Not my child

The sheer brilliance of most people is completely undermined by blind trust in their own child who is not yet capable of wiping their own bum. Billy would never, absolutely never hit anyone.

The reality is that your child is three years old. He has absolutely no clue about the rules of life. The rules sometimes are a bit fuzzy to a three year old. When someone frustrates him or annoys him, it’s okay to be mad at them, but he is not allowed to hit them.

Why wouldn’t your child hit another person? Society says don’t do it, but little Billy doesn’t know what society is, does he? It’s the base survival instincts for Billy. Children do not come with guilt or with a conscience we install that in them.

When we are teaching children what is right and what is wrong as parents we say, “No hitting Billy, That boy is your friend. If we love our friends, and treat them with respect we can keep them forever."

In the future when someone annoys or takes a toy from your child and they hit them, your child may feel guilty (or is it fear) because they know if they hit a friend they could lose their friendship.

It's instinct to protect ourselves. When teaching right from wrong to our children we have the opportunity to change our child's responses from survival instinct to appropriate behaviour.

Our goal as a parent is to attempt to teach right from wrong. Our job is to help our children be functioning healthy adults. We teach them to brush their teeth so they have strong and healthy teeth. A nice smile will help them get employment as an adult.

We teach them to be clean, so people like how they smell and want to be close to them. We teach them to be kind to the people in their life they are close to because every friend is a blessing. We teach them about hard work through chores and helping when someone asks them for their help.

Human beings do not come with these traits they are installed by their parents. When someone falls down and is crying I want to know my child is helping them up not standing over them laughing. But he might, it might have been pretty comical the way they fell. He might not have known that they were really hurt; maybe he thought that they were playing or joking. When something goes wrong then you just teach them how to make it right.

Teaching right and wrong doesn’t mean that that will always respond appropriatly to a situation; we simply hope they will.