I don’t believe in spanking, I believe in parenting.
The thing with parenting is that it’s a commitment, the most serious commitment you can make. You commit yourself to loving another human 100% unconditionally, you commit to protecting them, you commit to their happiness, you commit to their future, you commit to making sure they live the best life possible. So you have to think ahead, because parenting is such a delicate thing, if you don’t believe me, go ahead and tell me your parents didn’t fuck you up a little? Just a little, but they did.
“People always say things like:
“If that was my kid I would have spanked them a long time ago.”
“Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
Ew, you can even hear the hate in their voice when they say it. It’s sad really.
To those people I want to say…Why? Why would you want to hurt your child? To hit them? You seriously want to hit your kid to get your point across? Are you stupid? What’s wrong with you? Can’t you communicate? You’re an adult. We learned hitting others was wrong a long time ago, we learned to talk about things or to walk away. Hello? That would be a human being that you're hitting. Kids don’t know better, they’re not done developing yet, they're still learning everything. It took you a long time to learn wrong from right, and apparently you still have a lot to learn, because you don’t know how to communicate without hitting or intimidating.
If a husband slapped his wife around for not listening to him, I would hope that she would call the cops and leave him. But guess what, that child doesn’t have that choice. That child looks to you for love, for compassion, to teach them wrong from right, but to do it in a loving way. They can’t walk away, they need you to survive. They need you to love and protect and teach them. In case you haven’t realized that’s what it means to be a parent. They didn’t get choose to you, you choose to have them.
This time is crucial for them. Their like little sponges just taking it all in. Just like you did when you were little. Do you remember the fear you felt? Do you remember how bad that hurt, and how sad it made you feel that someone you love so much could hurt you like that? Do you remember feeling unloved? I do. & the reason I know this is because I can’t write this without crying. Not for me, but for the kids out there going through the same thing we did.
People seem to forget those feelings, they forget that were sad, hurt and scared. They just look at who they are now & they say “I’m disciplined because my parents spanked me.” But that’s not true, you were still that little trouble maker whether you got spanked or not. Them spanking you did nothing to change that. Time did, its called growing up. It happens to all of us, everyone at different times. You aren’t a rotten brat, because you got older. You learned this with time and age. It wasn’t those terrifying beatings that shaped you, all they did was hurt you and that’s all it does to your kids.
But you know what? We don’t have to make the same mistakes our parents did. We don’t have to pass that on. We can choose to be smarter, kinder and more loving. We can choose words over hitting. Our eyes are open to that ignorance now,
Let us be the generation that doesn’t fuck up their kids!!!
Timeouts work wonders for us, and that’s our last resort. Because we will explain the same things to Gisele over and over and over again until she fully understands. That’s all you have to do.
Guess what? It works, she understands so much! She is so well behaved, she doesn’t throw tantrums, she doesn't kick and scream to get what she wants.
You know what she said to me the other day? “Ok, we’ll see. Maybe I can have it, maybe I can’t, but even if I can’t I’m not going to cry. I’m a big girl.” Yes, that came out of my 4 year olds mouth!!! She’s brilliant, she’s sweet and you know what? She’s not afraid of me & she shouldn’t be. I’m her mommy, her superhero, her best friend, and her teacher. Not some big bully who hurts her.
So to those of you out there hitting your kids, pick up a book, educate yourself, get some therapy and break the cycle.
