Those who were corporally punished: What were you punished FOR?

In My Humble Opinion
21

We were spanked for most normal kid trangressions, lying was the big one, but also too much fighting and torturing each other, getting in trouble at school, backtalk, not doing chores/homework, taking stuff we shouldn’t, etc. The standard punishment was spanking, which varied in severity by who was administering it and how in control of their emotions they were, but neither parent attacked us angrily or without warning.

I went to a private parochial school that delighted in trying to beat Satan out of our backsides. Lying, blaspheming, swearing, smoking, talking during class, fighting, not doing homework, cheating, all the usual suspects and disrespecting any adult was the big catch-all. I once got beat on for sticking my tongue out at an elderly librarian, behind her back. I got “swats” weekly, usually a few times, from grades K-6th, and you bet your ass I was thrilled to get into public school.

I’d say we were pretty aware of all the rules at home and school, I don’t recall there being any surprise beatings or random crazy changes in parental expectations to deal with. Unfortunately for my parents, I did weigh the consequences and usually decided to misbehave anyway. As the youngest of four, I figured out fairly early that they wouldn’t kill me and I could live through anything else they could dish out, so I disobeyed constantly. It was particularly vexing for them in my teen years, I was too big for spankings and would just endure the lectures, groundings, removal of privileges or whatever and break rules.

Re: getting beat at home for getting beat at school, the idea was kids are supposed to go to school and follow the rules and work hard to get their education. Break a rule at school and the school punishes you for the actual transgression, the parents punish you for violating the prime directive of not screwing up at school, period.

There was a Lot of drama in my extended family because my parents firmly believed in spanking and the rest of the family didn’t. I remember abruptly leaving holiday gatherings because an aunt or grandparent tried intervening and refusing to let our parents spank us in their home. Obviously, there must have been many arguments over the issue I wasn’t privy to as a kid, but there was enough drama that even we were aware of it. I don’t recall feeling very victimized by it, or feeling like the rest of the family should stick up for us and get us out of an abusive situation or anything, most of the kids we knew were spanked, I didn’t feel abused as a little kid.

OTOH, there were times when we were teenagers that we pushed them over into angry physical responses like an open slap to the face, and that was wrong and no one knows righteous indignation like a teenaged girl, but that’s separate from the spanking punishment we received as children.

22

One time my mom gave me a choice between no TV the rest of the day or a spanking for getting in trouble somehow in nursery school. I chose the no TV option. The next time (for the same transgression) I didn’t get a choice, I got both. There was no third time!

That was hardly the only time I was spanked, but it wasn’t like I was getting spanked all the time. Just when I was really deserving of it, for bad behavior. The only real specific time I remember, other than the previous one I mentioned, was the time I kicked my sister in the back for no reason when she was sitting on the top of the stairs. Hell yeah, that was a deserved spanking.

What kind of behavior earned a paddling? And did you know the rules going in, or was it random?

It wasn’t any set behavior or rules, it was more how bad I’d acted and whether it was something I should’ve known better or been warned about before. Never was it just out of the blue for something I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be doing. And even then, they weren’t the “go to” method of punishment. Usually I had to go sit on my bed for an indeterminate (to me) amount of time, which was probably that era’s version of a “time out”.

And come to that, did you weigh the cost-benefit ratio before committing one of these transgressions?

Well, the one time I tried that it backfired as mentioned above, lol.

Or were paddlings so common they weren’t much of a deterrent?

Not so common that my butt ever got used to them. It was a very good deterrent the way my parents did it.

I was never paddled/slapped in school or by strangers, I think that stuff was mostly fading away by my time. I do appreciate that my parents actually believed me the times I got in trouble at school for things I didn’t actually do.

23

Closed fist punches to the head and body by my father, the former marine. Reasons would include being born, his getting my mom knocked up and felt that he had to marry her, he didn’t like his job, his having had too much whiskey, it was Wednesday.

24

My parents were/are great parents in many ways, but consistency in anything was never their strong suit and discipline was not an exception.

