I love this quote. How many people have vowed to
never be like their parents and then wind up being exactly like them? It is fate or kizmit. We do have no control over that. It is our destiny. We each have one parent who we are like. For me, I have traits from both.
In the end, we become everything we swore we wouldn't be.
I identified traits in my father I wanted to avoid and was successful. For me, as a parent, I have been successful in
not being a parent like my father. My mother on the other hand was always kind, patient and compassionate. I have been more like her than him.
My dad was absent from most of my life. He worked all the time. If he wasn't working, he was sleeping or getting drunk. There have been fewer than ten days in my children's life when they haven't seen me. My father was an alcoholic. He drank every day and was inebriated frequently. I bought a 12-pack of beer before Thanksgiving one year. Those 12 bottles lasted ~24 months. My father spanked me until I was twelve years old. When he did it, it was out of frustration. His spankings were what psychologists refer to as adult temper tantrums. I chose to include spankings in my parenting because I know it works. I found that with four children, some needed it and some did not. Not every child behaves the same way.
When I used that parenting tool, I sent the misbehaving child to his or her room to give both the child and me a time to cool off in the event tempers rose. Then, I would go to their room and have a conversation. I would ask them three questions:
What did you do wrong?
How can you correct your behavior in the future?
What sort of punishment should you receive?
Most of the time, when they answered the third question, I went with their suggestion. I might modify it slightly, but I like the child to have some say in the matter. If I believed the suggested punishment did not fit the offense, I would go with my idea which may or may not include spanking. Once the child reached a certain age, spanking was removed from the parenting tool kit. This was between ages 3 and 6. After a while I found that the benefit of spanking no longer existed.
Once I stopped this form of punishment, then the
threat of spanking became an effective tool. You cannot threaten something you have never done. There is no teeth in the threat without it.
When my father spanked me it was an adult tantrum. When I did it, it was a calm professional conversation. There was not a lot of emotion involved and it was always done away from the other children. They may have known what was going on, which lends itself to helping with the fear of the punishment.
Today, my children who are between the ages of 8 and 14 are very well behaved. I frequently receive compliments on their behavior. Many adults will not use spanking as a tool; mistakenly believing it is child abuse. This was considered true in the courtroom in the 1980s and 1990s. Children raised in those decades were not spanked and often times grew into spoiled entitled brats who have no comprehension of consequences. They deserve the best and will not settle for less. They have grown into parents believing the same. By the late 1990s, the courts overruled a previous court case that said any parent who spanks their child is committing child abuse. As a result of the later court case, if a child suffers permanent injury or excessive bruising, trauma or lacerations occur, then yes the act of spanking would be considered child abuse in the eyes of the law. It was never a case of child abuse for me either as the child or the parent. Even in his inebriated state, I was never permanently injured or scarred by his punishments.
Spanking teaches a child humility. In the absence of humility, a child can grow to become arrogant. Arrogance and humility are two sides of the same coin. You can counter too much of one, with an extra dose of the other. The way you counter excessive humiliation is with extra heapings of praise and encouragement; things that will increase confidence. Humble confidence is the desired behavior for a child in the eyes of his/her parent.
