Warning: Serious Topic

Yes, I gave a warning for anyone who's interested. Today I'm getting personal and talking about domestic abuse.
The Union Leader had a brief article on Nov. 7, about a couple who was arrested on domestic violence charges. The alleged incident took place inside a grocery store, and some shoppers took the initiative of calling the police from their cell phones while they were in the store.
This article gives only the briefest of descriptions of the incident. Only the people who were present can really say what happened there.
Let me make this clear, I have no information on this incident, nor am I passing judgement on the people involved in this incident. That is for the court and judge to decide. The only information I have is the police report as interpreted by the Union Leader correspondent. And that's not a lot.

On to my point. It takes INCREDIBLE guts to call the police in such a situation. So I can only surmise it was pretty bad. I applaud the person who made the call, whether they judged the situation correctly or incorrectly.

Too many times people see something and are either stunned to inaction, or figure it's just not their business and walk away, making that little "tsk" sound in their mind. Too bad, that's another kid who will grow up only knowing violence. Some people shouldn't be allowed to be parents. And so on.

Other people are simply indiffernt. I am a survivor of domestic violence, and I know others who are also survivors. (It's good to have a support network of understanding people.) This doesn't mean dwelling on the past incidents and harboring the pain as an excuse for my own behavior. However, nothing is more bothersome than someone who doesn't understand the extent of some abuse and takes the "my parents beat me and I'm ok" stance.

My first question is this; why did your parents beat you? Did you endanger yourself or your sibling doing something stupid? After 9 times of your parents telling you not to do something, did you go ahead and do it anyway? Were you just being generally defiant of your parents' rules? In my mind NONE of those things are justification to beat a child. Though, being childless I can't imagine trying to raise a little person who is so defiant that they are constantly in danger. So I can't honestly say what I'd try to do to protect them.

But here's the twist; I wasn't particularly defiant of my parents rules. Tried to follow them at every turn. So did my sibling. Still; socks not folded correctly? There was a beating for that. One time I don't know why there was a beating, but I hid in my room and listened to the yelling and screaming and sound of a larger person knocking a smaller person to the ground repeatedly.

That does not make an ok child. That makes it difficult for me to keep my cool when someone says "My parents beat me and I turned out ok".

So I'm sure there are people who read the Union Leader article and thought "the kid was probably doing something that had the parents on their last nerve. Heck, I have to get stern with my kids, who am I to say how they should raise their child?"

Children can be impossible. I watched a friend of mine repeat about 10 times the "parent rules" for when and where her little girl could use a particular toy. Each time with patience, though increasing exasperation. I'm sure she would have repeated the rules 10 more times if she had to. But there never would have been a need for violence.

I don't know what the child from the Union Leader article did. Perhaps the tomatoes in the produce section were just too tempting and each one needed a hole poked in it with some toy. Perhaps it was nothing.

What's perhaps the worst about reading that article for me? I fall into the "stunned into inaction" category. My brain shuts down and I deny what I might be seeing, or hearing. Despite all my healing from my own childhood and understanding the awful dynamic of domestic violence, I'm afraid I might be overreacting to what's happening. I actually ask myself, "Isn't this just what happens?" I tell myself that I'm sensitive to this and am seeing things in a situation that other people don't see.

It is still difficult to guage what is normal and what is not.

And sometimes, I'm afraid none of it is normal. That society has begun, or has always, fostered an attitude of abuse that allows this fucked up dynamic to continue.

And I truly don't know what to do about that.