Baltimore 'Mom of the Year' Faces Growing Backlash — But Does She Deserve It?
Critics are condemning Toya Graham online for thwacking her 16-year-old son, Michael Singleton, at a riot in Baltimore on Monday. Were her actions abusive? Yahoo Parenting has child abuse experts weigh in on the controversy (Photo: CNN)
After Toya Graham was spotted slapping and yanking her 16-year-old son away from throwing bricks at police in one of the riots ripping apart Baltimore on Monday, she was called a hero.
The single mother of six, including the teen in the video, Michael Singleton, was commended by Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts in a press conference, praised for disciplining her son in news broadcasts, and spawned her own Twitter hashtag: #MomOfTheYear.”
STORY: Mom Hailed as a Hero for Smacking Son Preparing to Riot in Baltimore
“I’m a no-tolerant mother,” she told CBS. “Everybody that knows me know I don’t play that. He said, ‘When I seen you,’ he said, ‘Ma, my instinct was to run.’”
(Photo: WMAR)
But in the days following the dramatic incident — in which she admits “I just lost it” before hitting Singleton repeatedly while swearing at him — backlash has begun to brew over the 42-year-old’s treatment of the teen.
STORY: Dad Calls Sheriff’s Office to Supervise Spanking
“She should be arrested for assault, battery and child abuse,“ proclaimed one of her increasingly vocal critics on Twitter. Another compared her actions to those of NFL pro Adrian Peterson who was charged with felony child abuse for striking his then 4-year-old son with a switch in May 2014: “We accused one person and praised another for the same action.”
Graham herself declared on Facebook that she “beat the s—t out of him,” while Singleton told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that after his mom spotted him in the crowd, “It was just World War III” that day.
“What we saw was a mother committed to protecting her child under a very adverse situation,” James M. Hmurovich, President and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America tells Yahoo Parenting. “However, research is clear that physical discipline is not an effective form of discipline and has limited lasting value.”
And the idea that her slapping and pushing is OK because the riots were a crisis situation doesn’t hold water with child abuse expert David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
“Violence-using individuals generally argue that it was really necessary because of the circumstances,” Finkelhor tells Yahoo Parenting. “The whole concept behind the ‘if it is dire enough, something really attention-getting is required’ excuse for hitting ends up supporting the justification for violent responses in all kinds of other situations.”
Graham’s actions actually reinforce the use of violence — just the opposite of what she is trying to accomplish, he says. “Serious sanctions against her child may be warranted, but he will get her message much more successfully by punishments that involve teaching, discussion, and withdrawal of privileges that will be on ongoing remind of his bad choice.”
Graham, for her part, stands by everything that she did that day and continues to do for her son. “As long as I have breath in my body,” she told CNN. “I will always try to do right by Michael.”
Abuse or no, the only actual injury Singleton says he suffered that day was to his pride. “I was embarrassed a little bit until she started talking to me when we got home,” says the teen. “She was telling me she did it because she cared about me and it wasn’t to embarrass me. It was just because she cared. She didn’t want me getting in trouble.”
Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.
