"People can call me what they want, but I'm not a slapper."

"I did it for my kids," said sue, earnestly. Gazing long at the reporter whose quizzical look prompted a small-child look-askance, quickly succeeded by a recollected wide-eyed pleading innocence... "I love my children," she said, "My singular focus on wider socially important issues has meant they have had to be secondary to these pursuits. They have had to live with the embarassment of my public cv, of seeing me, their mum portrayed as the victim for all the world to see, of seeing me mishandled by the authorities, of seeing me biting and scratching, screaming, wriggling and writhing in absolute defiance of authority ... and then coming home, days later, bruised, hurting and taking it out on them ... but I never slapped them, people can call me what they want, but I'm not a slapper ... I was so driven by ideal and they had to put up with my frustrated yelling and weeping, often directed at them ... and they knew it was nothing they had done and they always tried to comfort me at those times."

She hung her head briefly, indicating a fleeting shame ... uncrossed and recrossed her gumbooted feet smiling as a lump of dried humus fell to the carpet revealing both her inherited green affiliations and fickle petulant character at once.

"and then I realised," she looked earnestly at the reporter and then, reclaimed that 'shiftiness of eye, that ADD'd persona... "That my kids were simply behaving like I was ... and when authority figures used force to try and correct me, it made me worse ... yes, I became uncontrollable, repeatedly I was just so embarassed by myself ... and gosh, it must have been so embarassing, so confusing for them," she added with rare and fleeting insight.

She abruptly brushed her undisciplined hair from her eyes inadvertently poking a recently gardening finger into her left eye which watered profusely. One of her children sidled up to her, cuddled and offered her comfort for her one-eyed cry.

"and then it came to me," she said, her eyes raising skywards, revelling in the act of revelation, then flitting rapidly side to side as if caught in an untruth, "this is probably why my kids get so bad, it's because I use force to discipline them." She looked menacingly at the reporter restating, "but I am not a slapper."

"So, I asked my children and they agreed with me, they already knew this. Talking with them I was surprised at their maturity, they were aware that I was displacing my anger on to them and this on top of expecting them to comply with me when I so despised authority ... and when they infringed or ignored me I used to cry so dismally, it was as though my whole world had imploded."

"Children are so different these days, they are so much more advanced than we were at their age," she said, "I am so impressed by their ability to analyse, to intuitively know the right path."

"and then I knew what I had to do. I had come so close to slapping my children on so many occasions and knew that so many parents would be in the same position and that this would simply make the situation worse and I had to protect these parents from themselves. This anti slapping legislation wasn't anything to do with child-abuse, it was to bring families closer ... it had nothing to do with the United Nations," she said smiling at her burgeoning intellect, "but everything to do with uniting families ... and my children knew this, as if this were a universal truth ... such wisdom in those so young and they were aware of it before I was and they can't even vote."