The Baltimore Mom

[homeslice]

By the accident of birth, I have no idea what this woman was feeling. I lots of kids one of whom happens to be a 17 year old son. I don't believe in smacking a kid in the head. I don't believe violence is the answer. But I also get to make that pronouncement in a safe town from a safe distance. This woman's son has dressed himself for trouble. He is walking towards trouble. Other kids are already finding the trouble. None of this is theoretical for her like it is for us. We get to think it through. We get to consider nuances.

She had a few moments to move that kid. She threw herself between her kid and all of the trouble in the world. I wish she hadn't hit him. I get to wish that. My teenage son is asleep upstairs. But the terror she felt, the danger she faced- that different than parenting.

People do weird stuff in times of war. Look at Baltimore and tell me she wasn't trying to save her kid from a war.

[Toothfairy]

Good for mom! We need more parents like her. I would've done the same thing with my son

[Mama Mia]

You inhabit a world with a sick and twisted form of logic.

Do you realize you're implying that the cause for those riots is because

( presumably) those kids were spanked as children. Do you seriously believe that?

I'm sure it has nothing to do with routine police brutality or lack of a vision for a future or teen bravado or. Posturing or getting caught in the moment because adolescent brains aren't fully developed. Or too much testosterone -- or any of the other traits that make young men equally good soldiers and criminals.....or, ..you know , anger about that dude who just had his spine broken in multiple places and died because , it was, what, a road full of potholes the cops drove him on? Nope all that's irrelevant .

Nope the cause of this is his mom must have been a crappy parent. Of course.

[SoybeanQueen]

I think she was reacting on adrenaline, too. Who knows what they would do in that situation? Being terrified for your child's safety, angry that he was misbehaving in such a way, and knowing that he was putting himself in a very dangerous environment might be too much for even the most calm parent.

[August]

Do you realize you're implying that the cause for those riots is because

( presumably) those kids were spanked as children. Do you seriously believe that?

I'm sure it has nothing to do with routine police brutality or lack of a vision for a future or teen bravado or. Posturing or getting caught in the moment because adolescent brains aren't fully developed. Or too much testosterone -- or any of the other traits that make young men equally good soldiers and criminals.....or, ..you know , anger about that dude who just had his spine broken in multiple places and died because , it was, what, a road full of potholes the cops drove him on? Nope all that's irrelevant .

Nope the cause of this is his mom must have been a crappy parent. Of course.

I am not implying that the cause of the riots is violence at home. However you cannot claim that kids who are hit don't take that lesson to heart and hit others :angry-banghead: If you're going to have a hope that your kid will be the peaceful protestor and not the looting thug, or indeed the one who fights with words and not their fists in the playground (and later in bars) then yes, being violent towards them yourself is the first step.

Don't try and use the revolting and sickening racism of US society to defend hitting children. That would be like me saying you shouldn't bother caring about racism because ten thousand people have died and half of the houses in Nepal just fell down. You don't have to fix all the problems of the world in sequential order from worst to least. You can be a good parent even while there are shitty assholes right outside your door waiting to try and kill your kid.

[lilah]

That was my first thought when I first saw the footage.

Look, I don't blame the mother for being angry with her child and taking him out of the environment, but I am not OK with her resorting to violence herself in the situation. I do not think teaching kids that physical violence is wrong while physically hitting them is productive or good parenting.

I agree I think she was scared he was going to get arrested or worse

I think it's quite ironic that the whole point of the riots and protest was against police brutality against black men and yet we find it highly entertaining to see a black mother beating up her son.

[Grimalkin]

Unfortunately, statistics show us that approx. 1/3 of child abuse victims go on to abuse their own children.

I am going to be painfully blunt here. I don't believe for a second that's the first time that young man has been beaten by his mother. She did it with an ease that suggested is was not something unfamiliar to her, and regardless of arguments that she was only trying to make him leave, she beat him AFTER he was walking away.

There is never an excuse for beating your child in the face.

I don't think my point was expressed clearly. A while ago here on FJ out of concearn for a loved one I asked a poster what if any help they got for the abuse they had as a child. I think she assumed I thought she was going to be an abuser. She gave me an earful about this very point. i was mortified, but grateful for this because it was eye opening to me. But bottom line it was incredibly offensive to her.

