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Discipline or abuse?
A Florida mother is in “hot water” after a surveillance camera caught her spraying her toddler with a high-pressure car wash hose. Single mom Niurka Ramirez, 22, says her 2-year-old daughter was throwing a tantrum and rather than spanking her, Ramirez chose to use the hose to wet her daughter in hopes of calming her down. But authorities didn’t see it that way: They charged her with child abuse. Do you agree with the charge, or was this simply a case of a mother exercising tough love?
Topic: Newsworthy, WorldMagBlog
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That is pretty tough for a two-year-old
It ought to last for a lifetime and the mother should not have to parent her any further
the child probably won’t be able to establish healthy relationships at any point in her life, if her mother keeps this up…I know adults suffering from this kind of behavior still from their childhoods
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I consider it abuse.
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I think it has probably been blown out of proportion and the car wash attendant is loving the attention she is getting. If it really were abuse and those screams were horrific, why didn’t she do something then? Maybe we should charge her as well for not stepping in at the time the “abuse” was happening. If the mother really thought she had done somehting wrong would she have turned herself in? Sometimes in parenting you have to do the unexpected. Chloe was really shocked one day when I joined her in a temper tantrum and got down on the floor and really showed her how to wail and thrash about and kick and scream.
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Wouldn’t there be marks or bruises on the child if the hose were on high pressure? I couldn’t get the video to play.
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Also the mother said she did this because she didn’t want to spank. This might not have happened if parents didn’t fear someone would turn them in if they spank in public.
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This is abuse. It is also foreseeable that the child could have slipped and cracked her skull open.
As I understand it, this woman is unmarried and pregnant again. She’s receiving parenting classes, and I hope they work. It can have a lasting effect on a child who can only trust her mother to respond with a vicious punishment as Reg said. And abuse usually escalates. If she gets away with this, what will she do next? What will she allow a boyfriend to do?
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A high-pressure hose on a toddler?? She’s lucky she’s not being charged with manslaughter.
From the video, I can’t tell whether the hose was on the high-pressure setting or not. It’ll be up to the prosecutor to prove it, and if it was just a spray of low-pressure water I don’t see the harm. But those hoses on high pressure are really forceful.
KBells, I think the best discipline for a tantrum is to ignore it. The child is demanding attention, and even punitive attention is attention. Ignoring the child until she calms down (while of course keeping an eye on her) teaches her fast that the tantrum isn’t going to get her anywhere.
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SteveG, I’ve said this every time the subject of tantrums comes up I know from personal experience that that does not work with some kids.
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God gave us the perfect disciplinary tool. Our hand. If you spank too hard it hurts your hand. The purpose of a spankiing itself is not the punishment. The spanking gets the attention and then you can discipline. I personally used a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon called Obie for Obey Me. Once Chloe was acting up in a restaurant and I told her they had industrial sized everything and I bet they had a really big Obie in the back that I could get. The waiter overheard me and asked what an Obie was. I told him and he came out with the biggest rubber spatula you have ever seen. You can bet little missy sat her hiny down in her chair and didn’t act up again. She is 10 now and that sort of stuff doesn’t work anymore. Now I can somewhat “reason” with her and take things away or explain the consequences.
Kbells try having a tantrum with him. Do it at home because if you do it in public…wait…what’s the worse that can happen? They might haul you off to the luny bin for a couple of days of well deserved rest.
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One of my Bible teachers in high school used to spray us with water if we fell asleep in his class. We were high schoolers, though, and that was only small spray bottle.
I wonder if the child was acting as poorly as the woman is portraying her to have acted. Perhaps, being a single mother, and, I’m sure, more than a little stressed, she saw her child as acting worse than she was because she had acted poorly before, and this temper tantrum was simply the last straw for her mother.
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SteveG, to be charged with manslaughter, the kid would have had to have died. She did not. Perhaps you mean aggravated assault? I’ll go there with you!
It depends on the situation, but I agree with SteveG that often the best way to deal with a tantrum is to ignore it. I babysat a three year old who threw one. I took him inside the house and let him go crazy on the floor, while I calmly ate a banana. Every once in awhile, he’d look up to see how I was reacting to him, at which point I’d calmly offer him a piece of banana. In time, he stopped.
The problem here is with the mother and her coping skills. The kid was doing what kids do.
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NJLawyer, and what would you have done if he had started throwing things? Some kid don’t just stay on the floor.
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If the mother used the high pressure, then I would certainly call it abuse. If it was low pressure, then I can see how it might get some kids’ attention and even help calm them down. Of course, then you’d have a wet kid to deal with, which I wouldn’t want in the car.
