[GarthB]

Gentlemen:

I deal with discipline issues with children every day. My second period class last year was known school wide as "the class from hell." I have served in the miliatary and was a police officer. I have seen my share of violence committed by adults on children. In my short LE career, I arrested more than a dozen adults for child abuse. I studied child abuse. I learned how it starts...with an adult unable to control his anger who strikes a child and who finds a way to excuse it, usually blaming the child and then getting others, inclduing witnesses to agree with him. Wife abuse follows a similar pattern.

Dispense of it as you will. "It wasn't that hard", "He didn't mean it", "The kid had it coming". I will repeat from an earlier post. There is no excuse for a grown man to slap a 12 year old in the face. None. Nada. Zip. This is not "discipline", this is an uncontrolled angry reaction. What the kid did has no bearing. Whether or not it left a mark has no bearing. This is a grown man unable to control his anger slapping a 12 year old kid in the face, and yes, that IS violvent behavior. That's why I say that. Grown-up are supposed to control their anger. That's part of being grown-up.

I know this, all a 12 year old really learns from being slapped in the face is that it is acceptable for grown adults to lose control and strike children. There are posts in this thread that bear that out. Those condoing this action are the ones saying "I had my face slapped as a kid and I turned out okay". (The hole in that argument is as obvious and huge as the Grand Canyon.) So we see first hand how violence visited on children is often carried on by those children.