A spanking won’t kill you. And it’s effective to swat a young child’s rear with your hand if a stern mommy voice or timeouts aren’t doing the trick. But oh, how discipline has changed in just a generation or two.

My Mom, the Rear Admiral

My mom used a switch that I had to go get myself. I learned quickly that picking a small one in hopes it wouldn’t hurt was really dumb: The thinner and greener the branch, the springier it was as a whip. Little ones darned near cut the skin. Bigger wasn’t much better. Once, to make a point, I reproachfully dragged in the biggest dead tree branch I could find. It was longer than I was tall. Almost firewood. (Mom snorted and for a second I thought she was going to laugh, but then she stormed out and picked a switch herself. I always hated seeing her slide her hand down a switch, stripping off the leaves in one sure motion, but I was wailing especially hard that day; my little political statement had just made her madder.)

Sometimes, she’d use one of my daddy’s belts. Switchings meant sharp stings on the backs of my legs, but belts were much worse. When she was just threatening, she would fold the belt in half, grab both ends, push her hands together to make the belt gape into an O, and then yank her hands apart to make the leather snap together. (I would jump and moan.) When she meant business, she’d hold one of my arms while I was standing there — and then we’d be spinning around in a circle as I was yelling and trying to run away and she was whipping. It probably was sad and funny to watch when you heard the soundtrack: “MOM, I won’t do it again!” POP! “Ow!” “No (pop) you (pop) won’t!”

It was harsh, but it was all she knew to do, and I had it easier than some kids of my generation. (My cousins thought I was spoiled rotten because Mom bought me lots of toys and I was still lazy and still mouthed off so much.)

Speaking as a reformed brat with the red-striped ass of experience, I’ll tell you that whipping with objects is a bad idea. Switches and belts are like lashes — they leave raised red lines on the skin. The worst switchings break the skin a little. The worst belt whippings can bruise, especially if an angry mom grabs the wrong end of the belt and swings the buckle at you. (Not intentionally. But when the belt is flying through the air with clattering metal at the end of it … shit, that still hurts, intentional or not.)

Not that it deterred me — Lord, how I had a mouth on me! (Let’s not quibble over whether the “had” should be a “have.”)

One Generation Later

My daughters? My “easy” kid’s only been spanked a few times, when she was little, for things like running toward the street and not stopping when called. She’s pretty obedient and I’m a more experienced mom. My older, headstrong child got more spankings when she was little for her defiance and for monumental misbehavior like accidentally cutting holes in my sofa and trying to hide it, drawing on the rental house’s walls in magic marker when she was old enough to know better, etc. But spankings are over quickly, make everyone involved feel bad, and aren’t effective for long.

My solution: Tedious and heinous chores, or creative but painless shock tactics:

• Didn’t clean your room? Now you have to clean your room and scrub the toilets … all three of them. Don’t complain, or I’ll take away the toilet brush and just give you rubber gloves.

• Didn’t feed your dog? When we set the table for dinner, there’s no plate in front of your usual chair — just the dog’s empty bowl. (You can get your plate when you feed your pooch.)

• Refuse to take off your clothes and bathe? Fine — I’ll bathe you with your clothes on. New shoes too. And hot water’s a luxury, I’ll warn you.

• Lie to me and say another mom’s watching you at the apartment pool when you’re really swimming unsupervised? Super. Now you owe me a 10-page report on pool safety before swimming privileges are restored. (My older girl’s stubborn; that one took the rest of the summer.)

The spankings I resorted to were, with rare exception, by hand. Never with a belt or a switch. Once — to my shame — my oldest got 2-3 pops with a ping-pong paddle that was nearby when she lipped off to me after a hand spanking, saying with a toss of her head, “That didn’t hurt.” I grabbed the paddle and spanked in anger. That night I apologized, and we threw away the paddle together.

And although my older girl is still just as willful as I am, people tell me they’re both polite and good-hearted children, and I agree. They’re also both better behaved than I was. :o)

This post was inspired by Lindsay Ferrier’s post, “Switched at Birth,” at Parents.com.

Photo credit: artbyheather

Technorati Tags: corporal punishment, switching, belt whippings, spankings, child discipline