Baby Daddy 52: Corporal Punishment

Well I must say, I suck at keeping up with this. I do good, I do good, I do good, and then BAM! I lose a month. All the same, I am expecting, hoping, and praying that everything has settled down a bit. I am also hoping that I can force myself to write more, which would allow myself to write more. Something about habit and practice and what not. SO! On that note, I plan to catch up on some thoughts. Some are going to be may be long, some may be quick, and some may be dirty.

First thing first, my friend Craig is going to be a father. I don't know if I shared that before or not, but he is. We were talking one day, after he was getting some jitters, and started talking about how we parent kids. Craig was talking about how he knows that spanking and physical punishment don't work, but that he also had to keep the rod as an option for disciplining his kids. I reiterated that physical punishment does not work, to which he said that he is not creative enough to do something else. I told him it is easy. As a toddler, you say "no", they cry, and then they learn. I also told him that, as the kid gets older, he can simply use chores and such.

This got me to thinking about the idea of spanking and such. Of course, I immediately flashed on Shoot 'Em Up, with Clive Owen:

Now why did this flash into my mind? Well, probably because I don't believe in spanking, or any physical discipline on a child. But yesterday, I started to dig deeper. Why do people spank? To create a negative consequence for undesirable behavior. At the same time, it is something more than that. Craig's desire to have the rod as an option for punishment was a crutch to express his own frustration.

Now let me ask you something. What if you were not frustrated with a child, but with an adult? What if, instead of your son or daughter, you were frustrated with a 250-pound, muscle-bound motherfucker named Glenn? Would you try to spank or beat Glenn if he was upsetting you? What if you knew that Glenn was a 'roided out fighter? Odds are that you would suck it up, accept that Glenn is an asshole, and move on with your life.

What if the person that upset you was a co-worker? Unless you are planning a workplace shooting, you would likely find some petty way to get vengeance. For the record, do NOT plan a workplace shooting. If you plan to do that, do everyone a favor and start with yourself. If you are planning something petty -- such as stealing their stapler, or leaving the stapler and stealing the staples, or maybe a Whoopee Cushion! -- then do that! And then do that to your child! Not the Whoopee Cushion, because kids think it's funny. And not the stapler, because kids tend to find ways of hurting themselves. But you know, take away the toy that your kid threw. Force the kid to rake the yard or paint the house. Or even just enjoy letting the kid fuss for a bit.

For the record, I have taken the toys my son throws. I have removed my son from situations where he is being volatile. I have also let my son fuss, and just found a dark place in my soul that could find comfort in it. In the case of that last one, my son was extremely tired and needed to discharge his leftover energy to sleep.

Moral of the Story: If you are not willing to use physical discipline on Glenn, you should not do it to your child. Also, if you eat my lunch, I WILL TAKE YOUR GODDAMN STAPLES KAREN!