Conversely I was spanked as well my siblings (except my handicapped sister) sometimes out of anger. I never considerd myself abused my siblings don't, none of us are violent, neither are my parents. My neighbors were spanked too, again no violent rioting kids among us. I think it has to do with the whole picture. The enviornment, the rest of the upbringing.

[HereticHick]

This viral video is the least important part of what is going on in Baltimore.

[sparkles]

The mom, Toya Graham, was on CBS This Morning today. She acknowledged that her son had been in trouble before and that she'd warned him not to go to the demonstrations but when school let out early, that's where he ended up. She went looking for him and she said that when she saw him with a rock in his hand, she "lost it." BUT, in response to Gayle King's comment that (paraphrasing) "it was clear this wasn't the first time she'd opened a can of whoop-ass on him," she definitely didn't deny it. That puts a different spin on things for me. I can understand a one-time, over-the-top reaction in response to a very tense, dangerous situation but not when there's a history of physical violence. Her instincts were correct, her method's not so much and that seems to be what she's being celebrated for.

As for why this particular incident seems to be getting the attention, my theory is that it's because protecting your child is something we can all relate to. I don't doubt that all of us here are deeply troubled by the bigger picture—race relations, an increasingly hostile relationship between the police and the public, and so forth—but no matter how much I sympathize and feel angered, I'm still a middle-class white woman from suburban New York and to pretend otherwise would be disingenuous. No matter how much I try, I can NEVER truly understand how it feels to be a person of color who is immediately judged on that alone. What I CAN understand, though, is how it feels to be a parent whose child is in danger. It personalizes and humanizes the situation for me and, I would imagine, for others as well.

[Koala]

I don't think my point was expressed clearly. A while ago here on FJ out of concearn for a loved one I asked a poster what if any help they got for the abuse they had as a child. I think she assumed I thought she was going to be an abuser. She gave me an earful about this very point. i was mortified, but grateful for this because it was eye opening to me. But bottom line it was incredibly offensive to her.

Conversely I was spanked as well my siblings (except my handicapped sister) sometimes out of anger. I never considerd myself abused my siblings don't, none of us are violent, neither are my parents. My neighbors were spanked too, again no violent rioting kids among us. I think it has to do with the whole picture. The enviornment, the rest of the upbringing.

Here's the thing. Reality is sometimes offensive. Reality (statistics) say an abused child has a 1/3 chance of going on to abuse their own children.

That's not my opinion. That's not speculation. That's a fact. Facts don't change because people find them offensive.

Also, whether you consider being hit abuse or not is of little relevance. It's very difficult to objectively evaluate our own situations, and people are generally reluctant to label the actions of parents they love as "abusive".

The studies on spanking have linked it to aggression and depression. That doesn't mean it will happen to 100% of people who are hit by their parents, but it certainly increases the likelihood.

[Boogalou]

Since I saw there was some interest in this thread I started a thread in WWoS for the Baltimore Riots if people wanted to discuss them viewtopic.php?f=81&t=25848

[Chubbi]

Here's the thing. Reality is sometimes offensive. Reality (statistics) say an abused child has a 1/3 chance of going on to abuse their own children.

That's not my opinion. That's not speculation. That's a fact. Facts don't change because people find them offensive.

Also, whether you consider being hit abuse or not is of little relevance. It's very difficult to objectively evaluate our own situations, and people are generally reluctant to label the actions of parents they love as "abusive".

The studies on spanking have linked it to aggression and depression. That doesn't mean it will happen to 100% of people who are hit by their parents, but it certainly increases the likelihood.

Here's the thing. People citing that statistic usually use it as ammunition to shame adult survivors. That's not my opinion. That's not speculation. That's my experience as - guess what! - an adult survivor of child abuse. That experience doesn't change because people wanna throw around that tidbit of information. It's also been my experience that people who wanna invoke it don't actually care about helping that 1/3 break the cycle, and ignore the fact that 2/3 go on to be good parents. Not saying that that's you, but you have to be cognizant of the nuances if you want to get into an in-depth, potentially heated, discussion.

