Child Training/Discipline – Page 4 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Hurts Me More Than You: Christine’s Story

October 8, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

Willfully Disobedient: I Was a “Lovingly” Spanked Child

HA note: Christine’s story originally appeared on her blog on September 24, 2014 and is reprinted with permission.

“I was spanked but I turned out just fine.”

“There is a difference between spanking and beating a child. This story clearly crosses the line.”

“Sometimes parents need something a little more to get a child’s attention. I was only spanked when I was doing something dangerous or being a hellion.”

“I deserved it and needed it.”

I inhale sharply as I read through the comment section of an article about NFL player Adrian Peterson’s indictment for child abuse after whipping his son bloody. The glow of my iPad screen is harsh in my otherwise darkened bedroom. Maybe staying up reading the internet wasn’t such a great idea. I quickly glance over at my sleeping husband and cats while I debate getting up or staying in bed. I know this topic has already captured me and it is after one in the morning.

My heart is racing and my mouth dry as I click the “comment” button. I’m nervous, triggered into an emotional response that I still haven’t learned to control, that I’m not sure I want to control. Anger and frustration bubble in the pit of my stomach. Anxiety grips my chest as it claws up my throat. Adrenalin washes over my limbs, which twitch under the sheets. It’s time to fight. Feeling most secure in my bed, I opt to stay as I roll onto my stomach for better access to my tablet keyboard. Then, walking the line between complete emotional cyber meltdown and rational, logical, mind changing academic argumentation, I begin to type the same response I have been sharing in comment sections for the last five years.

Over these years spanking “debates” have made me crazy because many people don’t seem to understand the abuse and damage that so called deliberate, “calm”, or “loving” spanking leaves behind. There seems to be an assumption that so long as the physical hit is done with love and doesn’t leave a mark, then this is not violence or abuse. My mother performed these calm, loving spankings on me and my sisters. They were terrifying and shaming. They were also so normalized that I used to argue that spanking was ok and necessary for children to learn valuable lessons.

I had such an internalized notion of my own badness or rebellion that I believed I deserved such discipline.

My mother ascribed to the teachings of James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. His books Dare to Discipline and The Strong-Willed Child outline steps for parents to follow to make their children compliant. Dobson claims that children should not be disciplined when the parent is angry but that children need to know spanking will be the consequence of “willful disobedience.” He claims that this is a formula for loving correction that will not harm children. However, the thing about the term “willful disobedience” is that it boils down to lack of compliance, which is often found in the actions of just being a child. This was my experience.

There are any number of reasons that I or my sisters were considered to be willfully disobedient. Any instance of not obeying my mother was a prime example of my naturally sinful nature. I have been spanked for running in church, climbing a neighbors tree, following my friends into the woods, or not answering a question when addressed. Disobedience also came as a group if I was unable to maintain the obedience of others. On one occasion my mother tasked me with rounding up my young sisters after church. We would all often scatter after the church service, finding nooks and crannies to play in while our mother talked with the pastor. I tried to wrangle them, get them to the front door, but they were still playing when mom was ready to leave. Due to our collective defiance we were informed that we would be spanked as soon as we were home.

My mother was always calm when calling me to her bedroom, a dusky room with pulled curtains that diffused the afternoon light. It was perpetually warm with the smell of my parents. It was a room that I was only allowed to enter when invited and under other circumstances I would have found it comforting. But not today. I am instructructed to get The Wooden Spoon from the utensil holder in the kitchen and bring it with me. The Spoon or a wooden hairbrush were often used instead of her hand because these were considered to be “neutral objects.”

Spanking with her hand would be abuse. This was correction.

With tears already rolling down my cheeks, I approach my mother shaking with fear and shame.

Why didn’t I get my sisters to come faster? I should have been better. More good. I wanted to be good but seemed to have a hard time obeying.

She closes the bedroom door softly behind us. She is sure not to slam it because that would indicate anger and spanking a child when angry would be abuse. This was correction. My mother’s voice is soft when she explains that, in the Bible, God says children need to obey their parents. Parents who do not discipline their children actually hate their children.

“This hurts me to spank you but I do it because I love you.”

I don’t want to end up in hell where I will be tortured and gnash my teeth for eternity but I also don’t want to be hit. I continue to cry, tasting the wet salt on my lips. I hope that this time she will change her mind. Not that she ever has. Pointing out my pre-spanking tears my mother warns me that they won’t get me out of this. For her, a child crying in the face of discipline is manipulative and a sign of a sinful nature. She can not give in.

Once across her knees she hits my bottom swiftly and rhythmically. I do not remember how many times she would hit me but I know she was dedicated to spank as many times as it took for me to cry “genuine tears of contrition and remorse.” I know that I cried harder while controlling my desire to wail or scream. Crying this way was considered theatrical and attention seeking. It might have even gained more spanks so I avoid it and try to give my mother’s loving correction respect.

Afterward, she stands me up in front of her and straightens my clothes before I fall into her arms and sob my apology into her chest. With tears in her own eyes she reminds me again that this hurts her more than it does me. This was for my own good. I promise never to transgress again. “I love you,” she coos as she hugs me. If she did this without love, then it would be abuse. But her love makes it a correction. I thank her for loving me so much that she refuses to spare the rod. I do not want to be spoiled. Her own tears subside as she prepares for the next child to correct and signals my time to leave. The others are waiting for their turn. I need to send the next one in.

This form of discipline was normal in my house growing up. Although, it did become less frequent with each new daughter. She would later describe the two youngest as “spoiled” due to their lack of spankings as young children while reminiscing fondly about how I used to try and keep my sisters obedient.

I bitterly told her that I was trying to save them. She just smiled.

