To Spank, Or Not To Spank
A Hard Lesson for Every Parent
I grew up in the ‘50’s and “60’s. Things changed a lot in that era. We went from the hard line discipline mentality, “Spare the rod, spoil the child”, to the hippie movement, “Let the children express their individuality, don’t suppress their creativity”.
My dad was a tough man. He was a wounded WWII veteran of the 82nd Airborne. His battle jumps included North Africa, Sicily and Holland. There were things he saw that he never talked about. As a result of combat he suffered from what was then called shell shock but today would be called PTSD.
He was never a spanker, more of a “yeller”. But his voice could reduce us kids to tears faster than any smack on the butt.
That, by the way, was the prime directive of spanking: only on the butt and open-handed. Except for that devastating weapon of mothers everywhere, the dreaded wooden spoon.
My brother and I were spanked only once. We had been jumping on the double bed we shared in our basement bedroom when we broke the cross boards that supported the mattress.
“Oh no, mom’s going to kill us.” But it was worse than that. “I’m going to tell your dad and he’s going to spank you,” was mom’s not so empty threat.
I’d seen my dad carry a 200 pound rock across our yard just to use it as a garden decoration. I’d seen him take a gun away from my sister’s ex-husband when he threatened her with it and then throw him off the porch.
Our fate was going to be the same as the cross boards in the bed.
When dad got home we were already crying. Downstairs we went to the basement and across the bed, face down. Dad removed his belt, “Oh no, not the belt.”
My brother and I clinched our butts in anticipation of the whooping we were about to receive.
Up went dad’s arm and down came the belt. One half-hearted whap on my butt and one on my brother’s.
Then dad’s gruff reprimand “Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t do that again.”
We dutifully continued crying until he left the room. Once he was gone we looked at each other incredulously, “What the hell was that”? And I have to admit we kind of giggled in relief.
We felt that we had ducked a great big bullet for sure. But, we never jumped on the bed again.
But despite this I was, for a time, a spanker. I thought I had child rearing all figured out. Simply appeal to their logic. It didn’t occur to me that four year olds had no logic. They only knew what they had learned from their parents.
While it’s true that I had two children as soon as I got married I’m still not sure why I thought spanking my kids was going to help discipline them. It seemed my temper was way out of control. My spankings were unmerciful.
Then one day just after I had spanked my oldest, who was only six at the time, and he was crying in his room, it dawned on me.
What in the hell was I doing? This was only making things worse. Would I want to get beat up every time I did something that I may not even have known was wrong?
I didn’t spank any of my kids again. It’s true that I became a yeller for a while. Oh, and a thrower. I broke a lot of my stuff throwing it into a wall, but not the kids.
It took a few years but eventually I realized how useless it all was and how crazy and out of control I looked when I let my temper take over.
I don’t know if it was wisdom or just age, but I’ve finally become more easy-going and, I hope, easier to be around. In all fairness, I still lose my temper, but finally it doesn’t control me and my behavior.
Now I realize actually how hard it had been for my dad. He had overcome the violence and horror he had experienced. The balance between effective discipline and parental love is a very delicate one.
