Okay - some thoughts bout children and parenting and XYZ have been floating through my head for a while, and I want to write about them.... just my version of thinking outloud that I can preserve for myself.
I've always thought that kids were little people - heck, I call them little people half the time. It's - it's really a rather interesting way to look at kids - to really understand and - respect - really, their feelings/attitudes/viewpoints. I remember a while ago - most likely when I was with C's family for one reason or another, feeling so sad at how the kids were just - dismissed. Their feelings about a matter didn't seem to matter - it was like - you're short, so shuddup. And most of the time - it was about things that really, in the whole scope of things, didn't really matter. But - it's faster and easier and simpler to just ignore someone than it is to 'lower' yourself - physically and emotionally - to look at things from their point of view. And that applies to little people and big people - when you don't understand someone else, it's much easier to just dismiss them, and say that they must be wrong, and really, it doesn't matter, than it is to work with them and to learn and understand and respect them.
I've always known that all children do for the first few years of their life is learn how to be human - how to be people, basically. And that a huge part of parenting is being sure that you are teaching your kids the right things - by example, and by action. Each reaction to your child teaches them something, and I've realized that you really have to THINK about the implications of what you do - think that you don't know anything, and examine what YOU would learn from what you are about to do with/to/for your child. Kids are notoriously observant, and they pick up on things that some adults would never even notice.
I've been hanging around on crunchy parenting boards - and there is a very strong no-spanking attitude there - and spanking has always been the one parenting option that I have always been half and half on. Half because I was spanked, and honestly, I took it as a joke most of the time - a 'symbol' of punishment, that in the long run, meant jackall to me, besides giving me encouragement to insure that I didn't get caught. Half because - well, the whole teaching thing. Spanking is teaching your kids that it's okay to hit someone who is smaller than you, and who isn't doing what you want them to do.....and thinking of them as the perfect learners, and as little people - well, I've shifted almost totally onto the not-spanking side of the track.
I mean - how would I react if each time I did something that C didn't like, he hauled off and slapped my hand, or took a belt/strap and gave me a few licks? I would fight back like hell, is what I would do - and it certainly wouldn't improve our marriage, and it certainly wouldn't make me WANT to do whatever it was he wanted me to do in the first place.
I don't hit my cat when he does something wrong - what's the point of hitting him? He's not going to associate what he DID with getting hit - he's just going to cringe each time I try to rub him.
I don't want my kids to think that fighting is a wise option - I want them to consider physical violence against others as an option of not only LAST resort, but also of severe duress - how will including spanking as punishment show them that physical violence is the last resort - and is only done in severe duress? How will I teach them that it is unacceptable to hit their siblings and friends - when I, the person who is supposed to love them most - hits them 'because I love them'??
And then, there's the fact that spankings eeriely remind me (and almost always have - esp. when called 'whoopings') of slaves being beat on the plantation. I firmly believe that the slave experience has warped every generation of AfAms in America is ways we are (and most likely always WILL be) blind to, and beating my child because they did something that I don't approve of - well. It doesn't sound right - it sounds like an option to either beat the spirit out of them, and encourage fear and avoidance of authority - or an encouragement to lie, and conceal, and be sneaky, and be withdrawn.
It's - uncomfortable - thinking back on how white men and women did the same thing to my ancestors because they viewed them as little more than animals.
You don't beat horses or dogs or dolphins or whales or elephants or tigers or lions or bears to teach them discipline and how to follow instructions - and I'm starting to feel that using spanking as discipline is basically saying that a human child is less intelligent than those animals, and unable to learn what is and is not acceptable and expected without physical pain....
But at the same time - even with all that logic - I have no CLUE of how to actually disipline children without it! It's an on-going joke in black culture about how 'bad' most little white kids are because they don't get whoopings. The concept of a 'time-out' is considered a weak parenting resort - a way to turn your child into a little brat who throws tantrums and cusses at their parents and grows up to shoot up schools and start illegal wars.
Just a little tap on the behind will teach them - teach them what? That I can hurt them if they don't do what I want? Who wants to teach their kids that? Who wants to encourage their children to be little sadists in that pain will provide them control over other people? I would rather my child burn their hand on the stove, than me to spank them for trying to touch it - at least that way they will clearly understand the real danger - that momma was trying to protect me from something that hurts - rather than momma hurting me because I was doing something she doesn't want me to do.
*sigh*
It's REALLY hard, even thinking about this, and that troubles me SO much. Because - logically, I mean - come on! It makes perfect sense to NOT hit your kids. I mean - I'm going to do all that I can to protect them from pain everywhere ELSE in the world - and then I'm going to inflict pain on them to protect them from pain? *sigh* It's - stupid. It's - really, really stupid, actually - thinking about it logically.
And it's enourmously sad that I - and I think a lot of parents - simply don't KNOW any other way. I mean - really. If spanking wasn't considered so - so - okay - then people would work and look for other avenues to teach and to disipline their kids and it might make a difference. *sigh*
People always talk about how much 'badder' kids have gotten since they stopped doing corporal punishment in schools - but I think about what else has changed since then. How about the disintergration of the community and the extended family? How about all the crap we are pumping into the air and the food and the water? How about the violence that is shown and glorified on every channel of the TV - sometimes in such subtle ways that you don't even RELIZE there is violence occuring? How about the lack of attention most kids get from people who love them? How about the fact that kids don't play outside nearly as much anymore? I mean - shit, so much has changed in how kids are raised from then to now - how can any honest person point to corporal punishment and say - that's what the problem is?
*sigh* I'm really glad that I started thinking of this NOW - because it really is a mental shift. It's a mindchange to think of spanking as abuse - and interestingly enough, I think of it more as emotional abuse than physical. It's a real shift - even for me, who always thought of kids as little people - to realize that ya know what? I really SHOULD treat them the same way I want to be treated - and that if it's inhumane to beat a lion to train them - it's even more inhumane to beat a child.
It kinda scares me, and saddens me just how hard this is to process...and how I have to keep telling myself - I wouldn't hit a friend who was doing something I didn't like, I wouldn't hit my husband for doing something I didn't like, I wouldn't hit my boss for doing something that I didn't like, I wouldn't hit my cat for doing something I didn't like - why on the birght green Earth would I hit my child - who, besides the cat, understands the LEAST about what is expected of a little person?
It's really amazing - out of everything that I want to do around childrearing - this is the most radical.
ETA: And can I tell you how intensely uncomfy and scared and wondering it makes me that every time I talk/think/ponder spanking, my ass starts to tingle? And no, it's not even vaguely sexual or in a good way.... it's just - odd. It feels like a physical memory, and that bothers me deeply - esp. considering how nonchalant I feel about having been spanked.
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