Saturday, September 29, 2012

It's NOT "Just a Spanking"!

OK - for a long time now, I have been hearing people defend spanking as "not violent" or "not abusive". I just read somewhere (no, I am not linking it), that spanking a two year old in diapers isn't abusive because it doesn't raise red welts....

That brings to mind one of my earliest memories...I am sitting in a high chair with cold oatmeal, in my diaper (a thick 70s cloth diaper, with rubber pa
nts over it). I am supposed to finish the oatmeal - my mother is yelling at me to finish, but it's cold and disgusting, and it sticks to my mouth, and I am not hungry.

She yanks me out of the chair from behind, turns me upside down, spanks me with her bare hand - hard! - several times, and then slaps me back into my high chair - hard, and it HURT!!!!

Just a simple spanking, right? So why can I still remember it, as though it just happened, feel the pain of the blows and the terror of moving uncontrolled through the air, my assailant known but her face unseen? Is this why I am still terrified of falling - of the sudden loss of control that accompanies it?

I was reliably out of diapers, I have been told, before I was 3. I am 43 now.

There are ways to wound that leave no welts....no marks at all that can be seen from the outside.

What to a parent might seem like a simple spanking, done and forgotten within moments (especially in a home like mine, where spankings and far worse were almost daily occurrences), is never so to the child. It is being outpowered and hurt by someone too big to fight. It is abuse.

If you object to my calling it this, maybe ask yourself if you would want someone twice your size to grab you and spank you - bare hand or not, diaper or not.

Would a spanking teach you a lesson, if done to you now? Would that lesson be the one the spanker intended you to learn?

It is illegal to strike an adult against their will. Children are smaller and dependent upon their parents....it is inhumane to strike a child. Period.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great article. Thanks for sharing your experience. I had similar experiences that I can't forget. Hitting is hitting. There are a lot of other ways to train a child. People seem to think that it has to be drastic (physical) or it won't work. There are many parents with good kids that don't spank, but use other methods. You are so totally right, hitting is not appropriate on such little tender people. What the parent thinks was effective and temporary, might still be in the child's mind for life.