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In this entry I wanted to talk about child punishment and

child abuse. You may have already seen the video of the

southern judge beating his daughter with a belt and

yelling at her. There's also the Simpsons where Homer

strangles Bart over pointless crap. Child abuse does

exist and it is terrible but I do believe parents these

days have strayed far from spanking their kids. These

days if you do that you are a terrible parent it seems.

Meanwhile we seem to have a LOT more obnoxious little

shithead kids than what I remember seeing when I grew up.

When you grew up in the 40's-60's your parents could beat

the living s**t out of you and nobody would say anything.

Meanwhile kids grew up resenting their parents. When I

was raised it wasn't as popular to hit your kids. You

could still spank them, but it wasn't as acceptable.

Parents still spanked their kids, but not as much. Now

your kids can say you hit them and even if you didn't you

can go to jail. I figure when I was raised was the

balance. Mercilessly beating your kids is wrong, but I

haven't seen an alternative that works very well on a lot

of kids. You can hold your kids tight restraining them,

you can ground them, put them in the corner, take away

their cell phone, take away video games, and take away TV

privileges. None of those have worked very well from what

I have seen. Granted there are a lot of good kids out

there that don't need to be spanked I don't think they

should be used as a reason to not use spanking at all.

The alternatives work well on some people but not always.

I think spanking should at least be an option. If you

don't want to you don't have to, but I don't think others

should be told they can't have that option. It's all

about balance. The problem is it's not black and white.

There's no definite line between punishment and abuse.

This is where judgment comes in.

I also wanted to talk about verbal and mental abuse.

Along with beating their kids a lot of parents also

yelled a lot of s**t at their kids like in the video of

the judge beating his daughter with a belt. Sometimes

yelling at your kids and telling them they are bad people

can motivate them to succeed, but usually it leads to

feelings of resentment instead and mental scars. I have

an uncle that was told he would grow up to be nothing. It

motivated him to do well in school and get a good college

education. He has a couple masters degrees and makes a

lot of money. I have an uncle that actually went to war

in Vietnam just because he wanted to get away from my

grandpa who was physically and verbally abusive. My dad

was the youngest so when he was being raised my grandpa

mellowed out enough that most of the physical abuse was

gone so he probably got near the same physical balance as

I did it not a little more physical. He got all the same

verbal abuse about how he was a nobody and how he would

never amount to anything. The results were that he had

absolutely no self confidence or faith. Meanwhile I was

raised to hear the same crap about how I am worthless. My

sisters also raised to hear the same crap. Meanwhile I have a 3rd uncle who went through the same crap and I'm not sure how it affected him. He's by no means a huge financial success, but his self esteem doesn't seem to be absolutely crushed.

So out of 7 children he verbally abused 1 turned out to be a success. 1 had unknown effects. 5 were "failures" who were completely crushed. Because it worked well on one uncle and the rest of us turned out to be good people despite the emotional scars he thinks his tactics were successful. There were other results though. His one son who was successful calls him about once a month. The rest of his sons never call or visit. Neither of his granddaughters (my sisters) call or visit. If I didn't live with the guy I would never call or visit. The only other one who calls and visits is his daughter (my aunt) who was never subject to the verbal abuse.

He thinks he is a success and he thinks his kids are ingrateful of all he did to shape them into good people. When they were growing up he said he knew they would grow to resent him, but he did nothing to stop it. When they were growing up if they got in trouble for something they didn't do he would defend them. He does deserve credit for that. The problem is he thinks because of that they should call and visit him all the time like that one small piece of credit is going to make up for all the negative stuff. If they did something wrong he wouldn't stop at just telling them they were wrong. He would go out of his way to tell them they were worthless and a disgrace. He would go out of his way to destroy their self esteem. If they did something right he would respond with the silence of apathy. Would you really want to be around someone like that? He never told his kids he loved them or that he was proud of them. He told others he was proud of his family, but he never told the people that needed to hear it most when they needed it most.

Now he is telling me if I ever raise kids I have to do it the same way. One parent is the kind, loving, supportive parent while the other is very stern. Seeing and experiencing what he did I disagree with that method. I think both parents should be a balance of loving and stern. Kids need to know they are important to their parents. They need to know they are loved. They also need to know there are consequences to doing wrong. They need to grow up knowing morals. If one side is extremely loving while the other side is extremely stern the extremely stern side can cause emotional damage and be resented.

I still think parents should be able to yell at their kids and spank them. I just think you need good judgment in balance. Being extremely tough will make them hate you and damage them. Being extremely lenient makes them think they can get away with anything and they are more likely to be an obnoxious pain in the a**.

This is all coming from someone who does NOT have kids. Parents often think that if you don't have a kid you don't understand. They're probably right. I'm not going to write an instruction book on raising kids because I don't have experience. I'm just writing down my thoughts. These are my observations formerly being a child, seeing how past generations were raised and are turning out, and how the current generation is being raised and turning out. This is what I see and this is what makes sense to me.