You rear them when it's necessary. Say your child is burning plastic from the liter that's yours. You whip them and I fuckin guarantee they won't do it again. Then you hug and hold them. Gently tell them why that hurt you more then them. Tell them they will grow up to be someone great. Be there at all times. Trust you'll know when a drug is being used. Tell them horror stories but not to the point they are traumatized.
I have three kids. 1 baby boy and two others I love just as much as Johnathan. Me and my ex broke up. I look back and see all the mistakes. I have dreams that I'm with them only to wake up and I'm sick to my stomach. It was doomed before it started. I'll tell anyone that if you're internet dating be careful. Not saying my ex was bad. There was just thing I didnt expect.
I told her if we break up I'm done with relationships. Because I told myself I have to focus all my time to ppls souls. Even the worst person needs love.
When you can forgive the man that molested you 3 yr old. That's when you achieved what Christ was talking about love. Love your enemies. Pray for them that they wake up.
I'm not saying those things should be overlooked. That's why we have judges who let the hammer down hard on them. If you harbor hate a lot of times it causes cancer. I've noticed it so much. There is always something similar w all of them. There was hatred there. Love your children. I haven't seen my baby boy since last year. A dealer was trying to set me up to get shot. He caught wind that I told my therapist that I did coke. I said no names but the fuckin hippie doc fucking ran her mouth. I will take her license. Fuck it I'll let God do what He does best. Vindicate me in a way either they end up dead or openly humiliated. The dealer who sold me coke died two weeks ago today. No One threatens God's child. Every person who has threatened me has ended up dead.
Anyways I'm sorry 4 going off a rabbit track. Just love them. Tell them as often as possible because tomorrow is never promised.
This is long, but I'm covering my experience being a victim of DV, my work with foster kids, and some neuroscience here. Please bear with me.
If not, just skip to the last two paragraphs.
Are you going to tell your kids you love them while you beat them? My dad told me he loved me while he abused me (and yes, hitting children for whatever reason is abuse). It kind of made me a bit touched in the head.
Just because I was (mainly) sexually abused instead of physically, that doesn't make physical abuse any more acceptable.
You say you're glad your dad hit you. I've got news for you. If you think you got hit and you turned out okay, you didn't - because you believe hitting defenseless children who made a mistake is okay.
I was 24 years old and staying at my housemates dad's house interstate for an internship a few years ago and I accidentally flooded the laundry when I put my last load of washing in. When his boarder told me. I freaked out and ran behind the shed having a panic attack, getting flashbacks of when my dad would scream into my face and one time held me up against the wall and punched the wall next to my head a bunch of times for something I 'did wrong' (can't even fucking remember what it was it was probably that stupid) and I was so scared I fucking pissed my pants as a 12 year old. I grew up with him screaming at me while I lay in bed for 'talking too loud' with my brother and he would slam doors so loud the glass shattered and I constantly believed the next time he would actually hit me. If I got that fucked up from not even being hit, I can't imagine what actually being hit constantly would do to someone.
And so when this happened, the boarder found me crying behind the shed saying my housemates dad was going to kill me and I made him so made and ruined everything on my last day there and he would never want to see me again and would be furious he ever let me stay. She told me he was nothing like this (she had lived with him for around 2 years) and convinced me to come inside when he got home. When he dad, and asked why we were both standing there, I couldn't even get the words out to explain what happened but when she did, he just went 'okay let's clean it up' like that was it. I was shaking. I thought I was going to at minimum get screamed at. But I didn't move when he gestured for me to come with, until he came back and was like 'whats wrong' and I went 'im sorry I fucked it all up I ruined your house it's my fault everything is my fault I should do it myself I'm a fuck up sorry sorry you should yell at me' like literally grovelling to try and avoid repercussions because I learnt from my own sperm donor if I said that stuff about myself, he wouldn't say it. He would just nod and tell me good work for saying it for him.
And people wonder why that sort of behaviour damages children and creates damaged adults.
He asked if I did it on purpose, I said no (a drawstring from a pair of shorts got stuck in the door was all) so then he was like 'then I don't see why I should yell and be mad at you, it was an accident. You didn't floor the laundry on purpose. Go get some towels'
When I still didn't move, he asked (because my housemate had given his dad some sort of warnings about what my childhood was like due to the impact it could have on my behaviour at times which he had to manage a lot back then before I got treatment) whether this was an example of something my dad would have screamed at me for, and threatened to hit me over. I just nodded. He said that he didn't believe in hitting children ever because he was hit as a child and it made him resent his father, and it never made sense (I'll get to this point in a moment). So he told me again to get towels and I did. He said he wouldn't ever hit or yell at me knowing what his son told him about my life, and I deserved people who could act in parental roles in my life without harm.
And honest to god? Here's something for you - I *wanted* to help him. I *rushed* off to get towels. When he corrected what I wasn't doing right to fix it, I rushed to copy him. It was like two decades of an emotionally absent father got replaced with my housemates dad and I was so eager for his approval, I wanted to do everything I could to fix what I'd unintentionally done. And then he took me out the back and showed me how to work on my car as a reward as he's mechanic, since he had asked all the time I was there if I wanted to do that with him but I said no cause of being scared he would yell it I did something wrong while doing it. After that, I knew I was safe.
Afterwards I called my housemate to ask if his dad ever yelled at him and explained why. He was incredulous that I was even worried that would have happened for the laundry thing and said they never got hit, they only got yelled at if they were actually in physical danger.
