I think it is different. To be punished for a clear reason? Not out of anger? Parents did do what they thought was best and most likely what they were taught. I really feel sad for my mom, wondering what the heck she went through. She told me little things here and there, I do think it was from her mom she got all of that.

Yeah, I think my situation was not typical. I just feel lucky to have had sisters to take care of me. They saved me on more than one occassion.

Oh, it was painful to get spanked by my mom. There was never a feeling of relief that it wasn't as bad as we'd imagined. It just didn't cause injury beyond stinging for a brief while.

The Yardstick was the "tool" of choice for spanking.

It's funny that I can remember various spankings, but I can never remember what they were for. Kind of beats the "she'll never do THAT again" lesson.

True. I don't think anything I was ever hit for made any difference. I think all of us just learned to run out the door faster than she could take off her belt. That screen door was flung open so many times with a person running out. We used to run down to the school.

Or, if you'd see her eyes squinch up and her say 'Oh really???' Run....

My Grandparents had a razor strap that they used, which was mildly better than picking out your own switch. My Grandfather was going for the pain element though. The worst one I remember was when I was in the bathtub and my butt was wet. That hurt like a son of a .... I'm pretty sure I never made him mad when I was in the bath again.

My parents didn't stop to think about a punishment, it was usually just an impulse smack or worse. My Dad could be set off by the drop of a hat, literally. i remember throwing my Brownie beenie down the stairs so that it was with the rest of my stuff and my Dad flew up those stairs like lightening. I didn't sit for awhile and was too embarassed to go to Brownies that day.

I think I have given my son a "pat" on the butt a few times but I only remember doing so twice, both times he was putting himself in a dangerous situation. I would never leave a mark on my child like others had done to me. We use logical reasoning with zach and when that doesn't work priveleges go away.
I would never do to my child what was done to me.

I don't really blame my Mom though, after all My Grandfather did much worse things to her than she ever did to me. I don't think she knew any other way.

Wow, that was much longer than I intended it to be, sorry :blush:

Maybe you remembered at the time and now not doing THAT is so ingrained you don't even have to remember why you don't do that.

This all really has me thinking, yet again, about this subject. I can't say I've never spanked my kids. But, to think of the damage what has happened to my spirit, my soul, I'd never ever want to do that to my kids.

A lot to think about.

A couple of "funny" stories on this subject.

My father and his siblings fled Germany in the 1930s as kids and never saw their father again. Years later my father and my aunt, who was four years younger, had a disagreement about my grandfather's behavior. My father's story had always been that he was beaten regularly and that when my grandfather came home, he would ask my grandmother (re the three boys) "Which one, how many and which end of the belt?" My aunt insists that this was ridiculous and that nothing like this ever happened. My aunt insisted, however, that my grandfather was an alcoholic, which, for some reason, my father insisted was out of the question. Personally, I think they were both right.

My father also caught it quite a bit in school. In the German schools, the teachers would call you up to the front and brace your hand with their left hand so that you couldn't recoil when they slapped you with the right. When my father came to America and was reunited with my grandmother, he lived in Harlem and went to high school with a lot of black kids. Years later, my father would point to that as a comparatively civilized time because if one of the black kids got out of line, he would compliantly hold out his hand to be whacked by the teacher's ruler without, as he endlessly retold the story, "throwing her down the stairs."

My father was strange.

Without getting into personal specifics, I would observe that parental discipline has the same problems on the microcosmic level that the criminal justice system has on the macrocosmic level: it doesn't occur in a perfect vacuum of justice. The reactions towards the real or imagined transgressions varies with other factors such as the stress or the happiness level of the person dispensing the justice.

I swatted my kids on the butt once or twice. They only time I remember why was when one was a toddler and let go of my hand and ran into the street. Letting go and running was getting to be a bad habit and into the street was it! Reasoning and time outs go only so far with toddlers in some circumstances. It certainly wasn't hard enough to leave a mark - and there were diapers in between.

My husband was hit regularly until he was a teenage I think. It didn't do him a bit of good. It only ended when he asked his Mother, in a very monotone voice - are you done yet? It wasn't effective as anything but a way for her to focus her anger. He was an out of control teen before, during and after and beating him didn't improve things at all. She would do other things too like pinch his tongue with her fingernails if he said something bad.

She's not like that anymore - not with her nephew that she was guardian of or her grandchildren. She will agree that it was ineffective... and she seems a bit embarassed by it.

She's still got a wicked tongue though and I always feel it's better to have her on my side of anything because there's no going against her.