reality was that for a
long time. my first wife and I had

two rude, out-of-control kids on”

our hands — kids who savored
jusing foul language to shock rel-
} atives, for instance, :

Being older and wiser now, |
realize the poor kids were just
desperately trying to find out
where the boundaries were.

They kept pushing and

pushing, but their parents were.

stubbornly trying to follow an
ultra-liberal, even radical child-
rearing formula, and were ap-
proaching parenthood from an
ideological point of view rather
than just using common sense.

What happened was that -J
would become so frustrated that
every now and then I'd blow up
and lash out at my son, who of
course had been provoking me to
try to get a response. Then, ‘of
course, I'd feel so guilty I’d be
sick.

After the marriage broke up, I
vowed to myself that if I ever
made the mistake of getting mar-
ried and having kids again, |
would do it differently.

1 would be a disciplinarian. A
little roll of drums in the
background, please. ~

Any other kids 1 had would

‘know right away what the rules

were, They would know who the
boss was. There would be fixed
bedtimes, regular hours for
eating, no swearing, and by God
they'd eat their spinach just like
I'd had to.

And if they needed a swat to
underline the point, they'd get it!

Going on for a decade later, I
have to report that I have only
smacked my son from the second
Marriage once, and that was to
stop him, as a toddler, from
running on to the road.

Otherwise, it has turned out to
be a natural thing, using other
means of persuasion, like, at
worst, banishing him to his
room. Maybe it was just that
somewhere along the line {
unlearned the reflex of smacking.

Despite my best intentions to
be a tough, no-nonsense father, I
am a complete wimp when it
comes to knocking him around.
There just never seems to be a
point. Heck, his feelings get hurt
if I’m even slightly sarcastic.

But his little sister has turned
out to be rather, ah, fiesty.

Still, her mother and I refrain-
ed from giving her so much as a

YOU, or YOUR LOVED |

whap on the bum until a month
ago, after she had turned three,
and a particular bit of recurring
odious behavior proved incurable
by any other means.

We cach pave her one smack,
so she’d hate us equally.

To everyone's relief and awe,
she immediately stopped doing
what she

Another drum roll, please! Vio-

lence had worked. At least tem- ]

porarily,
A can of worms, as | warn-

When I see parents smacking
their kids around in public, |
am generally appalled, although
there are circumstances when a

good swat ought to be delivered to |

spare the rest of us from some
spoiled brat’s nonsense, no doubt
about it.

As a footnote to this opinion, it

should be noted that my first two |

‘spoiled’? kids grew up into
perfectly civilized adult human be-
ings, lo and behold! So who am 1
to say A.S. Neill’s lovely theory
wasn’t correct, after all? .

Conclusion? Hitting certainly
shouldn’t be part of family life,
if you can at all avoid it. But
mind the ‘‘if.””

AS to whether there should be
a law against it — that’s nuts! It
would involve a massive intrusion
of government power into our
very homes. In attempting too
hard to protect our children,
we'd be welcoming the police to
the dinner table, the playroom,
the bathroom, bedrooms,
everywhere.

And who needs that?

(Signed, ADMITTED
CHILD- BEATER. )

had been doing.

‘Booze who’ on
the N. Shore

RECENT CONVICTIONS in
North Shore courts have resulted
in the following fines and convic-
tions for drinking and driving
related offences. Mandatory
licence suspension is in addition to
published penalties.

NORTH VANCOUVER: Ronald
Edward Bigler, 424 East Ist St.,
North Vancouver (impaired, $750
fine); Perry York Brooks, 455 Ab-
bot St., Vancouver (over .08, six
months jail); Frederick Charles
Abney, 475 East Ist St., North
Vancouver (over .08, $500 fine);
Mark Turi Davis, 69-250 East 15th
St., North Vancouver (over .08,
$300 fine}; Kevin Robert
Growcott, 928 East 4th St., North
Vancouver (impaired, $500 fine);
Brian James Gray, Black Creek,
B.C. (over .08, $500 fine); Shawn

- Regan Robinson, 105 East 18th

St., North Vancouver (breathalyser
refusal, $400 fine); Kenneth Rick
Koochin, 349 East 24th St., North
Vancouver (impaired, 14 days jail);
Scote Archibald Smith, 411 East
{Sth St., North Vancouver (im-
paired, $300 fine); George Jones
Grant, 3455 Emerald. Drive, North
Vancouver (breathalyser refusal,
$400 fine).
See Booze

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