Did you get spanked as a kid? Do you spank your own?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I saw the same thing in the Christian school I attended.The paddle itself was a wooden board decorated with a drawing of a wailing child and the words, “THE ROD OF CORRECTION.” Everyone from the pre-schoolers to the seniors were subject to it. The older kids would usually emerge from the room with a wry smile and rolling of the eyes, but the hideous screams of the little ones were enough to curdle your blood.

There was one little boy who had mental problems-- he would go into uncontrollable tantrums, and got paddled at least twice a month for it. I remember once seeing the principal march through the hallway to his classroom, pluck up the writhing child and haul him into the library (which only had half-walls). Another teacher had to hold him down while she paddled him. The child’s screams and the rythmic whack of the paddle echoed through the whole building. They
never did manage to paddle away his mental problems, and he was eventually expelled.

They wanted to paddle me, once, when I was seventeen. They were supposed to call your parents in and explain what you had done, and the parents were supposed to give permission and ideally, witness the punishment. Many parents just gave permission over the phone. I was living with my grandmother at the time because my mother was living in another town. Grandma was out of town, so they called my mother. She drove a half-hour to come to the school to find out what was going on.

I was already seated in the library. Mom was ushered in, where the teacher and the principal sat with me. The principal explained that we had gone on a field trip and had stopped to eat at Pizza Hut. I had walked up to the juke box and read the selections.

“And?” Mom prompted.

"She walked up to the juke box!" the principal repeated. “Secular music is against the rules of the school.”

“Did she play anything?” Mom asked.

“Well, no . . . But she did lean over it and read the song titles.”

“She did, I saw it,” the teacher added piously.

“And you want to paddle her for it,” Mom said flatly.

No one said anything. My mom narrowed her eyes in that way she had that could probably stop a charging rhino in its tracks. She said, very succintly, “I don’t think so.”

The principal argued that such a thing warranted a paddling by the rules and that one should be administered or the rules lost their meaning.

“Fine, I’ll paddle her myself,” Mom said. “Come on, Lissa.”

We left the school and went out for lunch. “Consider yourself paddled,” mom said as I finished my sundae.

62

It seems a lot of posters in this thread weren’t spanked, they were abused. I don’t want to trivialise their experience, but saying you’ll never hit your kids because your parents beat you with broomsticks and you don’t want them to feel that way feels like saying you’ll never drink a drop of alcohol because your parents were alcoholics and neglected you and spent all their money on alcohol instead of food and clothes for you or something. Me, I was spanked fairly regularly as a kid, less often as I grew up. With the hand only, anywhere on the body except the face/head. Never in anger? My parents ONLY hit me when they were angry. Why would you hit someone when you’re not mad at them? I didn’t enjoy it, but I wasn’t particularly traumatised. I don’t think it was the best way to discipline me, but I think that’s just the kind of parents they were. As in, if they’d used time outs or taking away privileges they would just have been a different kind of ineffective. I was a difficult child, anyway. I think most people would have been hard pressed to find a good way of dealing with me. I don’t have kids and I don’t know if I’ll have them. I’d have to wait until they were born to say if I’d spank them. Every child is different.

63

Lissa, your mom rocks, too!

64

I wasn’t laughing at your personal choice. I actually agree with you. I was laughing at the statement “My children will never act that way in public.” Everyone says it, or something like it, pre-children. Anything that starts with “My children will never…” usually causes me to laugh, because it’s a naive statement. Kids have their own agendas that don’t always agree with their parents’. “I forbid it” was a sure way to get me to do something when I was a kid, and mine are much the same way. Parenting is a non-stop chess match, especially when the Mother’s Curse works.

And yes, Lissa, your mom rocks.

65

I was spanked often as a child. As a young child it was with the wooden spoon, then as I grew older, it was a big black belt, and finally it was some sort of riding switch thing. These I could deal with; it was the slapping in the face that always made me see red. With my mother it wasn’t always so much the transgression, as it was her level of frustration with me.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt it absolutely necessary to spank my children. It was always with my hand, and always on a diapered or clothed bottom. My kids are 13 and 16 now, way beyond spanking age.

When the kids were tiny tots, usually a firm and very deep voiced NO was enough to make them stop whatever they were doing. My friends were always amazed at this. However, spanking had to occur when they ran out into the street or were about to touch a hot stove, that kind of thing. The shock of the swat on the butt was enough to teach them to never do it again. I never spanked in anger. I always walked away.

Face slapping is a huge NO-NO here. I am ashamed to admit that I totally lost it with my daughter once and smacked her on the face (open palm on cheek). I was absolutely mortified that I had done such a thing and apologized profusely. I still feel guilty to this day (six years later). Granted, she was totally lipping off and would not quit, but that did not excuse my behaviour at all. She was about 10 at the time.

66

My mother firmly believe in corporal punishment. Most of my spankings were 4-5 stikes on the (not bare) bottom or thighs with her hand. It was what she did to punish us for just about everything. She had no imagination. It was not effective for me because I have a very high tolerance for pain. I can clearly remember weighing getting a spanking vs. making a smart aleck remark or doing something to torture my sister. Often I felt it was worth risking getting a spanking go ahead and do whatever crime it was.

