It hurts

You can read as many books as you want but until you have a chance to put things into practice, the skills aren't there. One of the fundamental principles or should I say "rules" of parenting, and therefore of teaching, is to not react impulsively. I had read it a million times; I have had it said to me a million times; but today I reacted impulsively. In today's children's class, two of the girls had been play hitting for most of the class. I told them a few times that I did not like it, even though it was just for fun, and asked if they could stop, but it continued. Halfway through the story I looked up just in time to see one girl hit the other quite hard, and the second girl then return the hit even harder. Having lost patience, I brought out the only punishment I give and said to both of them "That's it, neither of you will color today" and continued telling the story.
As expected they both began to cry quietly into their arms. It is the greatest challenge we face here in our classes...hitting and fighting...it is CONSTANT! And it is so hard to change because their parents do it, so we try to be quite strict in class about not hitting. While I was getting out the coloring sheets I overheard the girl who had returned the hit sobbing to the boy sitting next to her that he had ruined everything and ask him why he was so mean. I turned around and asked what was going on. After much persuasion and several versions of the story I discovered that the boy who the girl was talking to had a stick behind his chair and had been hitting the girl a couple of chairs over with it during the entire class; she has thought it was the girl sitting next to her and had asked her to stop several times until finally she lost her patience and hit her neighbor, who, because of how she was brought up, instinctively hit her back.
It hit me so hard when I heard all the facts...I realized exactly what I had done and how it easy it was to do it. I apologized for reacting so quickly and gave out a few warnings and yet another reminder of how much God hates to see us hit others. Unfortunately at that very moment one of the mothers came charging over and dragged her child off to be hit for some undoubtedly small offence. When I tried to stop her she just looked at me as if I was crazy. We can't understand how unusual they think we are. They don't understand why we don't hit their children and they possibly never will. The least we can do is continue to intervene when we can, and set an example of love and tenderness.
It really puts the work we are doing into perspective. It's funny how something can act as motivation and at the same time be so emotionally painful.

Lesson Learned: In order to acquire skill, you need practice. In order to create change, we must take action. Reading manuals and theorizing only goes so far. Everything we say and do must contribute something to advancing our civilization, morally, materially, and spiritually.