John Kinnear of Ask Your Dad resisted the urge by stepping away, though it wasn’t easy
I passed another parental milestone a few days ago. I had the urge to spank my daughter. This isn’t a proud moment for me.
I didn’t spank her. Instead, I got up, walked into the other room, clenched my jaw and made this guttural angry uurrrrggggggggg sound that started in my knees, crept its way up through my stomach and chest, then exploded out of my mouth in a collection of consonants and vowels that would probably not have been appropriate for network television.
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| I looked just like this, only I had a shirt on. |
What did Duchess do to cause this rage bubble in my chest? The whole lead up to it doesn’t really matter. I said yes. She said no. Rinse. Repeat.
She’s a kid. She is getting smarter. She is getting more manipulative, and she is getting really repetitive. She is testing boundaries. She’s like a Velociraptor in Jurassic Park poking the edges of her enclosure, testing for weaknesses. And she remembers.
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| Clever girl. |
What concerns me is that after 60 minutes of trying to find a way to convey my seriousness about something, after following every super nanny/attachment parenting/patient parent technique of explaining “why a behavior is bad”, I found these words crawling up and out of my mouth through my clenched teeth: “Do it again and you’re going to get spanked.”
Then Duchess looked at me, laughed, and threw a book at my face. It hit me square on the bridge of the nose. It made my eyes water. I wanted to spank her.
Let’s pause at this point in the story—since that is what I did in real life.
My history with spanking (abridged):
When I was four I peed in our neighbor’s basement window well. I had recently learned from some of my other friends that the world is a boy’s toilet. I took this new found freedom and did what most kids do with any freedom they are given. I pissed it away. (HA! Piss. I make myself laugh sometimes.)
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| I promised myself I’d never use this picture… |
While I was focusing on peeing in our neighbor’s window well, my dad was focused on walking up behind me. What he managed to see before I did was that the neighbors, whose window I was currently peeing in, were in their basement looking directly at me with a mix of anger and what I like to imagine must have been admiration for my boldness. My dad was not amused.
He scooped me up, still peeing, pulled my pants on and carried me back to the house under his arm – but not before giving the obligatory “sorry my kid pissed on your window” wave to the neighbors. They never invited us over for dinner after that.
When we got home my dad put me down, crouched down to my level, looked me in the eyes and said in his very best Dirty Harry voice. “Go up to your room and wait for me. I’m coming up to spank you.”
I ran up the stairs of our duplex and hid in my room sobbing for the next hour and dreading the worst. I vividly remember sobbing until I eventually started doing the stuttered gasp thing over and over. I remember burying my face under my pillow and peaking out the crack of light at the door every time I heard a sound, waiting for my dad to come through the door.
Here’s what is weird. I don’t remember if he spanked me or not. I slightly remember him coming up. And I know I ended up in his lap. And he may have lightly patted my bum. But mainly I remember burrowing my face into his neck, the rough feeling of his day old stubble and the smell of Old Spice aftershave.
The Aftermath
During my self-imposed time-out after I grrrd and urrggged my rage bubble into the ceiling, I was embarrassed. And I was guilt-ridden. And I was scared that I might have that type of violence in me. That’s not who I want to be. I love my kids. I even love them when they’re assholes.
I don’t want to teach them that violence is a proper reaction to anger or frustration. I don’t want to teach them that violence is something they need to fear from their dad. And not only do I not want to hit my kids, I don’t want to want to hit my kids. (I use hit, because who are we kidding. Spanking is just a nice word for hitting.)
I didn’t hit her though. I walked away. I took a minute…well ten minutes. I gathered myself. And sometime after my barbaric yawp, and after my guilt spiral, I realized that even though I may have wanted to smack her—I didn’t. I left her in her room, just like my dad had left me.
I could picture my dad pacing the living room. I saw him clenching his fists, his jaw, his eyes and letting out his own tortured argggg. I was him. He was me. It was a Shyamalanian twist!
Up until this point I thought he’d just left me up there for an hour to torture me. Now I just think he needed that time to calm down. So there it is. I am my dad. Duchess is me. And she’s just pissing in metaphoric windows. Mind. Blown.
Anyway… when I went back into the room I had the energy needed to continue to be patient (much more energy that it would have taken for me to smack her bum.) We talked about not throwing. We talked about taking care of our things. We talked. And it worked.
I know there are tougher times ahead. My patience will be tested more than it is now. I’ll need to be the adult. I can just see those of you with older kids snickering and saying “Oh just you wait…” I know. I know. I am a very young parent. I am work in progress. So are my kids. It’s a strange journey, this dad thing. Sometimes it fills me with pride and self worth. Sometimes it scares the shit out of me.
I still feel guilty for having the urge to smack her. I don’t know where it came from, and perhaps that is something worth exploring. But I’ll make you all the same promise that I made to Stevie that evening when I told her what happened.
I will never hit our children. Ever. Even if they are being complete jerks or throw books at my face.
I will utilize every tool I have at my disposal to make this happen. I will separate myself from the situation. I will ask for help from Stevie if I am overly frustrated. I will be honest about my feelings and try to explore where they come from – because we can’t always control our feelings, but we can control how we react to them.
