Child Abuse

As a school counselor in a high school, I hear some crazy and horrific stories on a regular basis from my students. I would think that I'd be building up a numbness to it all so that I'd be better able to maintain the "blank slate" on my face that as a couneslor I'm supposed to have. It is, however, one thing to hear about what happens to my students and another thing to get a visual sneak preview of it. Yesterday after schoool, I held a parent-teacher conference for one of my struggling tenth grade Latina students. If it wasn't bad enough that the mother began her interaction with me with a racist comment about the population of my school, she ended it by leaving a traumatizing image burned into my mind. After thanking me and saying good-bye, she turned and backhanded her daughter across the mouth. The office door hadn't even shut and her daughter was still facing me when she was struck. I got to see the hurt, shock, and humiliation flash across her daughter's already tear-stained face. More than the sound of her mother's hand crossing her mouth, the student's face is what echoed in my head the rest of last night. In Maryland, parents are legally allowed to use corporal punishment on their children, even when their children are 15. I cannot pass a value judgement on the parent for making the choice to slap her child as long as no mark is left on the girl, but I can question the timing of the slap. It seems to me that if discipline is the goal, the slap could have waited until they were in the car or even at home. Slapping her in front of me seems to come more with a humiliation motivation rather than a disciplinary one. Humiliation and discipline are not the same. In fact, humiliation can often lead to the opposite effect of discipline. Instead of positive behavior correction, humiliation can spur further rebellion. Before our conference, the mother told me how disgraced she was that her daughter was not doing her work. On some level, she may have wanted to humiliate her daughter to make up for her own embarrassment over her daughter's behavior. She did not think about the effects that such humiliation could bring in terms of worsening her daughter's behavior rather than improving it. Regardless, I would have personally preferred not to witness the slap. Legal or not, I would rather not close my eyes and see that image.