I've worked with foster care kids for 9 years. I have first hand seen the effects of parents who beat their children and it is not good. High rates of cPTSD. High rates of self harm. Low self worth. High rates of substance use at young ages. High rates of suicide attempts. High rates of other severe mental health issues. For girls, extremely high rates of ending up in intimate relationships where they are again abused, perpetuating the cycle of violence in their life which then goes on to impact their children. Also higher than average rates of going on to themselves become abusive. For boys, much higher rates of becoming perpetrators of domestic violence towards partners and children (are you seeing the pattern here, my friend) or themselves being abused.
Not just that, my work as a mentor and a sometimes pseudoparent to probably a hundred or two hundred foster kids on weekend camps spanning a decade has exposed me to the gamut of out of control behaviour. I'm talking kids strangling eachother, hitting eachother with two by fours of PCV piping, running at eachother with knives (admittedly dinner knives, we aren't stupid enough to leave the sharp ones out), and extensive property damage. I have NEVER raised a finger to harm a child, never hit them, never raised a fist nor even threatened physical violence.
Why? Think about it. Why did most of them end up with me? You'd think if hitting these kids worked they wouldn't be behaving more and more erratically right?
The absolute MOST I have ever done, was when a child who I luckily had a strong connection with was about to run past me, dinner knife held up screaming about how he was going to stab the kid behind me for riling him up. The CEO of my volunteer organisation had drilled us in physical restraint, but it's done in a specific way and for the least amount of time needed, and only in exceptional scenarios. One look at her was all I needed to know this was one of the only times I would ever need to do it, because of him carrying a knife. She held his legs to the ground, I held his arms by his side and hugged him from behind. He screamed for a while to be let go, he did mention that he couldn't breathe but I told him to notice my arms were nowhere near his neck, and I was just just enough force to pin his arms. We both reassured him we would let him go as soon as he let go of the knife and said he was okay, and honestly within a minute he repeated he was okay a few times and we let him go, and asked if he wanted to go walk in the normally out of bounds area away from other kids to calm down more.
I stayed away from him for a while, even though the entire time I had been telling him he was safe and he was okay with us, because unsurprisingly, these kids don't love being restrained. That's why we avoid it, and if we do it we have to log it as an incident report. So I went and did that. He'd sat next to me the prior night at dinner as on the first camp he and I met, he wanted me to be his buddy - I was in leadership the following one so that couldn't happen (but tbh I wish I was, this kid was hilarious. But it was better that I wasn't his buddy for the purpose for restraint). But even still he walked up and asked if he could sit next to me for dinner. I said of course, he apologized for getting angry, and he said he was going to ask to be shifted out of the kids dorm who kept riling him up because he couldn't stay calm.
That kid had a propensity to go from 0-1000000 in no seconds flat as I saw, but he wasn't mad at me after he calmed down.
And.... I didn't. Need. To. Hit. Him. Only because he was likely (genuinely likely) to harm another child did I need to use any kind of force, and it was purely for the purpose of stopping him, in a safe way. He may not have enjoyed it, but we weren't harming him and we were making sure he knew he was safe, which he was. But you can't hit a child and say they're safe, and we reported the restraint as a critical incident as we are legally obligated to do.
That is the only time I have ever used any kind of force against a child, and the circumstances where it was necessary. Each and every other time I have intervened by removing the item they were going to use to hit another kid (if you try to take a knife of a kid they may stab you, but you can pull a two by four out of their hands very easily), or I use body position with another volunteer and we move ourselves between the two kids who are going off after detangling them and we just walk them backwards gently with maybe a hand on their shoulder or head to sort of guide them, and we block them from going back around.
And these are foster kids. Their behaviour is... At times remarkable. But they're also remarkable children and I remember each and every one of them I ever formed a connection with.
When you talk about hitting a child, that is child abuse. Hitting a partner is spousal abuse. Generally that is frowned upon. Hitting old people is elderly abuse, hitting disabled people, abuse of vulnerable people. Both also frowned upon.
But child abuse is actually worse because it's perpetrated during years of critical brain development and it fundamentally alters the DNA and brain makeup of a victim. If you whip your son and call him over to say that you love him, he has a good chance of developing what's called a 'disorganised attachedment' where he doesn't view you as a safe person who is meant to protect him - and you're trying to protect him, right? Because he did something dangerous you don't want him to get hurt playing with fire.
But instead of getting hurt by the fire, his dad hurt him. Now he learns that his dad is not always safe, but he wants love from him. Disorganised attachments fuck kids up. They can't get close intimately to anyone. Perpetual relationship problems. Ever watched Good Will Hunting? That. Good portrayal.
Secure attachments mean your kids know they can go off and make mistakes, learn from them, and come back to you with your arms open, and waiting. That doesn't mean they will disrespect you. It means they trust you.
I'm using the royal you here btw instead of saying 'if one.'
I suggest reading a couple of books if you are absolutely intent on raising your children with violence, just so that you're aware of the future negative health (physical and mental, and not just regarding substance use) which await them in their future.
- The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel Van Der Kolk)
- What Happened To You? (Dr Fred Perry, a neuroscientist who has studied the impact of trauma on developing minds)
- Brene Brown - Daring Greatly (researching shame and its impact on child development).
I'm not going to debate this much either, I'm just stating my experience, and some scientific facts which are backed up by neuroscience. I understand that's probably talking to a brick wall but these are concrete, measurable, observable facts regarding brain changes we see from neuroscience.
I'll leave you with this. Not a debate just a question, and then a statement.
If it's okay to hit your kids, do you agree it's okay to hit your spouse if they do something wrong or disobey you? Or a grandparent? A disabled person? For me it's a no across the board. Interested to know if you disagree and why with children it's different even though they're a legally protected class.
My statement -
If your child does something wrong and is old enough to understand reason, then reason with him. If he isn't old to understand reason, *he will not understand the reason you are hitting him.*