—this essay first appeared on Ask Your Dad Blog
—photo by Ephemeral Scraps/Flickr
I am identifying a commonality in the comments and with the author as well. It is the assumption that spanking = hitting = violence borne of anger or rage. It is possibly true with some parents but it fails to consider the possibility that spanking can be delivered without rage or anger, in a controlled deliberate manner to achieve a specific desired effect. It is like assuming that all the painful pushups and and other physical punishments dished out by your drill sergeant in basic training were delivered out of hate, malice or rage. He is in fact, following the… Read more »
I spanked my children and am not ashamed of it. Actions have consequences. Until a certain age, punishments which are either not immediate, or too abstract, are useless and do not achieve the desired effect of instant and unmistakable negative reinforcement of a behavior. Spankings were reserved for only the worst offenses, such as acts that had potentially serious consequences for life or safety like running away in proximity to traffic or in a parking lot, or when clearly defiant to the point of un-allowable disrespect to an authority figure. When they warranted, they were applied immediately. They were not… Read more »
I was spanked a total of 3 times in my childhood. Though I no longer remember the reasons behind the punishment, I vividly remember the fear that it generated as I waited in my bedroom for my Father. I believe that hitting a child in anger, even if it is as a result of an act that truly deserves some form of punishment, is counter-productive to learning from our behaviour. My memory of the fear has completely erased whatever it was that my Father was trying to teach me about “Cause and effect”. I am a father, and while there… Read more »
What I always find interesting is this notion that there’s some one-size fits all approach to parenting. That somehow a discipline used in the past is somehow outdated because someone said “I do it differently” or that the new way is somehow better. As though every child were the same. As though every situation were the same. As though every person has or SHOULD have the same mental space in terms of managing both. What makes my heart sink is the lack of compassion for a parent as a parent. My wife used to show me the posts of these… Read more »
Well said, DGB. At the end of the day, we are trying to produce kids that are prepared to deal with a hard world. Touchy-feely has its limits.
I stopped using corporal punishment on my three kids on 8/12/2012.
I wish I had never used it.
I haven’t spanked my kid and I don’t plan to. But I don’t think it is the worst thing in the world. I was spanked as a kid .I barely even remember it. But I know it wasn’t abuse, it didn’t go too far, it wasn’t often. It was likely, as John alludes, harder on my parents than it was on me. There are no lasting scars. It was a bit of discipline when I needed it; it was my parents’ job. Spanking as the first or only resort is pointless. But it can be effective, and it doesn’t need… Read more »
@john hall Julianelle, I think you make some good points. It is not the worst thing in the world. And I have been on the fence about it for a long time–I have been a parent for about 30 kid-years. I can’t count the times I was spanked/grabbed/smacked as a kid on one hand, but I do remember them. And it seems like sometimes, when nothing else is working and you can’t seem to get through, that it is warranted. And it doesn’t leave a scar if used judiciously. But it can leave emotional scars, depending on the individual and… Read more »
This article was both informative and humorous. The only part that I find fault with is the comparison to violence and what your dad did on that day. Without knowing your history, your family dynamic and your dads prior reactions, it is hard for me as a reader to dislike your father’s course of action here. It sounds to me like he did just what you did, wait and calm down, maybe weigh his decision and then follow through with what was an appropriate idea or way to discipline a child back then. The lesson in this article of waiting… Read more »
Thanks for sharing. Been there, done that. It’s hard. So very, very hard. But, like you, I don’t want my kids to fear being hit by me, and I don’t want them to grow up thinking that violence is an acceptable response to anything.
I have a 2 and a 3 year old and I know there will be many more opportunities for me to exercise my patience. Stories like this are a good reminder that I’m not alone and that other parents struggle with the same thing. (That helps with the guilt factor too)
Good insights. I feel the urge to spank my son weekly. But I don’t, and I know that I won’t. My wife’s still afraid that I will, because I often leave the room and say HORRIBLE things about what I’d like to do – only because it helps me get out my frustration.
And you get points for blending a Walt Whitman reference in with a story about hitting kids.
Well put, Derek, on all fronts, especially on making them different forms of assholes. Had me laugh out loud. Patience is, arguably, the hardest part. Kids use us as models; they mimic our behavior. When a kid’s an asshole, you don’t have to look far to find the reason.
Kids use us as models; they mimic our behavior. When a kid’s an asshole, you don’t have to look far to find the reason. Yes and no. Parents model behavior to kids, but I think people are too quick to overlook the genetic component, and give both too much credit to parents for well-behaved kids, and too much blame for the little assholes. I think this is especially true of anyone who has never parented a “difficult” child, and I don’t just mean difficult in the way that all parenting is difficult. I’m not saying the nurture side has nothing… Read more »
I could have written this exact article…but I didn’t and you did, and I thank you for that! I have a 16 year old, an 8 year old and a 6 year old. Never hitting your children IS possible, and they can grow up to be good people, contrary to popular belief. At the same time, I completely relate to the rage bubble that comes from kids being little assholes. I don’t believe that physical discipline will solve that problem, instead it makes them a different kind of asshole. Every time I hear an adult comment about how the problem… Read more »