Letter from Reader: Question on Disciplining Kids, Comments

I found that you started writing your blog again I like to read your thoughts, though you tend to go more extreme in one way or another from me.  About spanking, before my daughter was born I was totally pro-Ezzo.  That lasted about an hour into her little life.      She’s 15 months now, still breastfeeds when she needs it, sleeps with me, naps when she’s tired, etc.  But where I tend to disagree with AP is that I don’t think that the child does know what they need (I’m not saying you’re AP).

I really didn’t like the idea of spanking her, and until she was about 10 months old I saw no reason to.  Then she got into the habit of pitching an all out fit every time I got her dressed.  I have no problem with her pitching a fit once in a while because she’s tired, over stimulated, really wanted the remote, etc… but when it became an every day thing I saw it was just becoming a habit.  Tried re-directing, laughing, making it a game, just because I’d rather do that than swat, but no such luck. 

So I flicked her fat little thigh and told her to knock it off.  And got her dressed and life moved on.  It took a couple more times of just one flick over the next week or so, and now if she starts pitching a fit I just tell her to ‘knock it off’ and that does it. I doubt I’ll spank a child after they’re 3 or so, but with the little ones I don’t really see a problem with it, I guess.  She’s gotten flicked maybe 10 times in her life, the getting dressed ones, and she was in the habit of pinching me while nursing and after re-directing a gazillion times, I did something a little more.

I guess what I have a problem with is punishment and I don’t see this as punishment. I see it more as a negative stimuli ~shrug~ I’d personally rather swat/flick whatever her once or twice and move on than have a struggle getting dressed every day, or wean her because she’s insistent on pinching. 

The problem I have with people who don’t spank is that usually they come across as, “If you spank you are the devil!” and that it’s “absolutely evil.”  I’m not saying you come across that way, it’s just that’s what usually turns me off from the no spanking arguments.

I’m rather opinionated in what is okay and what isn’t with her.  If she’s screaming in her carseat because she doesn’t want to be there but I  have to get to the bank before they close, eh, go ahead and scream.  If she’s screaming because I’m wasting time on the internet, eh, I better go be a parent   If she is tired and needs a nap but isn’t going down, she can go ahead and cry if rocking/nursing isn’t working.  If *I* want her to nap so I can do laundry without having to re-fold the clothes 97 times, that’s not a good reason to put her down if she’s not tired. 

I’m really surprised how this has been.  I heard moms talking on MDC and whatnot about ‘mother’s instinct’ and I thought that was a load of BS, because their ‘mother’s instinct’ seemed to involve their children running wild, emptying their cupboards and dumping things, keeping the whole house up all night, etc, because, you know, they’re only children, they don’t know any better.

I also understand that children can be so so so different from each other.  What works for Hannah could trigger rage in another child, or make them fearful of mommy’s hand. And in that case, you, uh, change what you’re doing. 

I usually tend to not talk about spanking at all because it is really hard to explain what I think to people who are super opinionated in one way or another.  But I have a feeling that you’d understand and not say ‘her children are destined to be heathens’ or ‘you evil person, you hit a BABY?!’ )

My friend wrote the above letter, and this just goes to show how difficult it is to communicate with typed medium.  When I talk about concerns I have with spanking, it is emphatically not with any concern towards what she is doing.  I’m pretty much on the same page she’s on.  And, I wouldn’t call that “spanking” as a discipline philosopy.  That sounds exactly like what I do with my 2 and a half year old kid: different issues, same basic core.  Sometimes it seems like a little swat saves us all a lot of grief.   

To me, what my friend describes is not punitive parenting (punitive, to me, is something like: I will punish you if you step out of line.  Sin must be punished and it’s my job to punish your sins.  Punishment is how you will learn to be good…)”  That’s punitive in my mind, and that’s the philosophy taught in way too many Christian parenting books and, to be blunt, it’s in complete opposition to what Jesus did on the Cross.   

We all probably have our own definitions in our mind.  My friend initially thought what I was advocating went against what she desribes in her note above.  I had another friend mention the same thing.  Whereas I basically do exactly what she does, so obviously didn’t mean to sound as if I was “anti” it.  I think this shows, if only slightly, how the conversation of discipline is terribly sticky.  But I some people can’t seem to get away from sticky.  And I think these things are good to talk about, good to wonder about.  

I mean, it’s our kids, after all, and it’s how they learn about God—-more than any devotional times or read-alouds, more than singing hymns (or U2’s “Yahweh,” or VeggieTale ditties on long car rides), more than memorizing verses or driving them to AWANA or teaching their Sunday School, they learn about God and how God thinks about them through the way we are with them.  And if I mainly discipline them through shaming techniques (whether that involves spanking or time-outs, who really cares, if the undercurrent is still shame), then I’m teaching them that they should be shamed before God, that God’s love includes shame, that shame is their proper place in life, a rightful voice in their head. 

I want to be the kind of parent that is (still a royal screw up, since the Spirit inside of me is housed in dirt, you know, but is) the kind of royal screw up that says she’s sorry, that is seeking to love wholly, that is on the same team as her kids, working to keep them within certain boundaries for their own safety (whether physical safety or mental and spiritual safety) but giving them ample freedom whenever possible in every other way, room to grow, to breath, to thrive—the kind of parent that embraces her kids with the same grace-filled arms God embraces her with.