The best solution is to leave the child with someone else while she goes to the car wash. I know it can be difficult to find somebody, but that’s one more reason to attend a church.
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It’s child abuse in my opinion. The mother needs some parenting help/skills.
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I am coming down on the side of discipline, a creative mom who loves her daughter and is trying to train up her child. High pressure? I dont’t think so or the child would have gone flying. Run of the mill count to three stuff? No, this woman was actively working to teach her daughter. From what the observer said, she was not even angry, just trying to get a strong willed child’s attention. All of first batch would have been laughing within seconds and out of their selfish state. I much prefer this idea to that whole count to three thing and it gets much faster results than waiting it out. Not all children are the same and sometimes you try something and it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
If it is going to be called abuse, and we know if she had spanked her it would have been, then the observer who let it happen is responsible as well.
I am going to guess that the people who were appalled with Cheryl for spraying the neighbor’s cat with the hose will be appalled here. Those who saw it as a painless irritant to the cat in an attempt to train it not to use her yard as a playground will see it as a loving mom trying her best.
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In the video I saw, the woman was screaming at the child, something about how the child should treat her with respect. How the child was supposed to understand what treating someone with respect means from a mother who screams at her is beyond me. I haven’t been to that type of carwash in years, but I believe even the lower pressure setting would be tough on a 2 year old. It’s abuse. A standard garden hose would have much less pressure [at the lower settings], so I don’t think that would be abuse.
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KBells, my sister’s son was hyperactive. He put the carkeys down the airshaft on the dashboard. When I found out what happened (after his father fished them out with a fishing pole), I laughed. My sister said: “That’s just like you! You laugh at everything they do! You encourage them!”
That said, under your scenario, I probably would have hugged the kid and talked to him as quietly as possible to calm him, or, if he was aiming for all my breakables, blocked him and taken the hit myself. And if that didn’t work, I’d YELL the way the judge used to yell. I’ve been known to frighten grown people that way. It’s not screaming, but rather a blunt, forceful reading of the riot act, and you gotta stand your ground and not let them see you sweat. It certainly worked on my sister’s kids when they were little.
I would not turn a high-pressure hose on a kid. If you look at the tape, she does take hold of that kid who tries to get away from the water. This wasn’t a garden hose, nor was this the kind of spritzing I used to do to my devil attack cat (which didn’t work, by the way–he was pure hellion; detention calmed him down). I’m not opposed to spanking or yelling or the draconian removal of privileges. You wouldn’t be applauding this woman if the kid had slipped and cracked her skull open, a real possibility here.
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The video I saw was not clear enough to show any of that, I was going by what the onlooker said.
I have not been to a carwash in thirty years so don’t know what the pressure is like, just figured low pressure would be garden hoseish and high pressure would be powerful. Yes, the child would be trying to get away from the water if it was wet and the mother would be stopping her. If it was a powerful stream of water and she was holding the girl in it, that could be dangerous.
Yes, the child could have slipped and fallen. Yes, the child by being outside of her car seat and walking around a carwash could have slipped and fallen or been run over by a car or been kidnapped or an earthquake could have happened causing a piece of roofing to come down on her or she could have picked up the hose and sprayed herself. And by being unattended in her carseat as mom washed the car, she could have swallowed the end of a car seat strap and choked to death and if left at a babysitter’s could have swallowed a piece of sandwich and died.
As we do not know the actual situation, we probably should not be too hard on the woman who has the character support of friends saying she is a good caring mother. She may not be. I think she was trying to be a good mother, you don’t. The video is not enough info.
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Even a garden hose, full pressure, would be much too forceful on a 2 year old. A small spritz, with the force broken by your finger over the spray is one thing but not a car wash hose.
And I was one of those who was ok with spraying the cat, but not a two year old little child.
Obviously the mom needs support and help!!
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NJLawyer at #11: SteveG, to be charged with manslaughter, the kid would have had to have died. She did not. Perhaps you mean aggravated assault? I’ll go there with you!
I meant she’s lucky she didn’t accidentally kill the kid (as you also noted was possible in #6.)
That would be an extreme outcome of course, but certainly possible with a two-year-old. And short of that, she could have caused a pretty serious injury.
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Another aspect to consider, though it does not make the final determination, is her cultural background. If she comes from a culture outside the US, she may not have a clear view yet of American discipline. In my limited experience, the American legal definition of what constitutes correct discipline is a far cry from what parents in many other countries think is acceptable. If this is the case, she probably would benefit from a parenting class. Ignorance of the law is no excuse of course.
