“If you touch that again, you’ll get a wallop,” my mum said to three-year-old me. I’d been turning the TV on and off on repeat and she was reaching the end of her tether. But a three-year-old is anything but rational so of course I turned it on again. A smacked bottom followed. It’s one of my earliest memories.
Another time my mother, who was, I should add, a very loving and kind mum in many respects, recounted the story of her horror and shame when taking me to the doctors with suspected tonsillitis. “Do you remember, mummy, when you smacked me so hard you could see the hand mark on my leg for days afterwards?” I announced to the waiting room. “It was mortifying,” mum said. “I thought for a moment someone was going to call social services.”
She wasn’t embarrassed about smacking me as such, just being caught out and having it broadcast. Fast forward to today and the proposed smacking ban and someone probably would call social services.
The thing is, as a child of the 80s, smacking was so normal I didn’t really think much of it until I became a mother myself 15 years ago.
By then I had read all about generational trauma, something which my mum, who died three years before my first child was born, probably also suffered from. My grandad had been captured as a prisoner of war and was known for his shocking temper, so mum had what would now probably be classed as a dysfunctional childhood. She was part of the “spare the rod and spoil the child” generation. If they were naughty, they were punished – with a wooden spoon or a belt.
I have tried very hard not to follow the same pattern but there have been times where I have raised a hand to my kids – like when my eldest shot out in front of a car on a busy road and I caught him and, without even thinking about it, smacked the back of his legs and told him never, ever to do that again. I’ve always felt terrible afterwards and have tried to learn how to regulate myself and my emotions.
Looking back, I realise that my reflexes and impulses, like smacking the back of my son’s legs that time, probably stem from my own childhood. I internalised being smacked and it made it harder for me to manage my emotions as an adult because we look to our parents, our first role models, to show us how to behave. “Do as I say, not as I do,” was another phrase which was bandied around when I was growing up but children model their behaviour on their parents, so now I realise it’s really important for me to get it right. For the sake of my own brood.
Now my children are older – nine, 12 and 15 – I would never raise a hand to them although there are certainly times, like when my teenager answers back or slams the door loudly to make a point, where I am triggered. I try and count to 10 and breathe deeply. It’s easier to reason with them now they are older too.
But, most importantly, if I do lose it with them for whatever reason, I will always take them aside and explain my reasons for shouting (“I was a bit stressed because I had a deadline” or “I’d asked you and your sister to stop arguing three times” and so on) and then apologise.
I don’t want them to internalise and normalise the sort of harmful behaviour I grew up with because, as a popular meme that is currently doing the rounds on social media, says: “If you want others to suffer because you suffered and turned out all right, you did not, in fact, turn out all right.”
Which just about sums it up really, doesn’t it?