That's why it's offensive. Not because it's reality and people are in denial. It's offensive because most folks use that statistic to further demonize adult survivors.

ETA: that neat little 1/3 is from 1987...so we're going on almost 30 year old information. it would be nice to get an updated number.

[Koala]

Here's the thing. People citing that statistic usually use it as ammunition to shame adult survivors. That's not my opinion. That's not speculation. That's my experience as - guess what! - an adult survivor of child abuse.

Speculation is exactly what it is. You are speculating that people usually use facts to shame abuse survivors based on your perception of the way you've been treated.

Unfortunately, I have seen the statistic play out in real life.

My father and his siblings were severely abused by their mother and father. The parents both died within 6 months of each other (one to cancer, one to suicide), and left the kids without parents.

At 8 my father was placed in an orphanage where he was abused by nuns. At 9 he ran away and lived under a bridge near a bakery. He spent his days eating out of their trash.

He went on to abuse my mother. I can remember sitting in her lap as he threw her cup collection at the wall. I can remember the glass shattering around us.

The remaining children (save one with special needs) turned to abuse, drugs, and alcoholism as well. Only 2 of the 6 made it into their fifties.

I never sit and ponder why. I know why- it was what they knew.

That doesn't mean that no one ever makes it out and rises above their raising. But it does mean that being abused has lasting impacts that some people don't have the tools to escape.

It's also been my experience that people who wanna invoke it don't actually care about helping that 1/3 break the cycle, and ignore the fact that 2/3 go on to be good parents.

It's unfortunate that you've had that experience. It really is. I think one of the main problems is not knowing how to help. I know for my father that was the case, because he was surrounded (as a teen and adult) by people who tried and wanted to help him, but they just didn't know how.

[Koala]

ETA: that neat little 1/3 is from 1987...so we're going on almost 30 year old information. it would be nice to get an updated number.

http://www.aaets.org/article185.htm

[salex]

Here's the thing. Reality is sometimes offensive. Reality (statistics) say an abused child has a 1/3 chance of going on to abuse their own children.

This is just out of curiosity, but what is the stat on people who were not abused becoming abusers?

[2xx1xy1JD]

I agree with this Love, Joy, Feminism post on it: www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2 ... story.html

I'm not going to say "we need more moms like her", because I don't want more situations where mothers feel that the lives of their children are in danger. I will acknowledge that in that moment, she wasn't calmly saying to herself, "hmm, how hard will I need to hit my son to properly discipline him?". She was in a situation where she had every reason to belief that her son was in danger and that she needed to stop him.

As for the legacy of abuse issue - both sides are right, to a certain extent.

The fear of stigma is real. I've had cases where one side used abuse survivor status as a weapon, saying "oh, my ex was abused, and I'm afraid to trust my ex with our child because they often go on to become abusers." Background is discussed in child custody assessments. It can make someone feel that they are being labelled as damaged goods.

At the same time, we are affected by our background. The way that we grew up creates patterns hardwired into our brains. Not everyone is affected in the same way - for example, one person may react by seeing violent reactions as normal, other may react by fearing any sort of confrontation. Changing our patterns is possible, but it requires more work. Some people will not have that pattern for healthy relationships, and will need to learn basic stuff from scratch. My mom did that to a certain extent - she had a mother who was mentally ill and somewhat abusive, and she vowed to be different. She studied child psychology and education, she read books, and she consciously chose more positive parenting. Some of it didn't always come across as natural, but it's more natural for my sister and I. My MIL also turned out very different from her abusive parents, and was instinctively more loving and devoted to her kids. The legacy was more in her tendency to avoid conflict, feel that she had to please others, feel a bit powerless and allow herself to be bullied, and have a bit of a blind spot toward the abuse until it threatened her family.

[Mama Mia]

I''m having several problems with some of the extremist takes on what this mom did.