As I got older, my mom would spanking me harder and longer. She was trying to break my willful spirit, but it didn’t work. I remember one time I had been disrepectful and she said she was going to spank me until I cried. It just plain didn’t work. I didn’t cry. She finally got tired and left the room. There were so many other punishments that would have been so much more effective. Witholding privileges, not letting me see my friends, making me do chores every waking moment, all would have likely shook my attitude. I was spanked until I was around 15 or so.

I have smacked my son on the bottom, mostly to get his attention when he was younger. I don’t “give him a spanking”. I just can’t do it. I’m creative with punishments where my mother wasn’t. Chores, copywork, no electronic media, etc all seem to be working, but are rarely necessary.

67

Slight hijack here, but it fits in with the “don’t punish when you’re angry” theory. When I was about 2 or 3, my mother had put me down for a nap, and decided to lie down with me. She went to sleep, but I didn’t. I went into the kitchen and got everything I could reach out of the fridge and cupboards. Milk, eggs, butter, sugar, flour, syrup, etc. all over the kitchen floor with small child in the middle of it, covered in it. Mom got up, walked into the kitchen, saw me, walked out, closed the door and called her best friend. “Mabel, do you love SCL?” Mabel: “Of course I do.” Mom: “Then you’d better come get her, or I’m going to kill her.” She then went into her room and shut the door until her friend took me away, and she cleaned up the mess I’d made. She told me many years later that she was actually afraid to touch me, because she knew if she did she would have hurt me because she was so angry.

Mom’s most productive punishment for me was a bit unusual. She didn’t restrict me to my room, because being left alone to read was my idea of heaven. Instead, I had to sit in the living room and work on a 6’ by 8’ latch hook rug we were making for my grandparents.

When my grandfather died and my grandmother moved into a much smaller house, she gave me back the rug. It really is beautiful.

[/hijack]

68

Never. But my parents said we were really, really docile as children and our worst behaviour was fighting with each other (my sister and I are less than 2 years apart). By the time we became mildly disobedient we were in the throes of puberty. Raised voices was enough for both of us.

No, I don’t plan to spank them. I have no memory of my parents laying hands on me ever and if they can raise me that way then I’d like to do the same for my children.

69

Hey, I did that once. Eldest had declared Defy Mommy Day one day and was celebrating it with gusto. Really, I cannot even describe it. After a couple of hours – well, it was almost like living in a bad movie, only you can’t get out. The culminating moment was when Eldest got a pot of purple paint out and – looking at me all the while you understand – took the top off and threw it quite deliberately straight up in the air. It came down like a purple bomb.

Suddenly I felt very, um, slow. As if time had slowed down. And I knew with the kind of clarity you only really get in dreams that if I touched him now I would not stop until he was bleeding.

So I didn’t. I didn’t go near him. But it was one very scary moment.

Though the time Eldest got up early and tossed an entire bag of flour, a bag of salt, and a tin of Ovaltine all over the kitchen and I woke up to his joyful laughter and entered the kitchen to his announcement that he had learned to skate – I laughed my ass off. It took hours to clean up but I still thought it was funny.

70

I was spanked as a child. Not often, but it was used.

I have no children of my own, but I did spank The Monster once. My housemate of the time, her father, was too bloody stubborn/stupid to actually child-proof his house. And since it was his house, I’d been told, rather forcefully, I wasn’t to do anything that would put in holes into his woodwork. And it would have been inconvenient for him to actually, say, move his ammo, and cannister of black powder, from the living room cupboard in which he kept it.

So the second or third time that The Monster tried getting into that cupboard, as a toddler, I swatted her bottom. She was shocked, and stopped doing it. It can be a useful tool, I think. Especially with pre-verbal children. Like any other tool, it can be abused, too.

The Monster’s mother had one of those moments: She came into the TV room to find The Monster hadn’t been quietly munching on the three (or was it five) pound barrel of cheese balls she’d gotten at the warehouse club. The Monster had, instead, spilled most of them out, onto the floor, and rolled in them.

I was called to give The Monster her bath, because she was afraid what would happen if she touched The Monster.

71

Oh, yeah I guess I should answer the question.

I was swatted a couple of times, fewer than three anyway. Of the five sibs, two were swatted more than ten times; one was never swatted; one was swatted about as often as I was.

Eldest was swatted twice; he regarded this as such a violation of his personal dignity that, well, all he learned (as they say about cats) is that I was a jerk. So I didn’t do it any more. He is six now and I don’t expect it to come up, it hasn’t for quite some time.

Youngest has been swatted far more often than twice, though not what I would call often. He was neither angry nor sad when swatted, it merely got his attention. The only times he has been swatted had to do with inability to get his attention by other methods. Though recently I have turned to holding his face in my hands and requiring him to look at me when I speak, this seems to work pretty well. At least it did about an hour ago when we had a bathtime incident very like the one described earlier int his thread. I may have to resort to bathing seperately soon, they seem to be trying to recreate the Zuider Zee in the bathroom every night this week, and they just egg one another on to do things neither would do alone.

