If you ‘hit’ your kids, you are doing parenting wrong and I know why

I still have nightmares about my dad taking off his belt.

Thankfully, not to remove his pants, but to ask me to “reach out” so he could slap the leather strap on my open palm.

The soft, open palm of a child.

If you are angry about this abuse but feel that this does not apply to the ‘light taps’ on the arm or belly that you use on your children, just know that my mother will also discipline us with the ‘light taps’ of a stick . spoon.

And I can assure you, her ‘discipline’ was just as bad as her father’s. Why? Because a child is not afraid of physical pain so much as they are afraid and confused about being hurt by some they love; someone who has lost control and is not a parent.

Having experienced both types of ‘discipline’, I know two things: the only thing a child sees is their parents’ anger and their lack of respect.

“Spanking is not the opposite of gentle parenting”

The last time I saw my dad, my sister was 17, studying and working full-time, and despite enduring this abuse her whole life, she was shaking and crying as she reached out.

She wet her pants when the belt came down. We will remember that scene as long as we are alive and not for the ‘lesson’ that our father was pretending to teach us.

So many parents justify their abuse in the name of ‘discipline’ or ‘punishment’, willing to mock ‘gentle parenting’ for its ineffectiveness in controlling their children.

People are mistaken and misled if they think that spanking is a controlled and deliberate parenting technique.

Corporal punishment of a child is not usually the first option – often, it is when a parent is so enraged that they have to lash out and cannot stop themselves.

So they surrender to their base, animal instincts, thinking they have no other choice.

They claim that what they think is gentle parenting—coddling a child, treating them as equals—is spoiling a child. They got it wrong. They don’t know that there are options in between that don’t involve techniques from 100 years ago.

Your parenting doesn’t need a label, but you should respect all children – yes, even your own. That’s really what ‘gentle parenting’ is all about.

In fact, we have strict laws about how children deserve respect – and don’t pretend you don’t know that.

A “light slap” still strikes terror in a child; it will teach them to fear you as much as a beating.

And the only reason abuse can temporarily work in getting the behavior you’re looking for is because you’re breaking their spirit.

“He did not stop until his anger was spent”

My earliest memory is of being absolutely smitten while visiting family friends. I spun around the room, with a circle of people watching in horror.

One of the fathers tried to stop him, begging my father to stop.

He did not, until his anger was spent.

My mother said quiet words to him in the car, later – to embarrass him.

When we got home I got two ‘taps’ on the wooden spoon in each hand for “causing it to snap in the first place”.

I was four. That was 40 years ago.

In a way I can justify it (to my mind) because that’s how they were raised and they didn’t know any better.