** There are lots of people on social media -- white brown and black--who are using this as a rallying cry to the importance of physical punishment. And screaming that "this is what's wrong with the world--no one whips their kids!" --which is bullshit, and wrong. And also stupid, because realistically - there is no shortage of people hitting their kids. And the statistically few parents who have never so much as smacked a hand of a toddler reaching for the stove -- aren't generally minority working poor single parents who are dealing with incredible stress and fear of losing their son to the streets. Like this mom. So no, lack of child beating is not the problem***

** There are lots of other people going the exact opposite route -that the mom is abusive, that this was inexcusible, that they would never strike their child, ever. no matter what Because, apparently, they would rather their grown ass teenage son who they love with all their heart --they would rather he die or kill or become a felon with their future ruined than get slapped in the face. I think these people are flat out delusional and just---incredibly sheltered and naive. I think their intentions are likely good -- but they just, fundamentally, don't get the primal fear and rage that can grip you if your teen is about to destroy their lives. Lucky them. ***

I think the weird thing, with both groups, is that they seem to be equating this to similar discussions regarding child discipline --like that football player who whipped his 4 year old bloody for some normal childhood infraction. It is not the same thing. It just isn't. It's not the Pearls. It's not an argument on whether you should swat a small child who just tried to run into the street. No matter your stance on spanking --that is NOT what this is about. There is a gigantic difference in what adults do to small children when there are a range of options. And what an adult does to a grown teenager in order to save their life.

I'm also very frustrated that this side show , and the self-defeating riots, have detracted attention from the real issue. Which is a fundamentally flawed system that allows a huge percentage of brown and black young men to be nothing more than fodder for the prison system. If they don't get murdered on their way to jail.

[Koala]

What do you know? This isn't the first time she's beaten him :o Who'd have guessed it? :roll:

Gayle King- "The way that you were striking him- you opened up a can of whoop ass on him the way I was looking at it. That clearly was not the first time you've had that interaction with him is it?"

Mom- *laughs* "No."

Yeah...hero mom.

Edited to add link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/baltimore ... t-lost-it/

[Koala]

I say good for her.

Gayle King-

The way that you were striking him- you opened up a can of whoop ass on him the way I was looking at it. That clearly was not the first time you've had that interaction with him is it?

Mom-

*laughs* No.

Good for her. Right?

[VelociRapture]

There is (or was) a separate thread in another forum on Baltimore in general. I posted in that one already, but I'll post in this one as well:

- This mother, by her own admission, was acting out of fear for her child's safety. As others have stated, you can see her attempt to talk with him at the start of the video and he brushes her off - it isn't until then that she starts with physical force.

- Many of the people in Baltimore are good people. Many more people there protested peacefully than there were rioting; we don't hear about that much because the news only likes to focus on the bad aspects of a story. . . because fear drives up ratings much faster than nice stories.

- Many cops are good people who only want to help those in their communities. The bad cops - the ones who abuse their position of power for any reason - give them all a bad name and leads to distrust in the community. This is especially true for minority communities, who are often singled out for special attention by the police (whether it is warranted or not). It is a very serious issue that absolutely needs to be addressed.

- I have no doubt that there were people rioting who only wanted to take advantage of the situation. I also have no doubt that many of those people were simply so frustrated and desperate to be heard that they lashed out.

- I don't find that video funny and I don't usually agree with corporal punishment. . . but that was a situation that was about as extreme as it could get. This mother probably felt her only option was to get her kid out of there as fast as she could and did what she did to make that happen. Judging her, or saying that he must have learned to be violent from her, based off this one moment in time is ridiculous. I highly doubt any of us here have had a child in a situation that extreme, so I really feel we have no place to judge.

Where parents went "wrong" is the riot is having kids be born black. You can't just go home and "make it right now." These aren't people acting out because their parents went wrong. These are people who have been backed into a corner too many times and are lashing out because it's more or less open season for cops to kill black people. These aren't kids lashing out because they don't like taxes, and maybe you didn't teach the what taxes buy, which is something you can fix. There is no way those parents can fix what's happening. It's entirely white privilege to miss the forest for the trees.

While I'd drag my son's ass out of there, as a white person, I can still understand why they're rioting. Nobody listened when they tried talking. Nobody listened. This is FORCING people to listen. This is desperation!