So if we did something wrong, we might get punished and we might not and that punishment might include a spanking and it might not. I can’t remember any time I didn’t know the rules or know that I was breaking them, but I never knew the sentence until it was delivered, which made it an iffy deterent.

25

The cardinal sin in my parents’ house was to annoy them. There were four of us kids, all close in age, and every once in awhile, us bickering or being too loud would just make them go berserk. We didn’t really clue in at that age as to why Mom and/or Dad would freak out once in awhile. They bickered and worse so we thought it was normal behavior. There was no way for us to really judge what would set them off.

It wasn’t just spanking. Ha. We also got spankings with wooden spoons and shoes and hairbrushes, whipped with belts, slapped, kicked, shaken, thrown into walls, dragged by the arm, dragged by the hair, etc. One of Mom’s favorite punishments for young children who were fighting was to grab them by the hair and smash their heads together. If you wanted to avoid having your head smashed, you had to pull away hard, and get your hair ripped out by the roots. Good fun.

My parents were also very strict and set a lot of rules, but interestingly, breaking the rules usually resulted in non-violent punishments like groundings. So yeah, a lot of times I broke the rules and judged it to be “worth it” because no violence resulted.

Essentially, the thing we were being punished for was the fact that we were small children. My parents don’t like them. Small children are annoying to them, period. They kept having more, hoping to get a boy eventually. As soon as some of us got a little older, like over age 10, the violence almost totally disappeared.

Now they are begging for grandchildren. WTF?

26

I got smacked on the butt a few times by my mom for smarting off, but my dad stayed out of it. I was your typical only child, tried to please everyone, keep the peace, etc.

27

I was slapped, punched, had my hair pulled and was hit with objects by nuns in school. There were also physical trials such as kneeling with objects in outstretched hands. It was usually for normal kid stuff, talking in class, giggling, not paying attention etc. It wasn’t everytime you got caught, so you took your chances. This punishment did not fit the crime, these women were awful and surely are in hell right now.

28

My grandfathers, and my dad, are/were not exactly the most baby and kid friendly men. And to the outside world, they were strict and serious. Yet they melt(ed) when they pick(ed) up their grandkids, and were/are awesome grandfathers overall. Your grandkids are not the same as others.

FTR, even though both sets of grandparents used corporal punishment for my parents, none of my grandparents put a finger on me, ever. I sort of learned early not to annoy those who spoil me. :wink:

29

That’s nice for you. Not all (potential) grandparents are benign.

My dad is a diagnosed sociopath. He has no melty places inside him. He has trouble controlling his desire to commit violence around all people, but small children especially set him off and he feels entitled to assault them, even kids that don’t belong to him. He actually shot at my sister once (she was about 10). I’d have to be insane to let him near my (still hypothetical) kids. He wants grandkids for one reason: status symbol.

And one of my best friends was routinely, viciously physically abused by her grandmother for years, until her kindergarten teacher called social services because of all the bruises. Her parents let her babysit because even though she was extremely violent with her own kids, they assumed that Grandmas never beat on their precious grandbabies.

Whoops.

30

I…um…don’t remember. It’s a gift and a curse that I can put out of mind things I don’t like thinking about faster than–oh, wait, what’s my name again? :wink:

Well, no, I do sort of remember getting spanked for having a smart mouth. I was always a bit too bright for my age and before I had it spanked out of me I was in the habit of a) questioning why Da Rules worked this way and b) sassing the folks with kid!logic just for the sake of being contrary.

I learned very quickly to channel my mutterings to a constantly running inner dialogue and became passive-aggressive in my disobedience. Sure, Mom was able to get me to clean my room when I didn’t feel like doing it, but by God was I going to drag my feet and do such a shoddy job that she would swoop in and clean it herself. (This got to be mildly irritating because she’d also swoop in and fix any genuine effort if it weren’t up to her draconian standards. Give me a break, lady, so I was a kid and I didn’t keep the house like you were planning to show it for sale every day. She also didn’t like me lounging around when she was making dinner and gave me gads of busywork. I don’t blame her for that one as much, but I still found it irritating.)

