What are your rights if a child assaults you?

Tell the child’s parents that the restaurant aisle is not for your child to use as a catwalk to troll for adoration.

If I wanted to hear kids babbling and screaming I would have made reservations at a daycare.

Get your spawn under control now. If you cannot control your kid or it’s too young to understand then it’s time to leave.

@Feta “And what causes a child to act like that anyway?” Ah, parental example could be a good place to start looking…

Adagio beat me to it. I was literally copying the same line to respond to. Seems like the answer to that is also on the video. If she’s an adult and she’s like that in public, I don’t want to know what that kid’s home life is like.

To respond to the general question before the specific video:

The right of self-defense is absolute. However, the response to “an attack” has to be proportional to the attack itself. That is, one may not shoot someone in “self-defense” in response to a mild provocation such as an argument or minor physical contact. Additionally, the response has to be proportional given the relative sizes of the adversaries. If a child, with a child’s body and strength, hits you in the face with his full strength, then you may not as an adult adopt a fighting stance and hit the child in the face with your own full strength. From an adult to a child that could be a killing blow; the child’s blow certainly wasn’t. Proportional response in that sense would be more along the lines of restraint and avoidance of future combat.

There was nothing in the video – until the adult woman herself lost control of her own emotions and actions – that militated for a strong physical reaction. The child was being disrespectful, disobedient and malicious, but in no way dangerous. Self-defense was not called for until she herself escalated the situation.

As for “what causes a child to act like that”, the child was more grown-up than his parent. He was merely stealing grapes – and haven’t we all done that a few times? – and then talking back to her when she told him to stop, until she started screaming and attempting to strike him. What caused him to act like that was that she lost control of his upbringing years and years earlier. As others have said, her own maturity is certainly in question.

In this asinine society where the butlers are given the keys to the Bentleys for fear some adult will get away making merchandise of some minor, I am not sure what rights adults have to defend themselves against attack from minors. If it were me, I don’t care, I would do what I had to neutralize the attack, even though I may want to go further to make sure they have no ability to try round two.

And what causes a child to act like that anyway?
Being raised in this ”Me first” society, by parents of like-mind, who are themselves their own gods.

You watched that video and felt the child was the big problem? I only saw the first two minutes, but my impression is the mother is a piece of work, and the kid is probably defending himself against his parents at times and also probably learned bad habits from them, and is looking for attention. I’m not saying it is always the parents fault, I am just saying in this situation that was my impression.

You can always defend yourself from harm, but usually if you can just get yourself away from the person that is the best idea.

A child can be arrested for assault and charged. They would be in the juvenile system most likely and the first offense they probably would not be treated too harshly by the courts. if the kid were lucky the court would mandate some therapy and he would get a chance to get some help if he has some sort of depression, anger, oppositional defiant disorder or some other underlying problem.

Or, the kid is just pushing that particular day and maybe doesn’t have a major problem.

Hello?! Why are you blaming the kid? If this is how she acts with him in public, I don’t want to know how his life at home was up to this point.

This is why violent “parenting” doesn’t work…at some point, your children are stronger than you. And if you’re unlucky, they may choose to hit back. Poor kid.

I just want to point out that if the person taking the video thinks it is the child behaving badly without comment about the mother, then I fear her community encourages the mother to be violent in her temper and physically violent to “control” her child. I’m making an assumption that the person taking the video lives in the area.

I saw this over and over again when I lived in Memphis. People saying kids sometimes need a good whipping to discipline them; and that kids are more out of control now, because parents don’t “discipline” their children, and they complained about Memphis schools no longer having corporal punishment.

The kid acts that way simply because he’s big enough and strong enough to pull it off. It should be no surprise that many people with children are deficient in parenting skills, or on the other hand, there are kids with frenetic out of control energy. It’s starkly clear that the poor woman in this video has her own behavioral issues, and I shiver at the thought of the family’s prospects. But let’s set aside the rudderless ball of energy careening around the store, and consider the cameraman/narrator who effectively, proper English accent at the fore, instigated the riot.I was frankly surprised that the woman upon being admonished for the kid’s behavior, rather than verbally hand the Brit his own ass, actually did the responsible thing and attempted to reel in the raging dynamo. It doesn’t occur to the camera person that as disgusting as the sight of a kid openly pilfering and devouring fruit might be, the idea of the demon physically assaulting his mother as the leisurely recording continues leaves the cameraman on shaky ethical footing.

In the beginning, I felt sorry for her. But, after her response to the security guard (who showed masterful restraint) and her inability to back off and calm down I wanted to call 911 and have them all arrested.

She’s likely (78%) a single mom, overwhelmed by a kid that likely has learning disabilities and behavior issues for any of a number of reasons, including: lead paint, crack baby, poor parenting, no father, inexperienced mother, low birth weight, etc.
The kids are horrors now and know very well how to push her buttons (yank the wig – a capital offense in some circles)

Very likely we are paying for that family. Five 5 years down the road, when (not if) the kid commits a felony and ends up in prison we will be paying for him, too – sadly not before he impregnates two other girls to keep the cycle of poverty and ignorance going.

Clearly the system we have now isn’t working. Imagine how different her life would be if she had agreed to end the pregnancy 13 years ago and finish her education. She’d have a much better chance at getting a job, finding a husband and making a nurturing home for children.
That’s how we end the cycle of ignorance and poverty.

