As a kid, I was not allowed to throw tantrums. When I was so young I can barely remember it, I learned that showing anger or even, sometimes, sadness resulted in a timeout at best and a spanking at worst.
Like many religious parents, mine believed in spanking because the Bible apparently commanded it. Or whatever. They never did it out of anger. I don’t remember more than five or six spankings in my entire young life.
My parents really thought they were doing this extremely common practice in a responsible and nonabusive way. But that didn’t make anything easier for me. I became terrified of getting a spanking — and therefore terrified of showing anger, sadness, or anxiety.
Yet my anxiety grew exponentially with every year that passed.
I also grew fearful of my father, whose spankings actually hurt (my mom’s didn’t). As loving as he was in the peaceful times, I always knew that a spanking could happen from my slightest misstep.
I overanalyzed his every mood, hoping and praying that I hadn’t done anything wrong on a given day.
I also learned how to tell a lie and hold it tight inside. My honest little brother didn’t, and he got spanked more than I did.
I did not truly relax and become happy until the spankings stopped when I was about 8 years old.
Despite my negative experience with spanking, as I grew into adulthood, I accepted it as a necessary and natural part of parenting.
I planned to use it on my own children
I thought the world’s problems could be solved if everyone had just gotten spanked as a child.
It’s a pretty screwed-up mindset. And it all changed the day I gave birth to my son.
When I held my newborn in my arms, I realized that I could never, ever hit him. It took almost a year for me to tell my parents that I would not be doing what they so believed should be done.
And if I’m being completely honest, I was actually terrified that my son would grow up to be a spoiled brat or a serial killer if I didn’t hit him or use timeouts.
When he was in the throes of the very challenging, occasionally utterly terrible twos and I responded to his anger with compassion and space, my parents were flummoxed and disapproving.
But he’s 3 now, almost 4, and I kid you not, he can express his emotions light years better than I can.
Because you know all those tantrums I couldn’t throw as a child?
Yeah… I threw them as a teenager and young adult.
I kicked a hole in a wall
I punched the floor, cracking my pinkie finger. I slammed doors and slashed lines through my skin with a box-cutting knife. I rammed my head against a bedpost in rage and the utter inability to let my emotion and anger out in any other way. I screamed at the sky until my throat was so raw I tasted blood.
Thankfully, this all happened before I ever got pregnant. And while I’m older now and can channel my strong emotions in nonviolent ways, my deeply rooted anger issues still affect my marriage.
There’s hope, though, because I realize now that in choosing to parent my son without violence, I have also chosen to embrace the sad, scared child inside of me and parent her without violence, too.
It has been one of the greatest joys of my life to watch my 3-year-old express himself to me
If I tell him it’s time to leave the park and go home, he says, “I frustrated!”
If something on a kids’ show freaks him out, he screeches and shouts, “I too scared!”
When his beloved grandma leaves after a fun stay at our home, he weeps and says, “I sad.”
When I don’t let him have a toy he wants, he says, “I angry!!”
He isn’t afraid to express all his emotions and opinions with me. That doesn’t mean he always gets what he wants, but it does mean that I let him be who he is and feel what he feels, as long as he isn’t hurting anyone.
And he doesn’t. He doesn’t push, hit, kick, or shove. When I fall, he bends down and says, “Are you OK, Mama?”
When I tell him my back hurts, he says, “I help you. I be a doctor.”
When I get frustrated and let out a growl because the internet is acting up, he gives me a knowing look and says, “You frustrated, Mama?”
And I remember to take a deep breath and say, “Yes, I’m frustrated! Deep breaths help.”
Because finally I understand that it’s OK to be frustrated, it’s OK to be angry, mad, sad, scared, and anxious.
These emotions don’t need to be spanked out of our children
And really, when you spank a child, all you do is push those emotions into a deep place where they’ll be trapped. Sometimes for years.
But one day, they’ll emerge and they will be ugly.
I promise, it’s not worth it.
So I have never hit my child.
Not once.
Not when he went through a biting phase as a 1-year-old. Not when he was a 2-year-old running into the street after I’d told him not to. Not when he was a young 3-year-old wreaking havoc at a library storytime.
Now he is an almost-4-year-old whose empathy amazes me every day.
Of course, he has his moments. But don’t we all, whether we’re 4 or 40?
And kids, more than anyone else, don’t deserve to be punished for feelings and behaviors that parents don’t like.
They have literally been on this earth just a handful of years. Their brains and bodies are still rapidly growing and maturing.
The biggest gift we can give them is to show them how to deal with emotions in healthy ways.
So please, let’s stop normalizing spanking of any kind
Science shows that it harms far more than it helps.
All my life I have dealt with anxiety and panic attacks, which I believe are the direct result of the fear I lived with every day as a young child.
This has been hard for my parents to hear, but they’re growing to understand why I chose the path I did.
They see the proof that spanking isn’t necessary in the beautiful, bold, and caring eyes of my child.
If you’re still spanking, you can stop anytime. There are so many tools you can use instead. Just Google “how to parent without spanking” and you’ll find everything you need.
As for those of you who are religious, think about this: We don’t stone people to death in this day and age. We don’t smite people for disagreeing with us. We don’t turn people into pillars of salt for looking back at a beloved home.
So let’s ditch the violent rod, too.