As a teenager and young adult, I held onto the belief that spanking with love was the only real way to teach children right from wrong, yet I had a hard time imagining what it would be like to hit my own child someday. I began to question this method as a psychology major when I read studies that clearly illustrated the lasting psychological harm spanking has on children. However, it wasn’t until my mid-20s, when on a city bus, I had a discussion with a friend about childhood spanking and I described my discipline “without anger” experience. As the bus rumbled and bustled around us, I watched as horror, pity, and sadness crept across her face. With tears in her eyes she replied, “I am so sorry that was done to you.” I was taken aback. So deep was the internalization of my own “badness” as a child that I tried to assure her it was no big deal. Spanking did me good. I deserved it. I needed it. I was a bad child.

But how can a child of ten, six, or two years old be bad? And how can anyone claim that the child deserves physically violent discipline? Why would anyone want to equate love with physical violence?

It has been heart wrenching to come to new conclusions about how a parent “loved” me. After a lot of reading and evaluation I now understand how being treated this way had a negative impact on my mental health and conditioned me to ignore my personal boundaries or emotional needs. I now call “spanking with love” what it is: abuse. I have a zero tolerance for any form of physical violence toward children or adults.

I want people who claim that “spanking with love” or “without anger” or “within prescribed parameters” to realize that I am that child. I do not fully relate to other’s abuse stories that include lashings from belts or punches to the head or angry outbursts. My mother claimed to love me every step of the way. She was calm and collected. I had warnings and was given a consequence. My experience is the loving discipline that so many claim to support. And yet, when I share these details I am always met with the response that my experience is clearly abuse and that is not what the debater is talking about. They tell me it was done to them or it wasn’t so bad and that they deserved it and so do their own children. All I can really say to that is what my friend said to me, I am sorry that you have been treated that way. I hope you can see you are more valuable than what was done to you and that you do not need to perpetuate harm.

The stories of others in similar situations have been a life raft in my most troubled waters. In telling my story recently, I also thanked another for telling theirs. I needed that person. Maybe others need me. To you I say, I understand you. I have been there.

You are so strong and have survived so much. I am with you in this.

Hurts Me More Than You: Alice and Beth’s Stories

October 7, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial TeamLeave a comment

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

Alice’s Story

I knew that I could get spanked for things I wasn’t even involved in, like my 3 year old brother talking and shouting when we were all supposed to be asleep. If he didn’t confess, or if Mom just didn’t care who was talking, we all got spanked.

Mom didn’t stop spanking me until I was about 9 years old. Even then, I still had moments of Oh my God, is she going to hit me this time too? When she’d burst into the bedroom I shared with my siblings, I very quickly tried to tell her that I wasn’t the one talking, or I just pretended to be asleep. Sometimes that worked and my ass would be spared.

I don’t remember all of Mom’s punishments. My sister claims that we were sometimes whipped with switches from our forsythia bush. I remember plucking the switches to bring to my mom to whip my sister with, but I never remember being whipped with them. Probably because those memories were a lot more painful, physically and mentally.

I know I’ve blocked stuff out, because my memories from 6 to 9 years old are patchy and it just feels like there’s stuff missing.

But there are things I’ll always remember, like the plastic black spatula my mother used (and broke in a fit of rage one night when she walked in, slammed it up against the dresser, and yelled at us). I’ll always remember the rage etched on her face when she stormed into the room. I’ll always remember silently seething when she brought us in later, apologized, and hugged us. I’ll always remember hating her as a child, because she showed little patience for us.

Even as I transition in adulthood, I’ll still live with what she’s done to me. It’ll stay with me for the rest of my life, but at least it’ll teach me to never inflict violence on my own children, God willing I have some. Through the pain, there is a lesson for both my mother and I, and for me it is this:

Violence breeds respect based on fear, but true respect is born out of mutual love.

And that’s a mindset I hope to practice when I have my own kids. With my partner’s help, I’ll be gentle and kind towards our children and not hurt them like my mother hurt me.

*****

Beth’s Story

My dad made “spankers” out of conveyer belt that he cut and sanded. He even put a hole in one end so you could hang it on a hook. We had two of them and my parents would warn us not to ever try to hide them. He gave some to my friends’ parents and I liked to make fun of my friends who were only hit with wooden spoons. Conveyer belt stings, but leaves no welts because of its surface area. It is blunt force but not as blunt as a baseball bat.

It is the perfect way to hit your children and leave no evidence.

My dad hated spanking me and so did my mom. And so, when I had a rebellious attitude, they usually told me they would “have mercy” on me, as Jesus had mercy on our souls, and that though I deserved a spanking, I wasn’t going to get one. But when I did get a spanking, they were very very angry with me. My dad has apologized, now that I am an adult, for only ever “spanking in anger.” He was the child of an alcoholic and was determined to do everything right, to be the best and most responsible dad there was. That makes him easier to forgive than other childrens’ parents, who spanked with cold detachment.

But I got older and stopped being spanked, and my parents did not understand why I cringed when they raised their voices. It was a reflex. My guts seemed to drop out and my legs turned to jelly when I knew they were angry at me. They got angry when I was secretive and moody and I flinched when they came up too suddenly behind me. That made them angrier. They weren’t abusive parents and I shouldn’t treat them like it.

I have forgiven them for spanking me, but not for hitting my little brother, who used a wheelchair because cancer paralyzed his legs.

He died when he was five.

I don’t know what he could possibly have done to merit a beating. I don’t want to ever ask them. I tread around the subject now, because I no longer live at home and want to keep the peace. The momentary act of hitting or being hit is small potatoes compared to the aftershock. I am afraid I will be cringing my whole life.

P.S. The relief I feel after writing this is huge.

Hurts Me More Than You: Polly’s Story

October 6, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

Additional content warning for Polly’s story: descriptions of sexual arousal from corporal punishment.