@LuckyGuy Oh Lawdy. Don’t hold back with the assumptions and stereotypes.

I just called the way I saw it.
The 78% is not my statistic. It came from the census figures (I think 2012). The lead poisoning from paint chips has been in the Rochester news for years as affecting blacks more than whites since they live in the old houses in the part of the city that used lead. You can look up the numbers, (I am too lazy and I am supposed to be working). Lead causes all kinds of behavior problems so does crack, so does low birth weight, so does….all mentioned above. Also the kid can just be an ass.
But she was, too, when the guard intervened and she didn’t stop.

One does not need to be a fortune teller to predict how different her life would have been. There are tons of data on the subject. Sure there is a chance her kid may be president. But the smart money would not bet that way.

I alluded to it also by using my Memphis example.

@JLeslie

I see the kids as the problem because I believe she’s probably a stressed out single mother having to deal with these two brats.
I’m not watching the video again but I believe she says something to the effect of, “Don’t start this now.” To the boy suggesting that his behavior isn’t anything new.
Before going up to the woman the man filming asked the kid if his mother had paid for the grapes, after saying no he continued eating the grapes obviously showing that he has no respect for any type of authority.

The mother yelled at the kid at first, she didn’t start hitting him out of nowhere, I don’t know if we watched the same video but the boy started hitting his mother.

Maybe that’s okay where you live but it’s not where I’m from and hitting a mother that’s reprimanding you isn’t “self defense”.

I don’t pity this kid.
I was raised by a single mother with bipolar disorder. She yelled at me and my brother similarly to how this woman yelled at her kid, the only difference was that we hardly ever gave her a reason to.
But I wouldn’t have dreamed of acting like this in public or hitting my mother.
I do think parenting plays a part but the kid isn’t completely innocent.
You aren’t brain dead until you turn 18 years old.
I knew right from wrong by the time I was in kindergarten.

I think the mother overreacted but for Christ’s sake, her son started attacking her.
But I suppose if a child hit you or grabbed you by the hair, you’d just let it happen right?

Because “poor kid”, he’s probably had it rough.

@Feta There is too much we don’t know to make a lot of assumptions, but for me, a child who is not afraid of another adult telling them what to do worries me a lot. If I had been stealing fruit and an adult (not my parents) said something to me about it, I would have cowered and stopped, and hoped that the man didn’t do anything to get me in trouble. This child didn’t care about any social rules, and I think that often comes from example, but sometimes people are just born as sociopaths. Being rebelious towards your parents is part of normal adolescence to some extent, but doing things that are ilegal and not caring about other adults challenging you when you know what you are doing is wrong is scary shit for society.

My guess is this child is overall starved for attention. Getting in trouble gets him attention. If he is starved for attention it is more than likely a parenting problem. I do empathasize with parents, because I think it is so difficult today and almost everyone is overwhelmed. If this is something that rarely happens and it just happen to be caught on film, then that sucks for the mother that it was caught on film, but it seems more likely it isn’t that rare in that family. If @LuckyGuy is right, there could be even other factors like lead poisoning. Culturally, it wouldnt surprise me if this family uses hitting to discipline their children, but I can’t be sure of course. Among black people when I lived in Memphis it was quite common. Although, in that part of the country it was approved of in white families too. It was very tied to religion there and just handed down through the generations as the normal course of action. I have friends there who were hit multiple times a week growing up. It shocks me how it could be doled out so often. What the hell are kids doing that they need to be swatted or hit in some way multiple times a week? It doesn’t make sense to me.

I wasn’t commenting that the child was acting in self defense. I had understood that your question was can someone defend themselves against a violent child. Yes you can, if you must, if there is no other alternative.

@Feta
“I see the kids as the problem because I believe she’s probably a stressed out single mother having to deal with these two brats.”

She is very probaby stressed out. In the video, though, she immediately adopts a threatening stance and gets in the boy’s face. Common sense tells us this is not the first time this has happened, which is why the kid anticipates what’s to come. He is smaller than his mom, and he’s been smaller all his life. Hear the laugh when she first reaches towards him? That’s a nervous laugh. He’s scared.

“Before going up to the woman the man filming asked the kid if his mother had paid for the grapes, after saying no he continued eating the grapes obviously showing that he has no respect for any type of authority.”

Not exactly. He doesn’t respect this one guy, who appears out of nowhere and instigates a fight so he can film it. I don’t have a lot of respect for him either.

“The mother yelled at the kid at first, she didn’t start hitting him out of nowhere, I don’t know if we watched the same video but the boy started hitting his mother.”

“Yelled”? Yelling is not what she did. She started reaching for him right away, and I doubt he expected to be cuddled.

“I was raised by a single mother with bipolar disorder. She yelled at me and my brother similarly to how this woman yelled at her kid, the only difference was that we hardly ever gave her a reason to.”

You don’t know this family. How do you figure the boy is giving his mother reason to “yell” more than you did?

“I suppose if a child hit you or grabbed you by the hair, you’d just let it happen right? Because “poor kid”, he’s probably had it rough.”

No. I would manage to safely restrain him/her. I would do so (and have done so) without freaking out myself.

@JLeslie In the very beginning he says something about the mother not doing anything about it.
I’ve seen that video before. Comes right down to horrible parenting. I was a single mother, stressed and poor. My kids would have NEVER behaved that way. Never.

They live, and were raised, in a culture that glorifies violence.

American culture?

Whatever culture they’re in.