Spanking (which used to be a hot topic in homeschooling discussions in the 1990s, but faded away gradually)
Violence (sorting actual violence from games and stories)
Our most recent two incidents were me and Holly. One was a mom in a store threatening to spank (a teen!) and I just said in a conversational tone that if a man had threatened to hit a woman in there, people would have called the police.
And the other was we were driving (slowly, on a main street near our house) and two boys were walking on the sidewalk right next to us. The older one who was about 12 SLUGGED the little one, who was five or six, in the stomach and the little guy collapsed onto his knees, holding his stomach and crying. I made a quick turn into the parking lot, pulled up next to them, rolled down the window and said (over Holly, who was in the passenger seat near them),
"What was that!?"
They seemed to be brothers. The older one was NOT a rough, mean-looking kid at all; he was a scrawny, bright looking kid wearing glasses.
He said really politely and sincerely (not defensively or resentfully), "He hit me."
I said "But you're twice as big as he is, and you're older. Look at him."
And the boy started helping him up and apologizing, and I said, "If you were an adult and hit another adult, someone would call the police. Please be nicer to him, okay?"
And he said okay, and I said thanks, and we drove away, and they walked away holding hands, and talking to each other nicely it seemed.
_________________ I will add others to this page as I come across them.
In the late 1990s unschoolers met at our house sometimes. At one large meeting with some new families, a dad told his young daughter (as they were getting up getting ready to leave) that if she did that (whatever it was) again, he would spank her.
He was right next to me, and I said, without even thinking, "Not at MY house you won't."
He looked up with a "what?" whether spoken or not, and I said it was my house, and he wasn't going to do it here.
I didn't know him; it was his first time, and I don't think he came back, but sometimes we met at parks, and he might have. I had answered a bunch of questions for him, earlier, up in the library at a table by the big window.
(If I find a better account written in those days, I'll put it here and replace the longterm attempt at a memory. I'm sitting eight feet from the spot where it happened, as I'm writing this, though.)