Oh, man, the battles we had after I moved back in from college. It was like I was such a “good” kid that I didn’t have my teenage rebellion stage until I was old enough to drink. My Dad was so pissed off about it that he threatened with degrees of seriousness to kick me out of the house.

As a whole, I remember ended up being more worried about being caught than doing something wrong, though my personal sense of justice was strong enough that most of the time I’d do the right thing out of principal. I just wasn’t about to share with Mom if I didn’t do everything perfectly, because I knew I would get TL;DR-ed to no end about it.

31

I was usually spanked on the butt with either bare hands or a spoon (for particularly serious offenses). It seemed normal enough for me. There were never any bruises and at most, I had a red behind.

I never knew the rules exactly, but since a spanking was the punishment for most things, it didn’t really matter a whole lot. Long-term screwups, like a bad grade, was punished with something like a grounding or loss of privileges. Something short like being a wise ass, or goofing off/whining in public was usually a swat or a full spanking. My parents never did it with anger, though. it was more ‘official’ than anything. Almost like a prisoner execution would be. You could almost hear the drums as I marched up to the counter and put my hands on it. Once it stung enough, you’d instinctively put your hands back there to stop the swats, which just hurt worse.

I’d say it was effective. After about age 8, it stopped hurting. Mom just wasn’t strong enough to hurt me or my brother. Of course, we didn’t let her know that. We’d still scream and cry and act really afraid. In the aftermath, we’d have to go to our rooms, where we’d laugh about how little it hurt. Mom didn’t catch on for years.

Once into my teen years, the swats were reserved for disrespect or blatant disobedience. Otherwise, it was being grounded or loss of TV or something.

ETA: I’m not going to hit my kids except for physical violence (Oh, you think you can hit your father? That’s unadvisable…) or disobedience of a ‘direct order’ (Dont ::swat:: Tell ::swat:: Me ::swat:: No! ::swat:: ). I’ve got 7 years as a day care teacher. I’ve seen how effective Time Outs can be. Violence just isn’t necessary when time outs are torturous enough.

32

I can remember times when it happened, but the whys aren’t very clear. They weren’t frequent, or violent. I was never a troublemaker, so I rarely got punishments of any kind. I was lucky, because both sets of grandparents handed out “spankings” to their kids that were really beatings. Both of my parents made the decision not to go down that path (a decision that some of their siblings did not make). The grandparents were never anything but kind to all the grandchildren, and in fact, have rewritten history in regards to their treatment of their own children.

There were no spankings in school. It never happened but, if another adult had hit me, my parents’ anger would have been directed at them, instead of (or perhaps in addition to) me. A relative who (unjustifiably) threatened to spank my sister ended up in an argument with me when I wouldn’t let her, that caused a rift between her, and my immediate family that lasted a couple of years. My sister was born over a decade after I was, and my parents no longer believed spanking was appropriate.

33

I was spanked just by my parents as a child, only for Really Bad Things. (And I was never hit with a fist or thrown against a wall or anything. Sometimes my dad would make a big show of taking his belt off, which was a huge threat, but I only got hit with it once.) It wasn’t often, and it was always for things that made my parents really, really mad, like smarting off when I was already in trouble. But I certainly never got a beating - frankly, it’s not like the spankings hurt that much, it was more of a “Oh Shit I’m Really In Trouble Now” thing.

34

Absolutely no question that the surest route to corporal punishment lay through backsassing.

35

Pupils got hit at my school for:

  • talking in corridors
  • being mistaken for another pupil
  • forgetting to bring something for a lesson
  • complaining about bullying
36

Oh yes! And having been born a smartass I was doomed to be punished. My Mom whipped my brother and I with a belt up until we were maybe 13 or so. I seem to remember it was about us not cleaning our room or some other chore but it was probably really due to some sort of smart back-talk. I guess I didn’t learn the lesson very well. I remember when I was younger having to cut a switch from the forsythia bush but I really remember the belt.

