3 thoughts on “Pinatas in Berkeley”

1. To the Creator of this website:

   Your child hit you in the face with a baseball bat. What happened in those few short years of her little life between the time she was a toddler and the time you gave her the piñata, that you were not able to teach her that such an act is wrong and could cause serious damage?

   You need to sit down with a therapist and figure this out. Any child that is raised by a responsible parent would never dream of harming her mother in such a manner. The other possibility is that your daughter has a serious mental illness, in which case you need to seek immediate attention for her; she will not be able to understand the consequences of her actions. She deserves to have a chance to live a normal life.

   Can you think back to your childhood, would you have ever raised a bat to hit anyone? Probably not, if you came from a non-violent family and you weren’t mentally disturbed.

   I’ve been a pre-school teacher for ten years and I’ve assisted with young children for several years prior. I’ve seen the change in families and thus the change in children. They’re dropped off at school At 8:30am, picked up at 5:30pm. Parents may talk to them in the car or just flip on the car DVD. They feed them, bathe them and send them to bed. How much time is spent with the child before they go to bed, maybe three hours? There can’t be a lot of learning going on there.

   In my profession we have a term, it is called modeling. That means that if we would like to see the children display certain qualities such as good manners, kindness, gentleness, then we have to model those behaviors in our day to day interactions with them so that they will pick it up. If I stand on a chair to get something then I shouldn’t be surprise to see Billy stand on a chair too. Kindness and goodness are not instinctual in anyone but that does not make us bad, we just have to be taught. This means that if the most prominent models in their life are fighting characters, wielding weapons, well that’s what their going to model their behavior after.

   Please, anyone who is having this problem, please reprioritize your life or get the appropriate mental health care for your child. Mental health care is nothing to be ashamed of; it would be a disservice to your child to withhold any type of health care from them.

   For the sake of humanity, reprioritize, what’s this world coming to when a little girl smashes her mother’s face with a baseball bat? Could a game such as piñata have lasted this many years if it was solely the game in itself that causes kids to act out violently? No, it’s the way that a handful of children are being raised. If she could do this to her mother, think of the things that she will do to other people if she does not get help.

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2. Father’s face, not mother’s face.

   I think you’re missing my point. We take a lot of care with our daughter. We teach her good values. Good behavior. Please and thank you. Between my wife and I, we spend all but three or four hours a day with her, playing, reading, or doing activities.

   But at such a young age, kids aren’t necessarily able to make all the action = consequence logic work out in their heads. Have you never seen kids jump off a roof? They don’t think they’ll get hurt. Or run around with a pencil? Or dive into the shallow end of a pool?

   If I can prevent what happened to me from happening to one other person, that’s worth all my effort. There are in fact correlations between piñata violence and real world violence, just as there is between video game violence and real world violence. People should know about this potential danger.

   I agree that mental health care is nothing to be ashamed of. We are sending our daughter to counseling. Once she realized what she’d done (which was just as soon as her mother stopped her) she was, literally, horrified and traumatized. She simply didn’t think through her actions.

   what would you have me reprioritize? Our daughter is not violent or disturbed. Her therapist agrees that she was simply caught up in the activity and didn’t think through what she was doing. And is now guilt ridden about it. Isn’t preventing some other little girl or boy from going through this worth my time?

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3. No, I have never seen a child jump off of a roof. I would not let my young child out of my site long enough to climb up to the roof and jump, I mean, when you think about it, thats not really something that can happen in a matter of seconds, it takes leaving a child unattended for a period of time before they are able to think about that action and actually execute it.

   No, I have never seen a child running with a pencil. Pencils and other writting utencils are usually sharp and those sharp objects are kept out of sight and out of reach of most children. Even if the child were to get ahold of a pencil somehow (a neglectful parent leaving it at arms reach on a table) My child would’t be out of my sight long enough to run with it and stab themselves.

   No, I have never seen a child dive into the shallow end of a pool. Most responsible parents have safety gates around their pool as to not allow their children around the pool unattended.

   Basically, all of these behaviors that you have seemed to have expierianced or know someone who has expierianced would all be prime examples of not attending to your child at all times. Sorry to say it but when you have a young child it becomes your JOB to have a Constant watchful eye on them. Other than when yourself and your child are sleeping, thats when you take all blunt force type objects from them, not allowing them to sleep with a bat is a prime example. But even when sleeping, there are still precautions that responsible parents take, I do not want the possibility of my child getting up and roaming freely through the house while we are sleeping, they make beds with safety features for that exact situation.

   I realize that a child can get hurt, even when attended by an adult, but it is usually things like falling off their bike and scraping their elbows, at which point you take the opprotunity to remind your child that that is what elbow pads are for and if they can not remember to be safe and utalize their safety garments, that the bike will be put away until they can remember that safety gear is a house rule!

   When you give your child immediate guidelines, you’ll be surprised at how you might actually have been listened to. Before the party, perhaps you should have set your child down and explained the rules of the game. I realize that mistakes happen, but the mistake was not the pinata, it was allowing your child to sleep with a bat!

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