by Patricia Bunch

Created on: March 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 11, 2009

In the dangerous society our children are born into nowadays, they have to be protected from everyone. Yes, in far too many cases even their parents. Children should have the information to be free to report "spanking" to someone, because spanking leads to beatings. When does a parent get up one morning and say, today is the day to stop spanking, whipping; whatever one decides to label striking a child physically as a way of training a child to behave.

Physically striking a child brings physical pain and emotional hurt to a tender heart. Is that the message loving parents want to send to a child? Surely not. I maintain striking a child is not done out of love, but out of frustration and anger. I speak now from experience, both as the receiving child and a parent who has struck my own child. For that I am ashamed and see the damage I have done. Training and teaching appropriate behavior is the goal in child rearing and is done through love and positive reinforcement, not brutality.

Rearing children takes an enormous amount of patience and training to be able to do it effectively so the child is raised with a positive set of valves and a zest for life. From my own experience, I had children before I was ready to rear them for their benefit. I was too young to begin with, I was in an emotional battle with my own parents, my life was in turmoil and to that turmoil I added a child. I loved the child with all my heart, but love is not enough to keep one from losing control and doing things one is later sorry for. When a baby grows to be a toddler, and needs to be trained, time-out has been proved to work much better than striking a child and instilling fear into a child. The only method of discipline and training I knew anything about was spanking. When that didn't work, I became frustrated and angry and spanked harder. How I wish my child had been able to report me, even to my own mother who might have been wise enough to give me directions of how to successfully put better parenting skills into practice so my child would not have been hurt. My child had my love, as well as my discipline in spanking, and I feel blessed she and I have a wonderful relationship today, thirty years later; however I carry the guilt of not being a better parent when she was in her young, tender years.

It took the intervention of some close friends she and I made while I was going through the difficult divorce from her father to bring about a realization in me of the harm I was inflicting

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>