ok.

It is never ok to harm a child.  Let me start this post with that statement.

But whether or not something is 'ok' is rarely really the question.  At my job it's almost like living with our 'clients' -- to the extent that I have to put the words 'clients' in little '' marks.  You want a holistic approach to issues of homelessness and poverty? Try becoming roommates with them.  Ok, so we're not really roommates, and I actually have much better boundaries than that.  But the point is that we're involved in our residents' lives a lot more than other agencies might be.  And it's beautiful.  And sometimes it's really ugly.  Like when one of the kids comes into the office while I'm on shift to tell me that her mom uses her cell phone charger for giving her lashes on her arms and legs.  Oh yeah, and that she wants to steal money from her mom's purse so she can go as far away as she can get in a taxi and never look back. 

If I were sitting in class reading some article about child abuse, it wouldn't take me very long to get worked up to a rage, and make bold statements about "that's the problem with society today" in regards to people who hit other people (whether those people are small or big).

But when that person is sharing the house I work in, I find myself feeling much more sad than angry. 

People don't hit their kids (or other people) because they're mad or because they have an anger problem.  In my experience (brief as it is), people hit their kids because they're frustrated and don't know what else to do.  They work day in and day out filling out paperwork, signing here, initialing there, waiting behind this yellow line, please holding on the phone for hours on end, calling back during business hours... ALL DAY.  And then their kids come home from school and they STILL need more.  They need to be played with.  They need individual time.  They need family time.  They need space to vent.  They need someone to listen to them.  They need someone to listen to.  They need someone to read with.  They need forgiveness.  They need to learn from life.  They just need and need and need.  And you're giving and giving and giving and they're insatiable and then the ungrateful little twit chooses to play with his transformers instead of clean up his pile of school stuff from the floor like you asked him to 10 minutes ago and he whines when you tell him to carry his weight around here and that's it. 

You slap them because that's the only way you can see to get their attention and because you need to move on with your life.  You have much more important things to worry about than whether or not it's fair that their brother ate the last of the cereal or who broke the lead on whose pencil.  You are taking care of everyone and nobody is taking care of you. 

And that is why you hit your kids.


That conversation with the mom who was hitting her kids was among the more humbling experiences in my life.  The Posada rules explicitly state that there is to be no hitting at all, but approaching this mother of a whole litter of kids who has fled domestic violence, homelessness, and hunger to tell her how to better discipline her kids was a little bit daunting. 

She was crying out for help -- quite literally.  What do I do? Catie, help me. Everything in my life is out of my control.

Yeah.

I'm not saying it's ok, but I'm just saying.