Who Hit You? And other ways of dealing with children

            What inspired me to write this is one particularly funny parenting technique I see every day. And let me qualify this: I essentially live with two giant extended families, so I can’t say if this is a Malagasy thing or a family thing. Anyhow. If a kid is crying, no matter the reason, they ask “Who hit you?” The wailing child then points out the offender, and that person is pretend-hit by the parent. Problem solved, crying stops. 

The “offender” often has nothing to do with the reason the child is crying. For example, there is a kid who falls down while running to the house. Clearly no one hit her, yet accusing her older brother and seeing him get “hit” stops her crying. The accused attempts no defense; everyone knows it doesn’t really matter who did what, the point is just to make the crying stop.

Going along with this is the relationship between older and youngest siblings (and extended family, ie every child within 50km). If there is only one toy/stick/anything, and the youngest child wants it, you had better hand it over. There is never an attempt to get a kid to share or take turns. No. Just give the youngest child what they want. Always.

This seems to be relatively easy on everyone since there is never any discussion about it, with the exception of the second youngest. They, until recently, were the youngest, and it seems quite an abrupt change to go from always getting what you want to always giving away what you want. Yet somehow they seem to turn out ok, and I haven’t seen any attempts by former-youngest recently become second-youngest to kill the newcomer or anything (unlike a certain sister of mine…).

Kids here are the ultimate errand runners. If you are an adult and there is a kid nearby, it’s unheard of to do small errands. It doesn’t matter if it’s your kid or not, you have them do it. Go fetch water; hand so and so the knife; go next door and borrow this; go next door and return this; hand me a piece of wood; etc. The funny thing is, it is frequently not a case of the adult being too busy; this is just how things work. And it will usually get done, but the speed with which it gets done depends on the kid.

One day a guy who was working for my neighbor came over asking for change for a large ($2.50) bill. I went inside to get it, but he didn’t wait for it and instead went back to their house to sit and chat. This was rather rude as it put me, the favor-doer, in the position of having to leave my house and walk over just to hand him change. And in front of other people, no less. I was debating what to do when my seven-year old shadow appeared. Perfect! She’s off at a sprint, change in hand and happy to help, and I have saved face.

I think my favorite is this situation: Mom is sitting in the kitchen and wants to tell Dad that rice is ready. But yelling is undignified. So she calls for the closest kid, who is only 7 and therefore doesn’t have a powerful voice. This child is asked to find an older sibling and send them to the kitchen. Older sibling arrives, is instructed in what to say, stands in the doorway and bellows out the message. Pretty soon, Dad arrives, rice is eaten, and Mom didn’t have to yell.