Kids Rules on Hitting *UPDATED*
Branching off to a topic I don’t normally cover here, but one I’ve talked about several times recently to friends & family - on the topic of violence.
With our children (2 boys and 2 girls), we’ve set up a few rules when it comes to fighting, which have worked pretty well (apart from siblings, but that’s another story for another day).
For the Boys
All you have to do is ask my boys “What is Rule #1 and Rule #2?”, and you will hear the following (which I don’t know who to credit , since it was ten-plus years ago when the rules were put in place):
Rule #1: Never, ever hit a girl.
Rule #2: If you ever think you really, really need to hit a girl, refer to Rule #1
(NOTE: To avoid incriminating anyone by name, I will just say that the rules came into being after a particularly embarrassing incident, at a Kindergarten/First Grade bus stop.)
Every girl they have dated has gotten to hear these two rules, usually in casual, light conversation, just so that they know what we expect of the boys, as well. While this is not the sum total of what we’ve taught them about respect for the opposite sex, because of the ever-increasing mixing of gender roles, we wanted this to be rather firmly established.
One of my sons, ever the looker-for-loopholes, asked “what if she’s hitting/kicking/scratching me?”
My response: If you deserve it, you’d best just take it. If you don’t, then I suspect you can run faster than she can. If she can run faster than you, then you probably shouldn’t have ticked her off in the first place…
Additionally, we’ve let the boys’ girlfriends know that our girls also have a rule (albeit a different one):
Rule for Girls
My girls also have a rule (which also has a similar #2, though for simplicity we pretty much treat it as a single rule):
Rule #1: One and done. (i.e. If a boy hits you, he’s done with you. Forever.)
Rule #2: Even if he’s sorry, refer to rule #1.
In this case, we’ve made it clear “You do have to forgive him, but that doesn’t eliminate the consequences of him never having the privilege of being in your inner-circle of friends again.” One of the nice things is that this has set up good conversation on the difference between forgiveness and earthly consequences.
In Conclusion
While I have no illusions of perfection as a parent, I can say that this has been one of those bits of parental folklore that has been successful in the Lyons household. I can also say that bringing these up on a regular basis (particularly when they’re dating someone new or if we see a man striking a woman in a movie or on TV) has led to some very insightful and helpful family conversations.
UPDATE
This should not imply that my girls are allowed to indiscriminately use violence against folks. Rather, they have the same expectation (”you don’t use physical violence, except in self-defense”), but I don’t hold them to a higher standard of chivalry.
