Yeah, as I said, [quote=“IanMcLoud, post:15, topic:40349”]
(Yes, encouraging fighting is obviously bad.)
[/quote] and these people shouldn’t be watching children; I’m not arguing in favor of them keeping their jobs.
That being said, a “proxy” with no ability or strength is not an equivalent. A Google image search for “victims of child abuse” will help with illustrating the difference between scratches that fade in 5 minutes and scars that last a lifetime.
This incident is a “meh” as far as the lives of these kids go. Kids fight each other and generally learn from it. Adults should not film child-fights or cheer them on, but turning a blind eye is SOMETIMES OK. Following up and using a fight as a teachable moment (@bcsizemo) is certainly a good idea as well.
IacMcLoud,
I actually do agree that not every toddler fight should be stopped because they can and do resolve them themselves. And yes, kids do fight, but hitting is a safety issue. When hitting occurs, rather than waiting for it to resolve itself and then having yourself a “teaching moment”, you stop the fighting and show them a better way to vent their feelings or whatever it is they are getting out by hitting.
When I was 4 or 5, my mom belonged to a babysitting co-op and unknowingly left me in the care of someone not fit to watch children. She seriously sat there doing nothing while her kid hit me and I cried and cried. I still remember this with incredible clarity even though I was 4 or 5, along with the helplessness and fear from not being helped by someone who should have been safe.
I urge you to rethink your concept of a teachable moment.
Turning blind eye to toddlers hitting each other and saying it’s a learning experience is like saying that letting a kid burn his hand on the stove is a learning experience. A teachable moment, by contrast, is when you split the kids up and tell them physical violence is not a way to solve problems, and not acceptable behavior.
Memory, especially childhood memory, is notoriously unreliable, but I can’t recall a single instance of a teacher physically intervening in a fight, and I fought a lot.