I was never spanked as a punishment in the way people talk about it. I have never spanked as a punishment in the way that people talk about it.

72

I was spanked, both at home and at school (ah, Christian school) and I have never spanked my son. I would never spank my son. I know that there are some children for whom nothing else works, but I am fortunate not to have such a child. I never want my son to physically fear me, and I never want my son to choose the right thing to do merely because he is afraid of physical pain. I want him to make the right choice because (gasp) it is the right choice. So far (he is almost 11) this has worked well. He is a kind-hearted child with a real sense of justice in his heart. I know that not all children are this way, and am very thankful that mine is. I just don’t see the logic in telling kids “hitting is bad! I’m going to hit you to prove it!!!”…

73

I got hit some. Worst time was when my dad showed a lack of a sense of humor.
It made sense at the time. My older brother suggested that he go in the house and tell my dad I got hit by a car. Then I would jump out of the bushes and say April Fool. It sounded good at the time.
So I jumped out.and the look on my dads face made it clear something went horribly wrong.
But hittiing doesnt teach discipline.It teaches hitting.
Ive never laiod a paw on my kid. Apparently he has no sense of humor.

74

Oh, and in addition to spanking I was also kicked, slapped in the face, and once, at age 4, hit in the face with a shoe.

75

Wow! Some of you had horrible childhood experiences!

I was spanked, but it was never traumatic. I wasn’t hit with a spoon, belt, flyswatter or anything other than an open hand on my bottom.

Once time, when I was a teenager, I was slapped across the face by my father. That was in response to me really mouthing off to my mother. That time was pretty scarey, but (to be fair) what I said to mom was really awful.

Mom was a bit of a wimp, so her spankings didn’t hurt. In fact, you could barely feel them. The trick was to never let her know it didn’t hurt or you’d get another punishment (like being sent to your room–I hated that). Dad’s spankings stung a bit, but weren’t too awful. They were still a preferable punishment than being denied a privilege or being sent to my room.

If I had children, I’d like to think I’d never spank them. I don’t have a moral objection to the kind of spankings I received (which aren’t in the same league as what some of you went through). However, I don’t recall they were particularly effective with me. To be honest, I didn’t hate/fear spankings enough to have them really change my behavior. In fact, I remember occassionally thinking “yeah, I’ll probably get spanked for this, but it’s worth it.”

76

I have to disagree somewhat. I think it is somewhat like this, but the reality is that, for those of us who were hit so severely, the middle ground is harder to see. It’s difficult to imagine that someone can soank their kids effectively when one’s own parent didn’t have the control to do so. So, it’s more like saying, “I will never be an alcoholic and neglect my kids and spend all my money on alcohol instead of food and clothes for my kids” if your parents were alcoholics and neglected you and spent all their money on alcohol instead of food and clothes for you. And, for some people, yes, that means never drinking a drop, because they were never taught that there is such a thing as moderation and they don’t trust that they won’t go from zero to sixty, as it were.

Being physically hurt is bad. But the humilation and crushing of one’s spirit that goes along with it is, in some ways, worse. I don’t ever want to hit my kids because I don’t ever want them to view me as so scary and hateful and out-of-control. And, again, I kow that not everyone who uses some spanking goes to that level of spanking, but that is all I know and I don’t want anything to do with it.

77

I wish I’d had parents like some of you had. I wish there had been somebody to explain to mine about not lashing out with or without weapons, in anger. I wish someone had told my parents that punishment was about deterrence, not about trying to inflict the maximum physical and emotional pain for whatever pissed them off at the moment. Living in abject terror does some pretty bad stuff to a person. It took twenty years and a shitload of drugs for me to get to a place where I didn’t flinch for no reason. But I’m one of those people mentioned above who doesn’t drink a drop of alcohol because there is no way I can allow myself to be my father. He was bad before he crawled into the bottle, but worse after he stayed there. I have no examples of moderate, social drinking to emulate. I have no examples of fair, unbiased, loving parents to emulate.

I can totally understand swatting a child’s hand or bottom if they are about to do something dangerous. I do not understand taking down a child’s pants and strapping him 15 or 20 times with a belt, with maximum force, for knocking over his milk at supper. Or how my own father could have me pinned against the bed with his knees as he gave me closed-fist shots to the face, while I screamed for my mother to call the police (she didn’t). That made him hit me even harder.

I’m as all right now as I’m ever going to be, but I can never have a child. I would be going back to living in fear. This time, of myself.

78

Yes, I received spankings.

Yes, I administered spankings.

79

[Old Man from the Simpsons]

Stealing my line. That’s a paddling.

[/Old Man from the Simpsons]

80

Oh boy! A paddling! oops, wrong board…

In mitigation, may I explain that I lost my mother long before the expression “you rock” came into being, so I was never able to tell her that. I loved the compliment and wanted to pass it on.

I did tell her I loved her, often, with feeling.