*****

Polly’s Story

My mother hitting me in the face with a vacuum cord and giving me a bloody lip, and then apologizing that “she was aiming for my leg.” Screaming at her that good parents don’t hit their kids with vacuum cords. Then guilt as she cried and my father said I made her feel like a bad mother. Having a massive bruise as an elementary student and my mother clinically asking my Father which spanking it was from. It wasn’t from being spanked, but because they often were no one would believe me and told me they were sure I deserved it even if they didn’t know what it was from.

Wooden Spoons, Paint Stirrers, Cooing utensils, Chopsticks, Dowel Rods, Hangers, Hands…

Pretty much everything that COULD be used to hit a child was. Nothing was sacred. Listening to my baby brother scream and scream as they laid into him. Listening to them tell him if he screamed the police would come and put them in jail and then everyone would blame him, so stop screaming. Trying to hide the evidence of something my little siblings had done wrong because I didn’t want them to get “spanked”.

Even when my little brother threw a tonka truck at my face, trying to hide the blood that was streaming down because I knew they would beat him. Screaming into pillows, biting my arms, scratching my face, anything to stop my heart from ripping apart as I listen to them. Holding them as they shake afterwards. Spending over a decade planning out how I would go into my father’s room at night and stab him to death. Anything to stop my siblings from getting hurt. Guilt that I didn’t kill him. Guilt that I didn’t tell anyone. But who would I tell? Everyone had bruises. Everyone had welts. It was part of growing up. Guilt as I grew up and spent more and more hours outside of the house, so I didn’t have to live in the oppression and pain. Guilt that I got married and left them behind. Guilt. Pain. Anger. Desperation. Hopelessness. You asked how it makes me feel to remember and there it is. Hopeless. Desperate. Afraid. Ashamed. Guilty.

I was 6 years old the first time I told my mother “I like being spanked”, to which she replied “Then, I’ll make sure to go harder.”

I quickly recanted and said I was “just being silly”, but even at 6 I knew that even though I hated them hurting me, and I despised my siblings being hurt, there was something exciting about it. Not while it was happening, but on the “long walk to the bathroom”, watching them pick an implement, comparing marks with my sister later in the day”…didn’t everyone get butterflies in their tummy and “have to pee” when they were scared. That’s what it was, right? I was scared. And yet it wasn’t scary at all when I read it or saw it when it wasn’t coupled by anger. It was exciting.

By 8 I was sneaking my mother’s parenting books, looking up the word spanking in the encyclopedia and dictionary. Anytime someone was spanked in a book I would read it over and over and over. I wanted to discuss spankings for hours with my friends, but they didn’t have the same response as me. They were more like “Everyone gets spanked, it’s not a big deal.” By 9 or 10 I started to hold back on talking about it, I might mention it casually “Oh yeah, did you know they actually mentioned spanking in that book… it’s so… Biblical.”, but mostly I kept it to myself. And I was ashamed. I did not connect it as something sexual until my late teens/early 20’s. I just thought of it as another aspect of my weirdness, I never fit in with the pure sweet little homeschool girls, so another level of “Polly is a weird one” was expected. I tried to hold back my excitement over spanking, it wasn’t any different than holding back my bubbly outgoing loud personality, it was just another thing that made me different and “bad”.

I was in my late teens the first time I read a spanking story on the internet. I felt so happy and free I cried tears of joy. I wasn’t alone!

There were other people like me who just loved reading and writing and thinking about spankings. I stayed up until 6amjust reading and reading. But I couldn’t figure out why it had a disclaimer on it “We do not condone the spanking of real children, this is only fantasy”. I woke up the next day to reread when all of the sudden the disclaimer made sense. “Fantasy” meant sexual. “Fantasy” meant fetish.

I was a freak.

I was a sinful, disgusting, gross freak, and maybe even a pedophile because it only turned me on when the person had no choice and all of the “adult spankings” I could Google were fun and flirty. They didn’t even hurt. So they didn’t make me excited. I threw up. I confessed to my friends. Later in life I confessed to my Bible study leaders. But I couldn’t stop. I would go awhile and then was right back to it.

Eventually, I found “Christian Domestic Discipline” sites where the husbands would spank and punish their wives in other ways. Again I felt relief and happiness that I was not alone, and there were not children involved, so maybe I wasn’t actually a pedophile — just a freak. There were other people like me in the world. But again, I felt shame. By this point I had started rejecting much of the “patriarchial bs” that I had believed for most of my life, I was a proud “feminist”, God made men and women equal, and a woman who allowed a man to hit or demean her wasn’t free. So for me to not only allow a man to hit me, but actively seek it out. That didn’t flow. Plus, it was still a sin. It still defiled the marriage bed… or did it? Well, it didn’t matter because *I* was a single virgin. I had never been kissed. I had no business having any sexual thoughts or desires and this was obviously sexual.

I was also a self-injurer (bulimia for a few years and then cutting), and that was shameful, but at least it wasn’t sexual.

When I was in my mid-20’s I was asked to be courted, and I said yes. And on our second date I said these fateful words “I have always wanted a man who would spank me” and he said “and I have always wanted a woman who would let me.” We have had many MANY ups and downs, but we have been married for several years now. And my love for spanking hasn’t diminished a bit. At times there are still twinges of “how can something that destroyed so many childhoods turn me on”, but overall I have accepted that consent is the key here.

As a little kid I couldn’t consent.

I couldn’t say “stop, don’t, RED”, and now I can. I enjoy giving up the control at times, but if I am ever feeling like I can’t handle this or don’t want this I hold the power to stop it. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Hurts Me More Than You: Deborah and Janet’s Stories

October 6, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team15 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

Additional content warning for Deborah and Janet’s stories: descriptions of sexual arousal and sexual abuse from corporal punishment.

