Parenting and "The Slap"

I cant believe the tripe thats going on about the TV show "The Slap" aired last night on ABC1.

How can anybody take the side of the parents of that child?

Maslow said, "Give me the child until he is 4 , and I will give you the man." The kid is totally spoiled and lives without boundaries, what is worse is that the only consistency in his life is that he is rewarded for antisocial behavior.

In the children's play there are good examples of the child's antisocial behavior and although the other children try to include him , he consistently draws their ire.

The unprovoked child bites another child and is rewarded by being mollycoddled and breast fed when the other children admonish him.

The child deliberately breaks the game controller when he looses a game and is again rewarded by breastfeeding when the other children object.

The child is left to his own devices away from the other children and begins destroying the hosts CD/DVD collection, when admonished he runs to mummy again.

And then comes the controversial incident where the host sets up a game of supervised cricket for all the children. The child is included by giving him the batting position but once again when he looses he becomes violent, dangerously swinging the cricket bat at the other players and screaming at them.

When one of the other children's parents protectively intervenes (his own parents do not) the child lashes out and kicks the man in the shins.

That the adult male responds with a disciplinary slap to the face is not surprising. Personally I probably would have just kicked the child back in kind.

All of this to me is not new, we have all seen it in todays world, where bringing up children without discipline and boundaries is rife. Done by lazy parents, too self absorbed to take the right line and patting each other on the back for taking the easy, feel good path. Parenting is not just a right, it is a responsibility. We have the responsibility to bring our children up to be functional and contributing members of society. Parenting is not a popularity contest with our children, we are there to guide them and sometimes the things we have to do are tough.

The touchy feely extreme of over permissive parenting leads to unruly children with overblown senses of entitlement and no understanding of their role in society or their social responsibility.

There is no easy way out and to neglect setting boundaries on a child's behavior is more damaging to a child in the long run than any face slap could ever be.