The aphorism “spare the rod, spoil the child” is derived from the book of Proverbs, and it’s often used by parents to justify harsh but just punishments for childhood transgressions.
However, Proverbs contains a whole constellation of godly exhortations, including Proverbs 14:29: “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”
Such an alleged hasty temper — and a definite lack of slowness to anger — now has a mother facing aggravated child abuse charges after a “punishment” for her child ended up with him getting run over by the car she was driving.
According AL.com — the electronic home of three major Alabama newspapers, the Birmingham News, Huntsville Times and Mobile Press-Register — Sarai Rachel James, 27, was one of two women arrested after the Feb. 9 “punishment” went wrong. Now, she could face up to 20 years behind bars and her child has been taken from her.
According to reports, police said that James picked her child up from school in Boaz, Alabama, and found out from the principal that he’d gotten himself into trouble at school that day. McClatchy News reported the child is 7 years old.
People magazine reported that police said the incident the boy got in trouble for happened aboard the bus, which would explain why the woman was picking him up at school.
James, police say, stopped a “short distance” from the school and forced her child to get out.
As punishment, he had to run or walk the distance home from there. James drove next to him with her emergency flashers blinking.
This isn’t an unusually long distance, about eight blocks, according to AL.com.
Should the mother spend time in jail for what happened?
But the anger and folly that was behind the punishment quickly revealed itself, at least if police have the details of what happened next accurate.
“According to police, the boy attempted to grab the door handle of the car, but the mother accelerated, pulling the boy under the vehicle and running over him with the rear tire,” AL.com reported.
The question is how much she realized about what the child intended to do. McClatchy News reported that James had slowed down just before the boy reached for the door handle and might not have known her child was trying to get back in the car.
“She might not have realized she was doing that,” Boaz Police Chief Michael Abercrombie said.
“Investigators believe the mother accidentally ran over the boy, but it wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t being punished to begin with, Abercrombie said,” according to McClatchy’s report.
Mom runs over 7-year-old son with car after forcing him to walk from school as punishment https://t.co/ax4VRny1Md pic.twitter.com/rIkk9Amz5x
— New York Post (@nypost) February 18, 2024
The boy was transported to the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital, where he was treated for — thankfully — just abrasions.
“It was a miracle he was not hurt worse than what he could have been,” Abercrombie said.
James, meanwhile, was charged with aggravated child abuse and released from Marshall County Jail on $50,000 bond. In addition, she’s barred from having contact with her son. Another unnamed 53-year-old woman who was in the car was also arrested on charges of endangering the welfare of a child.
She was released on $500 bond. Abercrombie said she charged because she “didn’t intervene” in the punishment.
If that sounds harsh, consider how much worse this could have been. People magazine, quoting police, say that the car ran over the “child’s back and grazed the side of his head.”
One inch to either side and we’re talking about a radically different outcome in this child’s — and this mother’s — life. God, mercifully, was watching over both.
However, divine intervention notwithstanding, something that ends that close to serious injury or death is not how punishment is supposed to work. No, this doesn’t say that one has to play the permissive parent, quietly telling misbehaving progeny over and over again that they’ll lose their iPad privileges if they don’t cooperate and behave as they melt down.
However, there should — there can — never be a chance that punishment results in grave injury. Driving alongside your child as he jogs home from school is, at best, a combination of helicopter parenting and tough love.
When combined with the negligence inherent in not realizing what could happen via this arrangement, it becomes a chargeable act, at the very least. Either make him walk home on his own, free of vehicular interference, or devise another punishment. The latter would likely have been wiser, considering the relative youth of the child.
At worst, this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, reached out of quick anger and definite folly. Whether or not it constitutes aggravated child abuse is up to the court system, but it paints a poor picture of how Sarai Rachel James views parental discipline.
Perhaps this is a good time for both mother — and son — to take a deeper look at the book of wisdom that produced the phrase “spare the rod and spoil the child.”