*****

Deborah’s Story

I always felt traumatized by spanking whether it was me or someone else. When I was really young I would try to get my teenage brother in trouble but to be fair he tried to get me in trouble a lot too and teased me a lot. Once I got to be a couple years older I didn’t ever want to get people in trouble. Somehow, it just seemed so much worse for them to get spanked than most things they might do to annoy me.

Anyway, even though my parents generally only hit me once, it was done/threatened for all kinds of things from the look on my face, to not closing a door carefully enough that would often slam itself shut when the window was open, to a vague statement from my mom to my dad about not getting a lot done for him that day because she had to take care of me and teach me school at eight years old.

Sometimes I even got smacked without verbal warning while sitting on my dad’s lap if I was sitting in a way that hurt him and I didn’t realize it.

I got spanked pretty much every day from before I was old enough to remember until I hit puberty at ten. Then I got lectured pretty much every day and spanked sometimes. The last time I got spanked, I was fourteen. I cried all day because I felt completely degraded. I had worked so hard to become a competent homemaker and learn to be a proper submissive woman only to find I would still be hit if I had an opinion. It didn’t really hurt that much, but inside it was devastating.

The worst part of getting spanked was never the humiliation or the pain or the endless guilt and self-loathing or even the forced hugs and prayers. The worst part was that every single time I got spanked, I would get turned on. A lot of people hear this and say something along the lines of, “Well that is why you should never spank someone past puberty.” I have news for you. It didn’t start at puberty. If it had, I might have been able to understand that it was something sexual or weird. It started by my earliest memories of being spanked. I remember it every time I remember getting spanked. I just thought it was part of the deal. It wasn’t until I learned about sexual arousal as an adult that I understood it.

Imagine how disgusting it would be to grow up thinking something was normal only to find out that your parents were causing you to be sexually aroused while hurting you on a daily basis for your entire childhood and occasionally in your teens.

The trauma this caused me really can’t be properly described. I don’t have the words to explain how it feels to this day.

So to anyone considering spanking their children, just please, please don’t. It is not worth the risk to their bodies or their emotional and sexual health. Sure it may not affect every child this way, but if it does affect your child that way you will probably never know and never be able to even say you are sorry much less make it right. It is a form of sexual abuse to some children at least and now you know it.

Why would you take the risk of sexually abusing your own child?

*****

Janet’s Story

I was being spanked for squirming while being spanked for getting mad while being spanked for throwing my math book on the floor because I desperately wanted to understand but no one could explain in words I could grasp.

Sure, throwing a textbook on the floor and sobbing in frustrated rage isn’t going to further my education. But neither is spanking my eight year old self for expressing my utter rage that I didn’t have someone who could help me understand. I desperately wanted to learn and most things came easy for me, but math wasn’t that way.

It had been easy for my mom in grade school and high school, so she didn’t have the words to explain to my stumped mind. When I would slam my book shut and cry because the frustration was so great I physically hurt, I was ushered into the bedroom, my skirt hiked up, my underwear dragged down, and I was spanked – first for one thing, then another, then another. Compound spankings lasting sometimes as long as an hour were a common element of my growing up years. I can remember getting five, six, even seven separate spankings all in a row because each time I wouldn’t fully “surrender.” I remember my mom sobbing while she spanked me, saying how she just wanted me to submit — all I needed to do was let her break my will and it would be over. Too bad breaking wasn’t my cup of tea.

First it was a fiberglass stick, until it got too short to sting because it had been broken over my bare backside too many times. Then it was a wooden spoon. Several, actually, because they kept breaking too.

Different families have different methods for how they spank. Some say pants on, some say pants off. Some determine it based on how severe the infraction was. For me it was always sans-underwear, no matter what.

For a young child raised in the extreme end of purity culture (short sleeves were immodest until my parents “loosened up” and allowed them when I was around 10), demanding that your child strip naked from the waist down for punishment (often doing it herself) was incredibly confusing and embarrassing. In retrospect, being naked in front of my mother or father was worse for me than the spanking itself, because it was so ingrained in me that good Christian girls must cover themselves from neck to wrist to ankle.

Spankings became a time when I was not only physically hurt, but also forced against my will to show my body — something that only the wicked hell-bound world did.

My early childhood memories are a strange jumble and sometimes I wonder if I’ve really remembered everything correctly. Were the spankings really that bad? Really that scarring? Sometimes I’m tempted to pass memories off as creative embellishment, since I have a vibrant imagination.

But then I remember the two things that began so young I can’t remember a time without them: spankings and masturbation. Maybe there wasn’t a link at the very beginning – somewhere around the age of two or three, I think – but there was soon enough. I masturbated to self-soothe after spankings. Then, whenever I was trying to survive those moments in which I waited in dread of the impending spanking. Eventually I did it when I was frustrated too, or just plain bored.

I began to imagine being spanked to arouse myself (though it’s weird to type the word “arouse” since I had no grasp of what was even happening). I pictured myself being forced to strip, doing things that I hated, that made me feel sick, vulnerable, and ashamed, feeling the burning hits on my bottom. I imagined it in vivid detail as I would touch my little five year old body. Yes, you read that right: five. Maybe I imagined it even earlier than that – I don’t remember. But it went on for years.

Before I knew the slightest thing about sexuality I’d already spent nearly ten years masturbating to the equivalent of BDSM fantasies — all inspired by the spankings I endured.

I still can’t find the words to express what that childhood was like. Whatever your personal opinion is on BDSM, I think we can all agree that it’s not healthy in the context of a five year old’s everyday imagination! It’s taken me years to break that mental link between physical pain/humiliation and sexuality.

