Does A Kid Ever Deserve It?

So there's this blog I read. A woman writer in Brooklyn. Well, plus she's a mother. And a month ago she moved to the suburbs somewhere an hour outside NYC. But I like her and she can be clever, so I drop by from time to time. But apparently there was an incident with her babysitter this week. Her kid hit the babysitter with an action figure and the babysitter responded by shoving the kid so hard he fell and scraped his knee. She fired the babysitter and posted a long commentary aboout how horrible it is and how bad she feels. Yada-yada-yada.

Now, I think this is horrible. The babysitter shouldn't have hit the kid but used the oppportunity to teach a lesson about Hitting. BUT. And, yes, but: nowhere in this mommy's post does she address her kid's inappropriate behavior. (And none of the 179 comments address it either.) She doesn't even talk to him about how it is not right to hit people. Ever. Even if you're not getting what you want. In the real world, when a man hits someone nine times out of ten he gets hit back. Unless, of course, that other person is a woman.

Something about this just pisses me off. Especially given the numerous kids and their nannies I see strolling Brooklyn Heights and environs. Always a white kid with a black nanny. Always the kid acting like the God his parents are teaching him to be. Maybe my attitude will change when I have one of my own, but some part of me thinks the mommy blogger should have been just a little concerned that her darling boy thought it okay to just haul off and hit the woman his parents had hired to care for him.