Former Teacher Explains Why You Should Always Speak Up When You See A Parent Hitting Their Child In Public
"Speaking up when you see people being abused plants the seeds to help victims escape."
Monkey Business Images | Canva Pro There is perhaps nothing more nauseatingly awkward than watching parents harshly discipline their kids in public, especially when that discipline gets physical.
It's embarrassing to watch and often humiliating for the child, but most of us react the same way: clamming up, looking away, and not getting involved. It's not our business, after all, right?
But one abuse survivor says we should do the opposite — not just to take a moral stance but because it could help the child down the road.
The former teacher says you should always speak up when you see a parent hitting their child in public.
Like many on TikTok, Lauren, a former teacher, was deeply affected by a video that went viral on the app a few months ago by a man known as @thiiirdperson, who witnessed a dad hitting and harshly disciplining his two sons in a post office.
In his video, @thiiirdperson described how disturbed he was by what he saw and why he felt compelled to immediately do the opposite of what most of us usually do and intervene on the kids' behalf.
He described how the little boys were doing what little kids do — messing around and being squirrelly while their parents were taking care of their post office business. When the dad ran out of patience, he "popped" both boys multiple times, then emotionally manipulated them when they became upset.
When the dad later scolded one of the boys for hitting things in the post office, @thiiirdperson could no longer hold his tongue. "I said, 'Isn't it funny that your son somehow got the idea that it's okay to just hit stuff?'"
When the dad replied with a combative, "I'm sorry?" the man shot back, "I'm sorry that I've had to watch this weird behavior of you striking your children in a public place."
The conversation quickly escalated, but he did not back down for one key reason. "I wanted the kids to hear that somebody in public didn't think it was okay that that was going on," he said. "I wanted them to have that data point so that later on, if somebody else spoke up, that data point could become a pattern for them."
In response to his video, Lauren said it is precisely this "data point" that they needed when they were growing up with their abusive parents. And they urged people to follow suit.
Lauren said a person speaking up when witnessing her sibling being abused in public was a turning point in her life.
Lauren, who said that she was abused as a child and is now no-contact with her parents because of it, said that what @thiiirdperson spoke of in his video is absolutely the right thing to do — and she knew from experience.
"There was one time where a stranger spoke up when my sibling was getting abused in public and it literally changed the course of my life," she said.
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Lauren said the incident happened when they and their siblings were all "bickering" as they left a movie theater, as kids do. Her middle sister "said something, and it just sent my mom over the edge. Something that was like a very normal child thing to say."
Suddenly, her mom snapped. "I remember my mom grabbing my sister by the arm and throwing her up against the wall," Lauren said, "and then taking her hand and covering my sister's mouth and screaming in her face to shut the hell up and to stop what she's doing."
"This woman, bless her, she came out of the theater right after and tried to intervene," Lauren went on to say. "She's like, excuse me, ma'am, get your hands off that child; what are you doing?"
Lauren's mom told the woman to "mind her [expletive] business," but the woman would not back down. "The woman was adamant this is not okay behavior, especially in public."
Lauren said the incident made her realize her parents' abuse was not okay.
"That was the first time for me that I was like, 'Oh, this isn't normal; people's parents don't do this to them,'" Lauren said.
"Because this was like a regular occurrence in my house. I cannot tell you how many times… my mom threw us up against the wall and covered our mouths to the point where you felt like you couldn't breathe."
It wasn't until years later when her therapist told her that the experience she described was abuse, that she fully understood what was going on — which is an incredibly common experience for survivors.
In full disclosure, I am an abuse survivor as well, and I had the same experience. But I still, after 10 years of therapy, question myself. "Was that REALLY abuse, or am I just 'too sensitive' like my parents always said?"
Incidents like Lauren's were rare for me (my parents vastly preferred verbal and emotional abuse), but I vividly remember the few similar altercations. I often wonder if my troublesome left shoulder is from being yanked and dragged by the wrist into restaurant bathrooms or the car on multiple occasions for scoldings or spankings.
At no point did anyone intervene in my parents' public outbursts, and, like Lauren, I assumed everyone's parents behaved like mine until two of my sixth-grade teachers, clearly suspicious, began asking questions.
Those teachers' questions opened the first cracks in my brain that let in enough daylight to start seeing that the things my parents said and did were not normal. And though it would take until my mid-30s to truly do anything about it, I did at least start sticking up for myself. I think of those teachers often.
Similarly, Lauren said that when her therapist confronted her with the abusive reality of what she experienced, the woman at the movie theater came rushing back. "The first thing that came to my mind was that woman," Lauren said.
"I can still picture her face to this day, that woman — the one woman who tried to stand up for us, the one woman who put her own safety at risk to try to intervene in the way that she knew how," she continued.
Lauren went on to say that @thiiirdperson's words about giving kids a "data point" is exactly what we should all try to do when we witness parents acting inappropriately towards their kids. "That really helps the rest of the facade start to crumble," Lauren said.
And to those who reflexively say it's nobody's business or scold others for being intrusive — firstly, parents make it your business when they hit their kids in public. But more importantly, Lauren had a pointed and thought-provoking message about the realities of the situation.
"Children's safety is everybody's responsibility," she said. Kids are basically defenseless, after all, which throws what Lauren said to close her video into even sharper relief: "If you ever see anything like that in public, just know that what's happening in private is probably 10 times worse."
If you or someone you know has been a victim of child abuse, there are resources available to help. Call 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) to speak with a crisis counselor 24/7.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.