The Swedish rules on disciplining kids

I was on the local train coming home last week when I saw someone doing something which is apparently illegal.

There was this lady with two children (boys, approximately 7 and 10, but the ages are not necessarily accurate). Blonde, German (before people start berating the immigrant community), very middle-class from her accent, and obviously a concerned parent.

The two boys were pushing the proverbial envelope, the mother asked them to stop misbehaving, they didn't, she reached across and slapped them each hard across the wrist (once and twice respectively). The boys stopped misbehaving, looked rather cowed for a minute or so, then they resumed a sort of polite normalcy, getting drinks of water from bottles that she gave them, and behaving more like she expected.

Good parenting, I thought - personally. There was an incident, she resolved it, firmly and quickly and no harm done. And the message went out that there are rules to be observed, which IMHO you need in an ordered society.

All well and good. Except for the fact that by slapping the kids on the wrist she had broken the law. The Germans now have this silly rule (which the Swedes introduced the best part of a generation ago) that you are not allowed to hit children.

Under any circumstances!

So quite what she was supposed to have done? She had talked to the kids, they had not obeyed her. She had asked them to stop, they did not. So what then? When persuasion does not work?

I left teaching in England over 30 years ago for a reason (and this should shatter any reputation that I have among American readership that I am an incurable Liberal!). I believed at the time that discipline in schools was not strict enough, and the methods being used were simply ineffective. Corporal punishment was still at the time available for boys only (I opposed only the single sex nature of the punishment NB), but used far too sparingly.

Trying to talk bullies (of both sexes) out of bullying other kids? Yes, good luck for trying, but my experience with kids like that is that the only thing that they respected was being faced with greater force! It may be a sad comment but some of the unintelligent 14-year-olds with whom I had dealings liked to think that they were "tough" and that was it.

Period!

You can appeal to their better nature, you can make life more inconvenient for them and try and wear them down, but eventually the only thing that often stopped them was the knowledge that continuing down that road would be painful.

In every school yard there are several petty fascists who love running down those they consider inferior. You think that you can persuade them to behave better, appeal to their better nature etc - you name the cliché. The problem is if you do not persuade the petty fascists in the school yard that they are not going to get away with their misbehaviour, they could very well turn into serious Fascists as adults, who think that they own the world and that there are no rules out there that can stop them.

Sorry, but I think that what the lady on the train did last week was correct. Illegal or not!

Disagree? OK, I am a pragmatist and I will listen. Tell me instead something that is effective and will work. In the light of experience I will take a lot of persuading though.