Of course my parents knew none of this. They caught me masturbating once or twice and were at a complete loss for what to do. I think they probably tried to deny that I was even masturbating. Nor did they know what to do when they discovered that at the age of nine I was making out with other girls my age. “That’s a sin,” they would say, “don’t do that.” They probably prayed and cried a lot, and talked in hushed tones about what to do, but they never made the connection in their mind. They still don’t know why I did it or what I

My parents really did love me and I know they were only spanking me because they thought that’s what God wanted them to do. Would they even believe me now if I told them? I don’t blame them as much as I blame the generally held belief among fundamentalist Christians that if you spank your children nothing will go wrong. Something went very wrong with me.

So tell me, readers:

Am I the only one who laid in bed at night masturbating to the thought of my parents forcing me to strip from the waist down and lay down defenseless in front of them so they could spank me? Am I as alone as I feel?

Hurts Me More Than You: Jessie’s Story

October 3, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

Jessie’s Story

Childhood Recollection

You know where the best place to color is? The walls. You know where the biggest canvas in all of creation? The walls.

You know where you get punished for coloring?

The walls!

Can you guess where your stubborn, imaginative baby’s gonna draw anyway? You guessed it baby. The temptation’s too strong. Even when your parents tell you not to, even when you know a spanking will follow. The urge to fill those empty dull spaces with the marks of your creative genius are too powerful to be denied.

Pain is a baffling thing, how it’s subjective and personal and always in flux, and apparently always “your own fault.” As the blows fall, some tiny voice in the brain braces against the sting with the mantra of “only have to make it to ten.”

Experience has taught that around the 10th you stop feeling the pain. The sting won’t bite so hard and the following burn won’t scorch so badly. “Hold your breath,” I tell myself… sometimes it doesn’t hurt so badly if you hold your breath, and with face down in their scratchy comforter I try to hang on. But then I’m betrayed by my own body. I was expecting a sensory overload and a full shutdown to see me through this ordeal. But I’ve never been swatted so many times, and at the thirteenth strike I’m ambushed by the pain again. The walls of ‘otherwhere’ I’ve built to protect me in this moment collapse inward and I’m drug under the burning blinding pain. Everything’s on fire, I’m on fire, in fact in that moment I could believe I’m made of fire.

That’s when the screaming truly starts. To her credit, my mother doesn’t shush me. She goes about her work of discipline as I go about mine of endurance. All told, there are twenty blows- accumulated for each time I draw on the walls. If I disobey again, there will be twenty-one in store for me. She has me sit beside her on the bed when it’s done, on my newly scorched flesh. We pray and she looks grim but determined to win this struggle. She reminds me that “we” agreed to this and I nod still crying.

I am seven years old, and I agreed this.

I’m seven years old, and I agreed to this… apparently.

Adult Retrospection

When you’re a strong-willed child you learn so many things about spanking, about discipline in general. It becomes both the axis and guiding star to nearly every aspect of your life and your parents. Everything’s a battle of wills that your parents are going to win, no matter the cost.

I was spanked so many times growing up, and for so many reasons. I can say it was usually done in an emotionally restrained fashion. But I also can recall times I was hit from a state of rage. Once I was picked up by my lapels and shook. While my mother screamed that she wanted to throw me through the screen door onto the hood of our family car. I reminded her of that incident in my adult years … she didn’t remember, and chuckled as she hoped I had forgiven her. The worst spanking I ever received was for drawing on the walls. She set down an arrangement with me when I was seven, for every instance of vandalism I would receive an extra swat. I took twenty (20) blows before I plain stopped drawing altogether.

The chief instrument was a series of hard plastic cooking spoons. They sat next to the stove in a large wooden vase, like a bouquet of pain. To this day the sound of a spoon being drawn from the bunch causes my brothers and I to visibly flinch. My mother used to complain that I never wanted to learn to cook, but I wanted to be as far from those spoons as possible. Once I spoke to a school councilor about the spankings. It felt surreal, and when I told my mother, I had to spend the rest of the day comforting her.

As an adult I can actually withstand her screaming now. It’s easy to drift away and not care if she yells herself hoarse.

Though I spend a fair amount of time wondering if she’ll slap me … and if this time I’ll actually slap her back.

Hurts Me More Than You: Traveler’s Story

October 2, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial TeamLeave a comment

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

Additional trigger warning for Traveler’s story: descriptions of self-injury.

*****

Traveler’s Story

Here are the lessons I learned from spanking:

1) Suppress your conscience; avoid the consequences of your actions.

When I was very, very young, I unrolled a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom and then left the mess behind when I got distracted by something else. The mess was discovered, and I feared being spanked if I was implicated. Instead of confessing, I asked “what will happen to the person who says they did it?”

“Nothing except they will have to clean it up,” my mother responded.

“Oh, well in that case, I did it,” I said, and gladly cleaned my mess.

With the fear of violence removed, I was happy to answer my own conscience and fix my mistake.

2) You can’t make up for your mistakes; you can only suffer for them.

One morning, I was late starting homeschool because I had gotten distracted during my chores. It didn’t matter if I was sorry, or if I promised to do better, or if I made my bed on time for the rest of the week, or if I even offered to do other chores to make up for it. Forgiveness could not be obtained from my mother until she hit me until I cried. I truly wanted to make my mother happy and to do right by her. But, a spanking taught me that there was no way to make things right anymore.

The only way for me to be forgiven and returned to my valued place in the family was to submit to physical pain.

3) Violence and humiliation can be deserved.

When my family rejected me as an adult for my sexuality, I began to abuse myself. I thought of it as a method of atonement. I would beat my shins against a table to raise welts and bruises. I would scratch at the skin on my stomach, upper thighs, and arms to make myself bleed.

I felt like I deserved to hurt.

I deserved violence. I deserved humiliation. I deserved emotional abuse.

And why shouldn’t I? My family had always taught me never to let anyone hurt me. But yet, they crossed those boundaries repeatedly when I was a child. I learned that there were situations where violence, humiliation, and a lack of self-respect were deserved.

Is it so hard to imagine that these toxic thoughts could have carried over into my adulthood?