Dad never hit us. There was always a final threat hanging over us - “wait until I tell your father”. The man had huge hams for hands and I dreaded the picture of him unleashing the fury that my tiny Mom could generate. That would have been terrible to behold. Fortunately Dad never had to pick up the belt.

The worst “beating” my Mom ever gave me what when she slapped me across the face. I was being a real prick of a teenager, I’m sure, and the slap was a wake-up.

37

My brother and I got lots of whippings with the belt when we were kids, mostly from Mom and Grandma, once or twice from Papa (our grandfather). It seemed pretty reasonable to us. We usually got in trouble for lying or breaking some other obvious rule. If each of us blamed the transgression on the other, we’d both get a belt, then another chance to tell the truth, then a belt, etc. until one of us took the blame.

We also got paddlings at the private religious school we went to. I got paddled a lot in third grade because I kept forgetting to have a parent sign my homework after I’d done it.
We both got paddled the time we “ran away from” morning daycare. Someone was supposed to be watching all the kids who got dropped off really early for school, and she was doing such a good job that she didn’t notice for a while when all of us slipped out of the cafeteria and went to the playground.

When I was eleven and my brother was ten, Mom married a man who would frequently beat the crap out of my brother. Whether it was because I was female or just better at flying under the radar, he rarely laid a hand on me, but Jim got hit nearly every day. He was kept home from school sometimes because of the bruises. Usually it was about getting bad grades, but it could really be anything. Once my brother accidentally tapped his fork against his teeth at the dinner table, and my stepdad reached over and stabbed a fork into his arm.

38

This was pretty much us. My mother would use either her hand, a switch, or a belt. I remember that my dad spanked us sometimes – the old “Wait until your father gets home” dread – but I don’t actually remember a particular instance for either parent. I do remember it was for pretty egregious violations; we were perfectly aware that what we had done merited a spanking. It was more effective than most people these days make it out to have been.

I don’t remember that any of the three of us kids ever seriously thought it was unmerited. I’m sure we did at some point, but I don’t remember it.

RR

39

I was corporally punished for a few things. Dad would VERY infrequently spank for clearly defined offenses of “lying about something important” or “disobeying a boundary set for your safety”. The former included things like “did you do something that caused your little brother to be hurt?” and the latter “crossing the street alone while being under age 5.” I can only remember 3-4 spankings, and they were pretty effective and well-measured in terms of pain level–it was more humiliating than anything. This stopped by the time we were age 8 or so.

Mom, on the other hand, took over at about that point and would swat with a wooden spoon on the butt or arm/shoulder for sassing, backtalk, and disobedience–but inconsistently. That only stopped and turned into groundings when I was older and either big enough or fast enough to take the spoon away and snap it in half. (my mom now feels bad about it, we didn’t really realize she was moody due to perimenopause.) She’s got a nice collection of about a half-dozen wooden spoons with 2-3" handles that dad and I sanded off the jagged edges from. =P

I will probably take my dad’s approach and only spank for clearly defined and serious offenses concerning truth and the kid’s physical safety.

Usually, I didn’t get corporeal punishment as an add-on when I was in trouble at school or something. That was generally just quiet time in the room during which I was supposed to lie in bed and “think about what you did and why it was wrong”, presumably because they were Catholic and repentance was a big part of their view on discipline/punishment.

40

At school in South Africa it was being phased out in my high school (I was born in 1979), although some teachers stopped before others. I didn’t get in trouble very often and was only caned once: as part of a group that knocked out some fluorescent lights with a gym mat we were messing around with while carrying it. I think caning was a regular occurrence for some others.

At home it happened from time to time, but very occasionally. I can’t recall a time where I didn’t deserve it (jumping up and down in the car to the point where I cracked the windshield, accidentally deleting my dad’s business files from the computer after being told explicitly not to use it, etc).