A great civility lesson from Sweden.
credit: mindaugasdanys
Today I feel good because I read something that made me feel like this. In Sweden an italian tourist was arrested because, outside a restaurant, he beat his son who didn’t want to enter.
How many times I saw a scene like this, in this exact situation.
Children that cry at the restaurant on one side, parents who shout and beat their children on the other side. Every time I attended powerless but feeling a weight on my chest. I always thought that it was absurd. Absurd to beat children in general, absurd to beat his own sons, absurd do it for a stupid reason like this.
Every day we force our children to do things that are unnatural for them or, even worse, a real torture. Be sitting on a chair for hours just waiting that someone brings some food. How could they understand something like this? How could they find this funny or enjoyable? Nevertheless most of the time children accept our decisions and suffer in silence, but sometimes they just can’t make it. For this reason they deserve to be insulted or beat? I don’t think so.
And, fortunately, Sweden as well. What a great civility lesson from this country. Swedish law punishes with jail both corporal punishment and too much heavy reproach. Do we think this is odd?
To italians it’s strange for sure seeing that, according to a recent poll, 53% of parents admit to use violence with their children. Monstrous and totally crazy.
A well known spanish pediatrician – Carlos Gonzales (his book “Besame Mucho” should be like the Bible for every parent) helps us to make a simple and enlightening remark: if an office manager slaps an employee to obtain a better work everybody would say he is a criminal; if a man beats his wife because he is displeased about his supper everybody would say we are facing to a domestic violence. But if a parent beats his child then he is “educating” him. Crazy, isn’t it? The only category for which we admit violence is the children, the most defenseless of the human species!
Starting from today I’d like to give as a present a free ticket to Sweden to all those parents who use certain methods to raise up their children. At least, there, they will be the beaten ones.