Do Your Kids "Feel" the Love?

When it comes to disciplining kids, things have really changed, haven't they? I guess it never dawned on me just how much until a few days ago while waiting in line at a Subway in the mall. Standing behind me was a young mother with her two sons of approximately six and eight years of age. The boys were arguing about something--I think it was because they were going to have to split a foot long. Anyway, they were pushing and shoving one another like brothers do, while their mom seemed oblivious to what was going on. Then, out of nowhere, the youngest boy spit on his big brother, at which time Mom finally responded. "Jacob!" she said, wiping the spit from the older boy's face with a napkin she'd plucked from a dispenser on the Subway counter "That wasn't very nice!"

That wasn't very nice? I thought. That's all the punishment Jacob gets? My grandma would have skinned me alive if I'd ever spit on anyone in her presence! And little Jacob gets by with nothing more than a scolding?

For those of you who have read some of my previous blog posts, or my book, Call Me Tuesday, which is based on my own true-life experience, you know that as a child, I was severely abused by my mother, and for that reason I spent all my summers at my grandma's house. Any healthy discipline I received during my childhood came from her. When I was going through the abuse at home at the hands of my mother, I didn't know there was a name for it. All I knew was something didn't feel right about the way I was being treated.

Unlike when I was growing up, kids these days know the word "abuse" all too well. Some of my friends have told me that their kids have even threatened to report them to the authorities. Thank God my own children never did that. If they had it would have probably sent me into hysterics. I didn't give them a chance, anyway, because I was so afraid of turning into my mother that I left most of the discipline to my ex-husband, which, looking back, I now realize was unfair to him. But that's an entirely different blog altogether.

I remember when I was about ten, while I was at at my grandmother's house for the summer, one afternoon I decided to walk to a nearby grocery store for an Orange Crush. I had been playing in an old washtub Grandma used to fill with cool water on really hot days days, so all I had on was a two-piece swimsuit. I scraped up some change from my room, put on some flip-flops, and without telling Grandma I was going, headed down the street to the grocery store.

When I got back, Grandma was standing in the front yard, holding a length of freshly peeled tree twig in her hand. I knew I was in big trouble. She whipped my hind end all over the yard that day, and it hurt like hell. But after it was all over, a strange calm came over me. I believe somehow I instinctively knew I deserved every stripe that switch left on my legs. For reasons unknown to me then, the boundaries Grandma set for me made me feel safe, cherished. Something terrible could have happened to me walking down the streets of Nashville all by myself wearing nothing but my swim suit. Simply scolding me wouldn't have been punishment enough. Grounding me wouldn't have driven home the point either. What I needed was a good old fashioned whipping. As much as it hurt Grandma to have to do it (I can remember, the whole time she was thrashing me there were tears streaming down her cheeks), she wanted to make sure I didn't wander off again. And, you know, I never did because every time I took a notion to, I remembered the sting of that switch.To this day, I can still feel it, still hear it whistling as it sliced through the air.

My point is, sometimes a whipping is the only discipline that will do. When fear really needs to be instilled, when the consequences of what a child has done needs to be branded into her memory. But now, because child abuse awareness has gone from one extreme to the other, parents today don't feel at liberty to spank their kids. And that's a pity, because I think when done properly, a good old fashioned whipping has a way of making a kid really "feel" the love.