Nature, Nurture, Behavior

My hubby and I have never laid a hand on our children. We decided this would be the case within the first five minutes of dating, basically. (Yah, we pretty much knew our shit was forever at what's your number.) 

We had just seen too much in our own childhood to infer that physical punishments contribute to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression, haunting the self-concept as we mature in and out of this life. 

Dublin, MY KING, hits. He bites. He throws things.

This is not nature. 

This is not nurture.

This is behavior.

This is him lacking the language to communicate the complexities of his emotional world to us.

Aggressive parents don't necessarily raise aggressive children.

Peaceful parents don't necessarily raise peaceful children.

There is not always a causal relationship between parents and children behavior. 

I suspect that for many of us who lash out with our bodies that our aggression is a substitution for something and that aggression can be corrected if we actually know what that something is.