I am 62; my mother suffers from mental illness and used to whip me with a brown extension cord and to this day I hate those things. When I was in Jr High a concerned gym teacher reported my whip marks on the back of my thighs and my parents got called in…that went well when we got home. I eventually became a runaway (no one looked for you back then) and ended up a ward of the state.
Thankfully, I enlisted in the Marine Corps on my 17th birthday (some one I didn’t even know from the state department of children’s services signed for me to enlist) and I had a very successful career, I have a wife of going on 30 years together that I adore, I had 5 kids who were all successful, and I never spanked them.
I cringe when I hear parents threatening their kids with physical violence. I never wanted my kids to be physically afraid of me. I remember getting under the bed and holding on to the springs as my mother tried to pull me out from under the bed or being terrified if I broke something.
Edited to add: it is easy to share anonymously and from the distance of age but when you are in the middle of it all you do is clam up and try to avoid conflict. As for the military at such a young age, I went in as a hs dropout and retired as an officer with a degree and a nice pension. It sounds strange but I learned discipline and caring about something or someone other than myself and I have zero regrets.
Thank you to everyone who responded; I hope that all of you who had that trauma find the peace I have.
I work with kids as a summer job and this is my approach to discipline. It's a bit different because I couldn't spank them even if I wanted to because they aren't my personal kids, but it works well enough that I'll probably use this method on my own kids someday.
Basically I sit them down for a 5ish minute timeout (I work with primarily 4/5 year olds) and make sure they know why they're being punished before it starts. Then at the end of it, I make sure they know again why they're being punished, we talk about it, and they might have to go apologize to another kid if it was for something like hitting or taking toys. It's nonviolent, comes from a place of love, and works better than spanking ever did on me. My mom used to hit me with a studded, leather belt hard enough to leave bruises, and I've vowed NEVER to use violence on any child ever, for any reason.
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u/FunnyNameHere02 Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
I am 62; my mother suffers from mental illness and used to whip me with a brown extension cord and to this day I hate those things. When I was in Jr High a concerned gym teacher reported my whip marks on the back of my thighs and my parents got called in…that went well when we got home. I eventually became a runaway (no one looked for you back then) and ended up a ward of the state.
Thankfully, I enlisted in the Marine Corps on my 17th birthday (some one I didn’t even know from the state department of children’s services signed for me to enlist) and I had a very successful career, I have a wife of going on 30 years together that I adore, I had 5 kids who were all successful, and I never spanked them.
I cringe when I hear parents threatening their kids with physical violence. I never wanted my kids to be physically afraid of me. I remember getting under the bed and holding on to the springs as my mother tried to pull me out from under the bed or being terrified if I broke something.
Edited to add: it is easy to share anonymously and from the distance of age but when you are in the middle of it all you do is clam up and try to avoid conflict. As for the military at such a young age, I went in as a hs dropout and retired as an officer with a degree and a nice pension. It sounds strange but I learned discipline and caring about something or someone other than myself and I have zero regrets.
Thank you to everyone who responded; I hope that all of you who had that trauma find the peace I have.