Hurts Me More Than You: glor and Gary’s Stories

October 1, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

glor’s Story

My father’s study was a terrifying room, from birth until I moved out of the house. I’m sure it still is for my siblings. But I seem to have been the only one to get as much pain there that I did. I try not to think about why that is, because it’s a long, dark, ugly road. But it stands: my father beat me, though not with a rod. He started with a belt, and moved to a wooden spoon and then “the paddle.” It was one of those cutting boards, oak, I think… 5”x8” or so and about an inch thick. It was terrible.

It was terrible not just because I was getting smacked with a giant board – but because I became intimately acquainted with how it felt on bare skin. Yeah, bottomless. A lot of boundaries that should have existed were ruined when that thing came into the family. There’s a lot more I could say on that, but… that memory section has mostly vanished into the depths of my PTSD.

What hasn’t is the non-hitting corporal punishment: the physical labor.

I was tasked with a lot of stuff that my brothers were not, since I was the girl and all. All the laundry, most of the dishes, making sure all the bedrooms were clean, and so on. One of my doctors has said that she thinks I have fibromyalgia because of the abuse and work I was made to do. I know some of you are thinking that that’s not possible. But try “being forced to manually turn a garden and plant bulbs in the middle of a Colorado October while sick with pneumonia.”

That is why corporal punishment is bad: not only are you hurting your kid in the immediate, but you lose all sense of boundaries the child should have… like helping them to be healthy instead of seeing them as someone you can force to do things because they’re terrified of being punished.

Trust me… while I’m not physically still being punished [I moved out seven years ago], it’s still punishing me. Through my PTSD, my flashbacks, and the nightmares where I wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

I may be free from more, but I will be punished the rest of my life by what I’ve already experienced… thanks to corporal punishment.

*****

Gary’s Story

I never heard my parents say anything even remotely close to “It hurts me more than you.”

For one thing my “spankings” were very rarely thought out. They were rarely “punishment” for some infraction, they were most often spontaneous beatings by my enraged father, enraged for any number of trivial reasons.

One episode demonstrates this best.

I was nine years old.

My father had been hired on a contract basis to clear brush from 180 acres of forest land. The man who owned the land assumed that my father would be working this job himself. Of course this was far from true. My father would wait till he knew the man was not in town, pile all us kids into the van, drive us to the land and work us, for a solid eight or more hours. Unpaid. Under the radar. During school hours.

“This IS your “schooling” he would say, “Learning how to work”.

This kind of thing was standard for my childhood, and one of the major reasons we were homeschooled. Work. Hard work. Unpaid work. Grueling work. Dangerous work. Mind numbing work.

Not chores. Not house hold duties.

Work. Real work. Work with chainsaws and lumber, work with shovels and rakes and hoes. Work that left blisters.

Work that my father was paid for on a “per job” basis.

Work us children never got a dime for.

All of this work was made possible only because we were homeschooled, because we could be worked 8-10 hours a day any time of the year.

It was early spring. Snow still held the shadows under the trees in an icy grip. As we headed into the forest to work, breath puffing in the cold predawn air, my father turned to me and said: “I forgot the gas for the chainsaw, go back and get it out of the van, and don’t dawdle.”

His voice was level and normal, showing absolutely no sign of the rage to come. I walked back, walked carefully, one foot in front of the other. Why? Because we were on a rutted logging road, and the deep ruts were filled with water several inches deep, crusted over with a thin film of ice.

And my boots were old and full of holes, passed down from 3 siblings before they got to me. I had never owned a new pair of shoes. Not once. My first pair of new shoes was bought for me by my Grandparents when I was 12 years old, so I wouldn’t have to wear ragged sneakers to their 50th wedding anniversary. I knew that if I got my feet wet I would work in the cold and snow for 8 or more hours with wet feet. No question about it. So I walked carefully, one foot in front of the other down the ridges between the water filled ruts.

This, was apparently, “dawdling.”

I heard an enraged scream from behind me, and turned just in time to see my father rip an ice encrusted tree limb from the frozen ground, it was a big one, two and a half feet long and twice as thick as a broom handle.

The beating went on for about 30 seconds.

Do you know how many times a enraged man can swing a club in 30 seconds?

Do you know what kind of damage it does to a 9 year old boys body when swung with the full force of grown man’s work hardened muscles?

That night my mother was worried enough about what she had seen to ask me to “show her”. Even she recoiled in shock.

I was covered in now black bruises about three inches wide from my lower calves to my lower back. At least 30 blows had rained down on my skinny frame.

This kind of beating didn’t happen all that frequently. But I still have nightmares at least twice a year. At 31 years old I still wake up with clenched teeth and a racing heart. In my dreams, I am small and helpless.

In my dreams I cannot escape. In my dreams my father is beating me.

Hurts Me More Than You: Dom and Scout’s Stories

October 1, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

Dom’s Story

They did everything right.

It was never in anger. We were told exactly why it was happening. They made us hug them afterwards. They said “I love you” during the act. My parents abused us exactly the way they were told to. You’d never guess. We were well-behaved, happy kids. My parents are loving and supportive.

And yet, they spanked me. And though they did everything “right,” though they did exactly what the Christian leaders told them to do, they did abuse us. To admit that to myself is jarring.

Most of my adult life I’ve been a spanking apologist. After all, look at me. I am okay. I don’t hate my parents. I am a well-reasoned adult. But that was before my life fell apart. Before my psyche imploded. Some mental breakdowns, suicide attempts and ideation, panic attacks, psychotic breaks, and a PTSD diagnosis later, I’m wiser now and have been able to admit to myself the damage that has been done to me. Not all of my problems are due to spanking. But the fact of the matter is, no matter how much my parents said they loved me, no matter how “right” they did it, spanking broke me.

