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Slapping in the face
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amother


 

Post Wed, Feb 28 2007, 8:42 am
I slapped one of my kids once on the face, and have felt guilty for it for a very long time. I did it out of anger. I now count till 10-for a cool off period, ad if I still think my child deserves petch, then I smack him on his behind
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JRKmommy




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Feb 28 2007, 10:06 am
Imaonwheels: I'm not bringing in civil law simply to back up an opinion on the rightness or wrongness of an action. Laws vary wildly from one area to another. I mention it b/c it is relevant to any discussion of what I would do myself and also how I would react to someone else doing it. I know it's fashionable, even on a frum site like this, for everyone to say "I can't judge...", but the fact is that in my profession I DO end up judging people every day. As a family/child protection lawyer in Canada, slapping on the face is different than a potch on the tuchus, because the former is now prohibited by law and therefore I could be required by law to report in some cases, and I have to deal with it if it comes up in a court case. While I personally don't like the idea of potching at all, I still have to tell people that a small potch with an open hand on the tuchus is legal.
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Imaonwheels




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Mar 01 2007, 10:53 am
BTDT, having been a dependent and neglected childrens' caseworker and a classroom teacher. I think lawyers have a harder time but I have used my discretion at times knowing full well what they would have in a sling if I was mistaken. I broke the law in the US once for the good of a child who was being tortured by a ruling by a judge who had to have her head umm you can guess where. I simply passed on some family info that destroyed the ability to inforce the ruling.

My prob is that I was trained to do the overall right thing for the fam and the state thinks they are always in a position to decide. I saw in Israel that my reports were followed up selectively. I ceased dealing w/the Israeli Soc Svcs when a 14 yr old preg girl told me that after being a victim of incest that her family said she deserved it because "you are a slut anyway", her baby was a product of rape and a few other horror stories. This girl was under the protection of a prominent rav. One call from the girl's important family and her case was closed.

Are you aware that many caseworkers make calls that bend the law or even tie it in a not to suit their values or to protect a child? That many family court judges are seen as adversaries and our most hated institution were child advocate lawyers. In Allegheny Co, PA in my days they were into proving they were the only ones concerned and fight every recommendation even though they were on rotation, never met the kids or parents and would prob be replaced before the next hearing.

That is my prob w/civil law. Not only is Torah irrelevant but the child's welfare is often irrelevant as well. I worked with caseworkers who were white and had no respect for their black clients or poorer people of all races. I see that in Israel a mother can have the fact that she became BT as proof of her instability and a child sent to an institution because his evaluation determined that religion is causing the child's emotional probs so he must be committed to separate him from the religion.

Not being a lawyer, I have no connection w/civil laws outside of trash disposal, taxes and traffic laws. And of course, when they violate our human rights which happens more often here than in the US.

I counsel women for free with their total understanding that I don't work for the govt or any mosad and I am just giving friendly advice.
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JRKmommy




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Mar 01 2007, 2:57 pm
I've worked on both sides with child protection - I represent parents in child protection hearings, but I also did a year-long stint on contract with a child protection agency.

I lost some naive idealism in the process. I don't think it's possible to use the child protection system to re-engineer families into the same, perfect little model. The system is a blunt tool, best reserved situations that really require it, and it will inevitably create a mess. That's the nature of the beast. A perfect happy ending in which no one feels bad is an awfully rare occurance, unless the parents decide to work cooperatively with the agency and it turns into a voluntary service situation.

There's an odd patchwork of culturally-appropriate services here. There are separate agencies for Jewish and Catholic kids. Native kids go through the regular agency for court, but there is a Native agency that helps out. As a result, some groups are able to get workers and services that have the same background/religion/language and really "get" where they are coming from. Sometimes this can get too close for comfort - I'd get Portuguese workers telling me everything they learned from cleaning ladies, family friends, etc. about a family. Then, in other cases, there would be a total cultural clash. The worst case I had like this involved a Somali grandmother. Most of the Somali community here just arrived as refugees in the early 1990s, and I got involved in this case around 1998. They were the newest, poorest, least empowered community around. There were no Somali doctors or lawyers or social workers, and even finding a competent translator was next to impossible. The culture was totally different, and they didn't have a network of more established people here to mentor them and help out. As a result, they clashed with the system, and were totally marginalized. In this case, the grandmother had single-handedly rescued her grandson during the Somali civil war. However, the Canadian social worker just saw an illiterate old woman who spoke no English and seemed totally out of place, and a grandson with "clinical issues" that must obviously be beyond her ability to comprehend. The idea that these issues may have arisen as a result of everything they went through in Somalia - the boy lost his parents and lived in a nasty refugee camp for a while - didn't get much attention. The idea that the grandmother may be one of the best people to actually understand everything that this kid had gone through was discounted. Instead, I got a cheery social worker telling me that we didn't need to bother with the court hearing, because grandmother had already signed the papers. That got me going on a rampage - how could an illiterate woman who didn't speak a word of English, and who had a lawyer, have been asked to sign papers without anyone else around to help her? I also had another case, where it was obvious that my client was initially labelled as "black single mother using harsh discipline". It took a while to get the blinkers off and reveal the truth: another social worker recognized her from child and youth worker courses, psychological testing and the reports from the foster mom indicated that the child indeed had some real psychological issues, and mom needed assistance with professional help, not to be dismissed.

Ok, now I've gone on too long, so I'll end this....
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amother


 

Post Wed, Mar 14 2007, 8:54 am
Motek wrote:
I was twice witness to mothers slapping their children (boys) in the face. It is horrifying Shaking

These are not generally abusive mothers, just ordinary mommies - I know them.

What do you think of slapping in the face? Have you done it? Would you ever do it?

A "potch in panim" ... on the tzelem Elokim? Sad


One reason why its horrible is because when you give a child a "patch" on any other body part you are sending an entierly different message to them than when its on the face. On the face is somthing personal! It they did somthing wrong its their ACTIONS that were wrong, not the child personally. Again, when its on the face youve touched a very personal areah.
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Mar 15 2007, 4:57 pm
During the war, many people from other groups went to see the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe regarding what was going on in Europe.

A great philosopher asked him, if the entire purpose of Olam Hazeh is the Jewish people, why does Hashem allow a wicked person to destroy so many Jews, especially the finest among them?

The Rebbe answered, when you want to hit someone in a way that the entire body feels not only the pain but also the humiliation, you hit in the "face."

(Sichos Kodesh 5710)
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Mar 15 2007, 4:59 pm
During the war, many people from other groups went to see the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe regarding what was going on in Europe.

A great philosopher asked him, if the entire purpose of Olam Hazeh is the Jewish people, why does Hashem allow a wicked person to destroy so many Jews, especially the finest among them?

The Rebbe answered, when you want to hit someone in a way that the entire body feels not only the pain but also the humiliation, you hit in the "face."

(Sichos Kodesh 5710)
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chen




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Mar 16 2007, 9:24 am
Mrs. XYZ wrote:
amother wrote:
"chosech shifto sonay bino"


I think this thread was specifically about slapping ON THE FACE- not slapping in general.


Besides which, "shivto" doesn't necessarily mean corporal punishment--it means discipline.
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