And again, it would depend on the pressure of your garden hose. In my experience, I have never lived places with a lot of garden hose pressure unless you somehow strangle the output to make it stronger. It would not be more forceful than a shower, and then I suppose there are showers with strong output and showers that dribble! I know for a fact that I have played with my children with the garden hose and none of them were hurt by it. They have even used the garden hose to spray me back!
If the child was mid tantrum, it is quite possible she was miffed with the water and screamed accordingly, out of anger, not fear or pain. We do not know.
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Discipline or abuse?
Sounds like party night at a “Swingers Convention”.
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Maybe she had a badly translated Bible – one that said, “Spare the hose and spoil the child.”
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Against my better judgment I’m going to respond. I think it is highly flawed of us to be sitting here in judgment regarding this women. I read the article, and from the quality of the snapshots taken from the video, we cannot accurately tell what happened. Moreover, the witnesses have contradicting stories and there is plenty of room for ulterior motives.
At best we can say, that isn’t how I would respond — but to sit in judgment is just wrong in this case.
One of the saddest things about WMB is how quickly posters will assume positions of judgment when their only evidence is a single article from a newspaper (you can be sure that the court will deal with far more data that you or I currently have access to). I wish posters here would exercise a bit more humility and charity in their responses recognizing that they don’t know the whole story.
I think back to a story that was posted about a year ago about a CA physician who refused service (in his private practice) to a lady and her son (the son’s ear was bleeding, but nothing near life-threatening). People were so incredibly quick to judge this man, to accuse him of being a hypocrite, unloving, etc. It was a sad, sad day — I knew the man personally and while I had disagreements with him (not on that particular issue, but others), the characterization portrayed by WMB was completely wrong.
So please exercise charity and humility.
A suggestion for how this conversation might be more productive: lets discuss alternative forms of discipline and what is appropriate — or lets discuss the role that others have or don’t have regarding our discipline, or lets discuss whether we should have to alter our discpline strategies simply because others might see what we do and be offended.
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Robert M,
Well said and good suggestions, thank you.
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Mexicans use machetes to abuse and high pressure sprayers to discipline. It’s cultural. Can’t you people show some tolerance for other cultures?
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Robert M
I believe you are correct. However this mother does need some parenting instruction. That type of behavior in public isn’t the answer.
I witnessed a situation in one of the department stores last summer which left most of us in awe. A small boy about 3 screamed so loud, rolled around on the floor, became so out of control that at one point I felt, and so did others that the authority’s needed to be called. The child was beyond any sort of control. There was another woman standing by with the stroller, and I asked her how this happened, she simply said “this child is so spoiled you can’t imagine” …. yes I could see ’spoiled’ but never anything like this.
Parents are afraid to swat a child on the rear for fear of someone around them calling the police, when clearly the child needed it. I think children are aware of the parents fear, and take advantage all to often.
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NJLawyer #17, I was not applauding this mother. I couldn’t get the video to play so I’m not sure. I just take issue with people who say just ignore a tantrum. That just doesn’t work with somet kids. Personally and what I have had to do in the past was to lock us up in the car together until she calmed down. Then taken her home and wore her out.
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WIGLAF,
It is my understanding that machetes are used in some of the African nations: Kenya, Rwanda, Darfur come to mind. And the high pressure hoses were America in the ’60’s though perhaps still now in some riot situations. They are still used in some European countries for riot control. Sharia countries would perhaps be known for using the sword though I suppose the machete could double.
But I was thinking of a less permanent discipline measure. Some cultures believe if you yell loudly enough the child will get it. Others believe slapping the child, still others just let the little ones run free. In America, it would appear, we want well behaved children through public school indoctrination or osmosis. Do nothing to stifle the poor dears leanings and “they better behave with my stuff”.
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KBells, that’s what I essentially did with the kid I babysat. I removed him from the other kids and waited him out. In time, he caved.
I know it is difficult with little people, that they’re unsocialized little animals sometimes. There were instances when even my mother was shocked that she couldn’t control my nephew, which shocked me. I had never met the kid she couldn’t outwit. But we all have to remember that as mothers, grandmothers or aunts (and men on the other side), we are the adults. Change tactics, raise your voice a little, deepen it, swat their tails, give them the evil eye — all sorts of things can be done to socialize the little beggers, but we don’t have to brutalize them with hoses or straps. We’re smarter than they are by experience alone.
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