They claimed that was never the goal. But that’s what it did.

I didn’t realize it was abuse until I let myself remember. When I remembered through the lens of absue, memories that had not made sense fell into place. I’d had homicidal thoughts towards my parents while I listened to the cries of my siblings. Fear gripped me physically in what I now realize was probably a panic attack. Perhaps the most confusing part is that my parents weren’t abusive otherwise. They occasionally yelled. But mostly they listened and loved us well.

Most of my childhood memories are happy ones. Perhaps that is why when they hit us, it broke me. The incongruity scarred the deepest levels of my soul. One of my closest friends recently admonished me that not everyone in my life is trying to hurt me. It hit me then that I live like that, without even realizing it. I let people get closer than they ought to and yet am constantly expecting them to hurt me – especially the people I let in the farthest. Not all of my problems are from spanking.

But I was spanked the “right” way. And it still broke me.

*****

Scout’s Story

Additional trigger warning: sexual abuse

My parents did spanking “right.”

They never spanked in anger, never with excessive force, and always explained what I had done wrong. I didn’t feel traumatized by spanking, because I knew I deserved it. When I was 3 or 4 years old, I remember my mother spanking me for some childish infraction. She had tears streaming down her face, as she told me how she hated to do this, but she had to, because she loved me. By the time my little sister came along, she was able to hit us ten or more times, without a twinge of emotion on her face. She had finally learned to love us correctly.

But it didn’t work–sure we got complimented on being well behaved kids, but most of our behavior revolved around not getting hit. Not being humiliated, naked and crying, in front of that increasingly cold face. We got better at it, and more creative. We coped by becoming skilled hiders and liars. We knew how sinful we were–how many more times we deserved to be hit, then we actually were.

By the time I was 12, I snapped. I realized that the person designated by God to dole out the punishment was given the job, not by virtue of their goodness, but by virtue of being bigger and more powerful. I was strong and nearly as tall as my punishers, now. The day I wrestled the wooden paddle out of my mother’s grasp, and told her, voice quivering in anger, that if she ever hit me again, I would beat her without mercy, I became a monster–but at least I was my own monster. Heavenly retribution came however, several years later, in the form of the middle aged man, pinning my teenage body onto the bed, telling me that I deserved this, because I dressed like a whore and wore too much makeup. And I didn’t scream, because I knew I deserved it.

God surely didn’t enjoy this, but he must hurt me, because he loves me.

Spanking teaches children that it is ok for someone to violate their body and hurt them, if that person truly loves them. It teaches them that they are evil, and worthy of abuse.

Spanking teaches children that violence is love.

Hurts Me More Than You: Sophia and Odessa’s Stories

October 1, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

Sophia’s Story

My mom said that she received smacks on the head by her mom with a ruler as a child, but not very often, because she always “learned from her mistakes.”

I was spanked so often because I was a “strong-willed child,” and refused to learn from mine.

I didn’t mean not to learn. I just wasn’t ever sure of what it was I was supposed to be learning. I’ve blocked most of these episodes out, but there are a few that stick in my memory. There was the time I was 8 and my sister was 6, and my father was convinced that we had deliberately killed his favorite plant in our garden. He took the “rod,” a zingy rubber object, marketed by a Mennonite company specifically for spankings, and told us to go to my sister’s room.

All spankings were bad, but we particularly hated “The Rod.” When my mom first jubilantly returned from a homeschooling convention with it, my dad tested it on a stack of newspapers, cutting through several of them with a moderate hit. That afternoon, my dad decided to use it on us to force us to confess that we’d killed his plant (which we’d never touched. It probably died because it was the wrong kind of plant in the wrong kind of climate.)

He alternated between us two bare-bottomed little girls, zinging each of us repeatedly, giving us an opportunity to confess, and then zinging us again.

We cried and cried until my sister decided to make up a confession, but she didn’t understand what she was confessing to (because she’d done nothing wrong). This made my dad madder, and he continued until he got tired, then sent us to our rooms to “think about what we’d done”.

My mom found me in my room later, sobbing and reading Lamentations. I picked Lamentations because my Sunday School teacher told me the word meant a deep expression of sorrow. I hoped it would make me feel better, but I was pretty sure God wasn’t there anyways.

I may have only been 8, but I already knew about fear, and pain, and hate, and injustice, and wishing I could die.

*****

Odessa’s Story

“If you only had listened..”

“The Bible commands it..”

“What if you had broken the instruments they used or threw them away? Then they couldn’t have hit you any more!”

I was powerless and indoctrinated to believe I deserved it and was rebellious for not wanting it over quickly. Society says I should have had power and told someone, yet the culture I lived in has repeatedly informed me that I should have listened and I never would have been hit, not even once.

Those who use the Bible to justify hitting their children, stop. It is time for a re-evaluation of what the Bible really says. It’s time to ask deep questions of yourselves.

Those of you secular parents, please reconsider.

It doesn’t matter how fast, how hard, or with which instrument you use – whether it’s your hand, or something else entirely – spanking your children truly does damage their very heart, soul and mind; not to mention their little bodies.

You may not think you will ever harm your child. If you are hitting them, you are every single time you lay a hand or instrument on their little bodies.

The truth has been repeated often for over 30 years: Spanking leaves long-lasting effects on children.

No matter how calmly or “biblically” you spank, you are still damaging your children. The Bible never actually commands spanking, not once. That the quote “spare the rod, spoil the child” is from a bawdy poem called “Hudibras” and is talking about sex, and the “rod” in the Bible was a symbol of parental or ruling authority, denoting discipline; not physical harm. It makes me wonder how a sexual poem came to justify child abuse and was conflated with the Bible.

