Did spanking make me good?
I was spanked as a kid. Did that make me a better adult? Some chatty women at the hair salon think so.
A couple days ago I was getting my hair cut and a child was throwing a tantrum and the mother couldn’t get the boy under control. He threw himself on the floor, he was kicking and screaming, he got louder every time mom told him to be quiet.
Naturally, the spectacle garnered a lot of attention from onlookers; many of the onlookers looking at each other in amazement.
After the woman was able to strong-arm her kid, the duo left and the hen clucking commenced!
The salon is staffed with Hungarian women who are seemingly mothers. They immediately started commenting that the embarrassed mother should have started spanking right away and the kid wouldn’t have been in power anymore.
The theory is because the child wasn’t scared of his mom he didn’t respect her authority.
If you ask Supernanny, however, you’ll probably get a totally different answer.
I’m not a parent but I find it fascinating the misbehaving kids on reality shows. The parents let the kid do whatever and then the adults are surprised when the kid acts like a spoiled brat.
I’m not saying spanking is what made my brothers and me good kids, but in a sense we were afraid of getting mom angry. Not because she’d beat us – because she didn’t – but we were just scared of her being mad at us. That was enough for us to behave.
I can’t envision myself being dragged out of a store because I knew mom would be pissed the whole way home and it would be a never-ending car ride.
Kids don’t have the same level of respect for parents as they once did. Perhaps this is because society frowns upon spanking.
Am I condoning spanking? I’m just saying I turned out OK.