Children's rights

I live in a large-ish (well, for these days) family with 7 children aged one year to 10 and another on the way. We are all used to the two-year-old tantrums, the screams of frustration (the weans, not the parents), the threats of sanctions (no videos today, etc).

We don't hit our weans. It's not a rule. It's just the way it is.

I don't have children. I do have 35 years of experience of working with children and young people - and, more importantly, with their parents. I started work as a teacher in the 70s when parents would routinely tell me when I tried to persuade them to supervise their kids' homework or make them turn up to sit an exam: Ach, just belt him.

We had the belt in schools then. I rarely used it because I was useless at it. My first instinct was to talk to the kid who acted up but my 'superiors' (the guys that took it hardest when the belt was abolished, by the way) wanted swift and violent action. It was such a relief when the belt was banned.

Now the Scottish Government wants to ban smacking. I'm for that.

I think children have far too few rights in law anyway. Scottish law on children's rights is untenable.  End of. And I know there are readers frothing at the mouth just reading that.

But let me point out a few things.

Children are most at risk in families - physically, mentally and sexually.

A parent can remove a child from education and nobody can do a damned thing about it. It's called 'education at home' and it's a parent's right. That's how kids disappear off the radar all the time in Scotland - 31 this year removed from one school and not enrolled in another. Where are they?

School is not just about learning stuff: it's about learning to get on with other people, to be part of a group (which you are at home and will be at work for the rest of your life). It's about community - civilisation, as we teachers call it. It's a safe place, where children can and do share what's happening to them elsewhere. Later they can decide these things are not for them but parents in my opinion don't have the right to stop children developing as social beings.

I have been told when I object to things like school uniform (so much claptrap talked about that) or placing requests by middle-class parents who know nothing about their local school but have heard  the one three schools along is better - I've been told I know nothing about bringing up children, born - as I was - under a gooseberry bush and raised by wolves...

And let's look at this word 'smacking.' What is a smack to you? It might look to you like a light tap on the back of the hand but I once saw a blow that knocked a small child off his feet. I intervened and I'll be honest: I was scared - I am totally afraid of physical violence. It was a granny who did it - in a shop in a village where everyone knew her.

We had a talk - it was either that I told her or I called the police - and it occurred to me pretty soon that this poor put-upon granny childminder was totally out of her depth. Too old to handle a 3 year old but obliged to help her daughter get back to work. Of course, she loved her grandson and was good to him but she needed help. (In that village, she got it).

So let's work on the adults. If you were battered as a child, either at home or at school, surely you want your children and grandchildren to have a better - safer - experience.

It still surprises me that the authoritarian element in Scottish society is still around, while the rest of us have moved on. And by jings, they're out in force over the smacking issue - as they were over equal marriage rights, etc. These are the people who reject equal rights for all, refer to women as feminazis, reject any kind of racial integration, and want control - above all, control - of the rest of us.

We've all moved on a lot since the 70s. And we're not going back.