Stranger allegedly slaps crying child in store

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http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/html_ch ... ageinf.htm
Above is a size chart for childern that age for a girl she would have to wieght between 10kgs to 15kgs why would a grown man ever think it's ok to hit someone so much smaller and weeker then him? Has hittting someone every made them stop crying? I see kids not being looked after all the time and have had to ethier speak to them or pull them out of danger. Slaping them even when they are complet brats has never crossed my mind.

They are not cute.

Would yelling at it have been any better? =/

So he figured hitting a child that was crying would help them?!?

As you said...

These days people get in big trouble for giving their OWN child a smack.

There is no excuse for hitting a stranger's kid just because he is noisy.

I'd have whacked the kid but that's because I am an out of control crazy b***h. Not right though. Oh well I guess I am off to jail one day...

Just ignore that last post... I'm in a bad mood today...

Don't feel bad Jellybean we all have them I hope you feel better soon.

from what i read initially, the woman was doing nothing at all about the crying child, who was screaming bloody murder and had been for quite some time, and the man said something to her earlier on. later he was on an entirely different aisle and the child was still screaming and he lost it, went over, and smacked the kid. i've ready other accounts where the girl was merely crying and the man threatened the mom with "shutting the kid up if she wouldn't" and then the slapping. there's never an excuse to hit a child of that age, be it your own or not. understandable sometimes, but never excusable.

it's also rather illegal, as that man has just found out. my guess is that he'll get off with a warning and some community service time.

i've been in walmart many, many times when there was a child throwing a screaming temper tantrum, a child old enough to know better, with mom totally ignoring them. i'm not talking about babies, that's a different matter. they should still be removed from the store if they cannot be calmed after a few moments, but it's a far cry from seeing a 3, 4, 5, 6 year old child screaming at the top of it's lungs for any time at all with the parent doing absolutely nothing about it. if the kid has issues, including spectrum issues, and loses it in a public place, it's time to leave and to come back when the kid can handle it.

given the demeanor of the moms i've seen in those situations in walmart, i doubt it was a "let's give this a first try and see if ignoring them stops it"...obviously, totally ignoring them has not worked in the past, since the kids were still acting like little hellions. when you can hear a kid bellowing five rows away, and when it goes on for more than a few minutes, no, it's REALLY NOT ok. it's right up there with neighbors who park their cars under your windows and then crank up the boom-box base until your windows rattle. there have been times i'd have loved to have said something to those mothers, but it always seemed as if it would have been a lost cause since if they had any clue in the first place, they wouldn't have been letting those kids behave like that.

i've the utmost sympathy for the parents who are doing what they can with a cranky kid (been there, done that), but those with a kid that's running amok with no correction at all... i shudder to think what they'll be like in 10 or 15 years.

I'm almost tempted to commend the man for his direct approach to problem-solving, if this would have been a regular annoying and non-sensible person who continues to make trouble. He should've really known better than to hit a child though, because aside from it not working, it's not very fair as the child probably didn't have much control over it.

My aunt and uncle heard about this on the news and it got brought up between us at dinner. I said thank god they didn't mention autism, thats the last thing I needed to hear. They thought it was horrible what the man did and I said he maybe had a bad temper and who knows if the mother did tried to silence her child or didn't do anything about it. Then my husband said if someone touched his child, he be mad and want to knock them down. That be some fun to see a fight in a store between my husband as a stranger. Then they both might be arrested.

Yep. We've all wanted to do it. And if we can't, then that guy can't either!

I've been tempted to do this, and quite frankly, I actually would have cheered this guy on had he only done it once. The closest I came to do this was at Centrelink, when a kid was hitting the wall's running board, and seeing as the parent wouldn't do anything, I just gave the kid a dirty look, and told it to stop it in a quiet, low tone of voice that suggested exsanguination if it didn't. The kid stopped.

Hatred of humanity in general is misanthropy, women hating is misogyny, men hating is misandry, and religion hating is misotheistry. So what is hating little kids?

How about miniaturopy?

I've been tempted to hit parents in shopping centres, and on trains... you know the kind of parent who drags a child around, then pays no attention to them. BUT there is no way I would ever turn a blind eye to an adult hitting a child.

If a kid is throwing a tantrum in a shop, there are not that many potential reasons.

There is the possibility that the kid is tired or ill... ie, teething, or suffering from colic.

There is the possibility that the parent keeps ignoring the kid, and the child has learned the only way to gain attention is to throw a tantrum... negative attention is better than no attention.

There is the possibility that the child is genuinely crying for emotional reasons... loneliness, etc.

And... those are pretty much the only reasons for crying as a kid.

So, a kid could cry because they are ill. A kid could cry because they are lonely. A kid could cry because they are bored. Or because they are a spoilt brat.

Whatever the reason, the correct response is not EVER to hit the kid. Perhaps the parent... but never the kid.

While I have a lot of sympathy for people that get disturbed by an unruly child, there isn't always anything a parent can do in the moment. In a grocery store, the child has to learn that he can't scream his way out of the boring tasks in life. I used to minimize my shopping if the kids got that way, but it was important my child didn't think his tantrum had gotten him what he wanted (as in, out of the door). I did once cause my son to scream, because the rule was that if he couldn't keep from grabbing things off the shelf, he would have to ride in the cart. After the stated number of warnings, I picked him up and put him in the cart, and he started screaming. I calmly repeated why he was now in the cart, told him to stop screaming as he was disturbing the other shoppers, and apologized to the woman near me who had seen the whole. And, she, wonderfully, told me not to worry, I was doing absolutely the right thing. Basically, sometimes you're investing in more calm trips in the future. And it works.

The opposite, though, is true for places the child WANTS to be. Keep screaming out of control in a toy store? We're leaving. In a restaurant? We're leaving. And so on. Looking back I'm thinking it could have been confusing to the kids but it really wasn't; they knew they had to act well in a place they wanted to or we couldn't stay there, and they knew they couldn't misbehave their way out of a place they didn't want to be.

But, interesting to have this discussion on an AS board, because my son has had AS related meltdowns in very inconvenient public places, like the acquarium, and there was no quick place to escape to. There is only so far you can move a child in full sensory meltdown, and some stranger hitting him would hardly stop the meltdown. Oh I am so glad we've learned to spot all the warning signs on that sort of thing and the acquarium incident is now 4 years behind us. We must have been the most hated people in the place.

Tough job parents have trying to balance it all. But most of us totally get that it is hard for the strangers around us, and just cross our fingers for a little patience.