:clap:

Exactly! As a young white women I can never know what it is like to live in a society that instantly judges me for my skin tone. I can't know what it's like to feel a sudden flash of fear each time I see a cop car. I can't know the fear a parent feels while attempting to explain how not to get yourself killed during a confrontation with police to a child. I can't know how horrible it must feel to explain to my child why someone at school or on the streets made fun of them for how they look.

What I can know is that these things are inherently unfair. I didn't ask to be born white. No one asks to be born with their skin color. It just happens and what you end up with is just pure dumb luck.

Discriminating or hating someone for how they look is just wrong. Racism is still alive and flourishing in our nation - in order to better society for the benefit of ALL people, we must first acknowledge that and acknowledge that these people have a right to be heard without being patronized or brushed off. If we do that then the people who truly care about these issues wouldn't feel forced to riot in order to be heard.

[DGayle]

I am not implying that the cause of the riots is violence at home. However you cannot claim that kids who are hit don't take that lesson to heart and hit others :angry-banghead: If you're going to have a hope that your kid will be the peaceful protestor and not the looting thug, or indeed the one who fights with words and not their fists in the playground (and later in bars) then yes, being violent towards them yourself is the first step.

I think you need to open your eyes and look at reality. You really think that being spanked means a kid will be a looting rioter and can't be a peaceful protestor, and that not spanking means your kid is immune. What an ideal little world you live in when the answer to solving violence is to merely not spank. In the world I live in, violences is driven more by poverty, fear, and a desperation to survive. There are a lot of kids who aren't spanked, or disciplined in any way at all, who grow up violent because there sure just trying to survive.

Yet you think that stopping violence is as simple as not spanking, and that being spanked means someone can't be peaceful. That might be the most ignorant thing I've read here.

Oh, I also guess I've protested wrong. I've been to many protests, alway peacefully, and even helped prevent a big protest I was in from getting violent. I guess from not on I'll start picking up rocks and throwing them through windows since that what I, someone who was spanked on occasion as a kid, am supposed to do. Oops. My bad.

Don't try and use the revolting and sickening racism of US society to defend hitting children. That would be like me saying you shouldn't bother caring about racism because ten thousand people have died and half of the houses in Nepal just fell down. You don't have to fix all the problems of the world in sequential order from worst to least. You can be a good parent even while there are shitty assholes right outside your door waiting to try and kill your kid.

You need to look at WHY people do what they do. A lot of what drives actions in poor areas, which are disproportionately black, is poverty. Doing the whole "redirect your kid for as long as it takes" method is a method for the privileged who have the time. If you live in a poor area and have to work a couple jobs to keep the lights on, nobody's got time for that. You have much less time to deal with misbehavior. You can't be there every minute a kid gets into trouble to redirect them, so have to come up with a punishment for after the fact that you hope they'll dislike enough that it'll stop them from misbehaving in the first place.

It's not ideal, but it's reality. If you want to stop spanking, then start coming up with ways for families to not have to have their kids unsupervised. Find a way to make sure there are enough jobs paying well enough so that nobody has to work 60+ hours a week and leave their kids to their own devices most of the day.

That is why poor kids are more likely to be spanked than the kids of affluent and middle class people. And if poor parents don't do anything at all, then they're lazy parents. Seriously look at life as a poor person and the realistic options you have. It's a fucking privilege to have time to catch misbehavior in the act and to spend all the time you need trying to redirect and talking.

I didn't grow up rich, but I did have a parent home than most of my friends. More times that I can count, all that stopped somebody from doing something really bad was somebody else saying, "You're gonna get in trouble if mom finds out." And that trouble meant a spanking. It was the best poor parents who couldn't be home had to work with.

Solve this problem. Solve the problem of poverty, and then you can start to solve how to ed spanking. It's easy and a feel-good way to just say don't do it. But that's just refusal to look at what causes actions you don't like.

Let's try it this way. We all know a lot of kids don't pay attention in schools, and that hungry kids pay attention least. Because they're hungry. Do we tell them to just knock it off and pay attention, because that's easier and all it requires from us is to sit on our homes and say some words? Or do we push for schools to feed kids to take care of the reason kids go to school unprepared to learn?

