It’s time he learnt to show some remorse when he thumps me
‘You just hit your daddy quite hard and he’s very upset,’ says my wife. He has indeed just hit me, and for the third time in a row. As a very-nearly-three-year-old, his blows aren’t exactly damaging. It usually feels a bit like a squirrel wearing tiny oven gloves. But he has to learn that this isn’t OK, so I adopt the stance of someone mortally wounded and, worse, deeply hurt by the experience.
On such occasions, we observe the time-honoured three-second rule of toddler fisticuffs: he generally gets one free jab for which the sternest penalty is an assertive, but de-escalatory, ‘Hey now!’ If he goes full John Prescott with a follow-up blow within one second of the first, we assume battle stations. ‘Heyhey! We don’t hit people,’ we’ll say, delivered with the sterner mien of a football referee, one of those older ones who used to fit FA Cup Final appearances in between their full-time job as oil-rig workers or prison chefs.
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