Here are a few things your child may experience, or are at high risk for, if they are spanked:

Alcohol or Drug dependency
Asthma
Attachment Disorders
Auto-immune Disorders
Cancer
Cardiac Disease
Decreased Language Skills
Externalizing behaviour
Mental Disorders or Emotional Disorders (Aggression, Low Self-Esteem, Oppositional or Anti-social behaviour)
Poor moral internalisation/regulation
Reduced Empathy
Suicide or Suicidal Ideation

Please reconsider your discipline methods if corporal punishment is one of them and talk (often!) with your children. No one deserves to be harmed by their parent for any ideology, even if it is part of your culture. If you truly want world peace, it starts with your babies.

Hurts Me More Than You: Darcy’s Story

October 1, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

*****

They Spanked Me “Right”: Darcy’s Story

My parents disciplined us “right” — just like the books said.

They were always calm and loving, rarely spanking out of anger. They truly loved us and believed that if they did not punish for wrong-doing with a spanking, we would not turn into good, moral people. They were not selfish and did nothing for their own benefit, but for ours.

Usually, a discipline session would start when one of us would do something wrong. This could be any infraction from “back-talking” to disobedience to lying. And “back-talking” could mean anything other than “yes, ma’am”. Because obedience should be instant and cheerful with no negotiating or it’s not true obedience. We could not have an opinion, only first-time obedience.

We would get sent to our parent’s room to wait til it was convenient to them to come discipline us. There were times when they’d forget they sent us there. Then they’d feel guilty and let us off the hook.

We often hoped they’d forget about us.

We’d sit there waiting in mental agony. One of them would come into the room, sit us on their lap when we were little, or when we were older, just sit next to us on the bed. They somberly explain that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child and a spanking will drive it far from us. That children are to obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right. That they had to spank us because they had to obey God and God wanted them to punish our sin, just like God punishes their sins. Then we’d lay on the bed, often with our pants off since pants provided cushion from the blows, and get 3-4 swats with a wooden spoon or switch, never their hands (although hands were last resort if they couldn’t find a wooden spoon). If we resisted at all, it would be another 3-4 swats for not submitting to the deserved punishment.

I had a very difficult time laying there still while being hit so I often got double or triple spankings.

Submission and a broken will were just as important as the punishment for our sins. After all, if your heart is not right, what good will a punishment do? They’d then hug us for a while, tell us they loved us, that they had to do this because they loved us and loved God and wanted to obey God. I remember seeing tears in their eyes on occasion.

When they said “this hurts me more than it hurts you” I believe they really believed that and that it really did hurt them.

Not everyone trapped in fundamentalism can completely shut off their hearts.

I often sat there in rage waiting for my parents to come spank me, angry at myself for getting caught or not being able to keep my mouth shut, making myself feel better by plotting all kinds of revenge on them. I have a very distinct memory of being 6 years old and laying on my bed after a spanking, rage consuming me, longing for the day when I was bigger and stronger and I could hit them back, dreaming of all the violent things I would do to my mom. This made me feel overwhelmingly guilty yet satisfied at the same time.

The very last time I was spanked, I was 13 years old. I had “back-talked” to my mom, and in a fury she sent me to my room. She came in to spank me and I initially tried to submit, but I couldn’t take it any more. I was taller than her by that time. I turned around and tried to grab the spoon, defending myself. She became even more enraged, but I also sensed her surprise. We repeated this multiple times, both of us crying, until she gave up and told me to stay there til my dad came home. Hours later, Dad came into the room and sat down. I was sullen and depressed. But, for the first time, I realized that I was able to stop them now and this elated me. Dad talked to me, I don’t remember what was said or if I was even listening at that point, but that was the end of the day-long discipline battle. They never tried spanking me again. My other siblings weren’t spanked past 8 or 9 years old.

My parents were often asked “How do you get your kids to obey like they do? Your children are so well-behaved!” They’d smile and counsel other parents on godly discipline. I smiled on the outside like the good girl I was, but on the inside I seethed and thought “if only you and they knew that we’re just really good at not getting caught.”

Spanking and authoritarian parenting didn’t make us “good kids”.

It made us sneakier kids, clever kids, kids who knew how to play the system to get what we wanted and avoid what we didn’t.

I daresay that when people proclaim “My parents spanked us right, never in anger”, they would describe a spanking like my parents practiced. And perhaps their parents were like mine, good people duped into thinking that if they didn’t punish and control their children, those children would end up rebels, perverts, and in jail. They took literally the proverb that promised if children are beaten, their souls would be saved from hell. Parents like mine were not the abusers you read about: people who were perverted and got off on beating their kids. They were not evil. Yet they practiced abusive parenting techniques because they listened to the wrong people, accepted fear as a motivator, and gave in to the tantilizing promise that they could direct their children’s future “in the way they should go”.

They made the wrong choices for all the right reasons.

Stories of horrendous abuse abound in our circles, but I write this to show that abuse happened even among the non-extreme families, inflicted by the parents who only wanted good for their kids. That abuse in discipline is not just physical but often psychological and almost always spiritual.

I saw what I now know to be glimpses of empathy and doubt in my parents, the logic inherent in them trying to get through the illogical spiritual abuse of the system that they were in, that they were inflicting on their kids. It’s not so easy to just be angry at them when I see them as victims of pervasive spiritual abuse. Yet they did have a choice.

They chose that abusive system, a system that hurt them and hurt their children.

Eventually much later, they chose to leave it. But that was not before the damage had been done, damage I and my siblings and my parents are still recovering from a decade later. My story and others like mine are complicated. The emotions that follow us are complicated. Rage and anger are mixed with empathy and forgiveness, and there’s no telling which one of those will come out on any given day — as memories come to the surface and our stories are processed and healed. I have given myself permission to feel them all, without trying to justify my feelings to myself.

Yes, they loved me. But they also hurt me. One of those is not more real than the other.

My parents spanked us “right”. Yet it was all still so very wrong.