[DGayle]

The studies on spanking have linked it to aggression and depression. That doesn't mean it will happen to 100% of people who are hit by their parents, but it certainly increases the likelihood.

The poverty that those most likely to be spanked tend to live through have nothing to do with it. In my little corner of the world:

My wealthier friends who weren't spanked and don't spank have a lower rate of depression.

My wealthier friends who were spank and don't spank also have low depression.

My poorer friends who were spanked and do spank are very depressed.

My poorer friends who weren't spank, but do spank, also have a high rate of depression.

Far less of my friends are wealthy. The largest number of my friends who deal with depression are the poor ones. Being spanked or not has less to do with it than the reality of struggling to get by, and not seeing any way to change that, just the same daily grind.

It's amazing how much your basic needs being reliably met or not can affect depression.

It's also amazing how so many people like to point the finger at spanking, kids not paying attention, and other things where it's easier to say "just don't do that, and ignore the larger, more overwhelming problem of poverty that leads to spanking, crime, doing poorly in school, and higher depression.

Pointing fingers and saying "just don't do that" is about as useful as relying on prayer to feed the poor in town. If you don't get off your ass and do something, then all you're doing is a placebo feel-good self-pat-on-the-back for being more "enlightened."

[DGayle]

This is just out of curiosity, but what is the stat on people who were not abused becoming abusers?

I've wondered this too, but never found info. It a third of all abuse-survivors go on to be horribly abusive people too, then the rate of abuse should be going down. Instead it's not, meaning that people who weren't abused in any way are joining in. I wish somebody would look into this some more.

[Toothfairy]

It's so easy for us to sit in the comfort of our home and judge this woman saying we'd handle it this way or that way...but it's likely we'll ever find ourselves in that situation. This kid's ego may be a little bruised but he's ALIVE, and he has his mother to thank for that. We all know black men and society don't mix. Black men have strikes against them. This young black boy was throwing rocks at cops. Now imagine if the cops decided to arrest or pull out a gun on him. His ass shouldn't have been there anyway. He should've been at home or do something positive. There are ways to get your point across and protest. If the mom didn't do anything and her son got arrested/injured or even killed, people would be outraged and demanding to know where his mom. So she disciplines her son on the spot and probably saves his life, people are still upset. Damned if you do...damned if you don't.

She could have calmly sat him down on the curb and talked to him and then took him out for ice cream afterwards, but she didn't. She was likely scared as hell and acted on it. The boy was doing something that could have gotten him killed on the spot. I don't see where she's claims to be a perfect parent. Even the best parents are flawed.

[August]

The poverty that those most likely to be spanked tend to live through have nothing to do with it. In my little corner of the world:

My wealthier friends who weren't spanked and don't spank have a lower rate of depression.

My wealthier friends who were spank and don't spank also have low depression.

My poorer friends who were spanked and do spank are very depressed.

My poorer friends who weren't spank, but do spank, also have a high rate of depression.

Far less of my friends are wealthy. The largest number of my friends who deal with depression are the poor ones. Being spanked or not has less to do with it than the reality of struggling to get by, and not seeing any way to change that, just the same daily grind.

It's amazing how much your basic needs being reliably met or not can affect depression.

It's also amazing how so many people like to point the finger at spanking, kids not paying attention, and other things where it's easier to say "just don't do that, and ignore the larger, more overwhelming problem of poverty that leads to spanking, crime, doing poorly in school, and higher depression.

Pointing fingers and saying "just don't do that" is about as useful as relying on prayer to feed the poor in town. If you don't get off your ass and do something, then all you're doing is a placebo feel-good self-pat-on-the-back for being more "enlightened."

Who here is saying it's only poor folks who need to stop hitting their fucking kids. Everyone needs to stop hitting their fucking kids. And as for finger wagging, that night be nice if none of us never had the urge to whack a little brat, or hadn't been raised being hit ourselves. Go and have a look at any thread on here where someone has shown a shred of interest in stopping hitting their kids, there is an abundance of good practical advice, given non-judgementally. All the people I know IRL who hit their children are wealthy, middle lazy lazy people who just can't be arsed doing it the hard way.