Child rearing

This morning I did something a bit different from my usual routine and went to the local pool and hung out in the spa and sauna. In the spa I got chatting with an elderly gentleman who had some interesting experiences and it got me thinking. Then the other two ladies in the spa started talking about child rearing and Peter, the elderly gentleman interjected with his opinion. Not usually one to interrupt I felt I must when the topic turned to the current referendum on smacking children and whether it had been a mistake to outlaw it completely. It was a very interesting conversation and I'll recount it for you.

It started with a question, as conversation often does. The question was this: are we right to make smacking a child as a part of a normal behaviour correction assault or should a simple smack on the hand be permissible. The problem is obvious. If you allow an inch someone is going to take a mile and probably without the strength of the law as it stands, get away with it. The problem from the other side of the coin is that children cannot be reasoned with on the same level as adults, well most adults anyway :) They simply do not have the life experience or the language to fully understand that some behaviour is inappropriate & furthermore it isn't always practical to teach them that in the moment, say for instance at the supermarket when a child is having a tantrum and throwing items off the shelves in to other customers. ( I don't know where I got that example, I would certainly never do any such thing... anymore :b ) It's an interesting question.

My take is this. A light smack on the hand or something similar can be used like an anchor is used in NLP. Paul McKenna in his book on weight loss talks about listening to the body and I think that each of us stores memory throughout our nervous system as a whole. Pressing an anchor for inappropriate behaviour in to our children is a useful and workable approach that I would like to promote as an idea throughout New Zealand and the world. If you would like to help me on that quest please get in touch and we'll work something out.

The problem is huge! Every year in the world children die at the hands of their carers, often not the actual parents but the step parents. Often it is men who simply cannot understand their physical strength compared to the fragile child they are disciplining. There's an old saying about an action taken in anger, but I digress. There was something else I wanted to mention about conversations in the pool this morning...

Another thing also occurred to me that when we are stripped bare, not entirely naked, but in our swimmers we are less guarded in our conversations. I was reminded of what it must have been like in the ancient Greek civilisations at the bathes. The clothes we wear are like a facade that can either help to create or act to interfere with the establishment of rapport. When we see someone we immediately make all sorts of assumptions based on what we think about that person based on what we see. But in the spa there wasn't any clothes to get in the way. It was easy to have eye contact and for some reason it felt less intense.