Parenting

*****This was written more than ten years ago, when my children were in that preteen period of existence. I think, however, that it is still relevant, so I am recalling it because I can.

Let’s face it, generally speaking, we suck as parents. That is not to say that all of us parents are similarly sucky in all areas. No, we all have carefully nurtured, over time, our own specialized area of ineptitude. Kids in general know more than they ever have before, yet they are less skilled when they grow up - according to the completely unbiased view of our leading pollsters - and they are more spoiled than we were when we were kids. Ask any parent.
Where have we gone wrong? Our kids get each other pregnant, convince each other to use and abuse drugs, shoot and kill and stab each other on a much more regular basis, and we do more and more to combat this trend with little or no success.
Perhaps a ‘shoot from the hip’ observation might explain some of the causes of our collective parental ineptitude. Your parents and my parents were bastards, and now that we are older, we love them for most of the bastardry. But rather than emulate them in significant ways, we opt to avoid making the ‘same mistakes’ our parents made. My only question is: according to whom? If I ask my dad if he’s sorry that he nailed me with a belt in the back of the knees when I was ten years old, he’ll say what?
In the interest of science, I asked him. He said he was very sorry for nailing me in the back of the legs with a belt when I was ten years old; he had been trying to leave a good, solid three inch welt on my behind. The legs heal faster, he said, although the initial injury is much more painful.
So I found out that mein papa was a quantity man, rather than quality. He wanted a punishment that would stick with me as long as possible, not one that actually had to hurt like the dickens. The point is that he completely ignored the question of whether or not he should have belted me in the first place. The idea that belting me might have been improper or harmful had escaped him.
And now that I’m raising kids, I think he’s right.
My mom had the biggest trouble with my younger brother, though I’m not quite sure why. My older brother and I had taught the young’un that most of mom’s yelling and screaming and gnashing of teeth was just for effect. Her theatrical barks were worse than her thespian bites, you might say. Then again, you might not say anything of the sort. That’s why I’m writin’ all this stuff down and you’re just lookin’ at it.
Anyway, my mom was much stricter and gnash-ready where my younger brother was concerned, and her bite proved to be more formidable than I thought, especially the night she discovered a more effective weapon than my father’s belt or the back of her hand.
For years my mom had tried to discipline me by whacking me with her hand, but my behind was much more resilient than her hand, especially after years of her putting laundry through a wringer-washer in a damp, cold basement. She would wind up and swat away, and I would smile, and she would wince. And to be perfectly honest, I think my self-assessment was altered forever; I thought I was a good kid because I didn’t get smacked. But I didn’t get smacked, mainly because my mom couldn’t hit me hard enough to hurt me.
So one night my younger brother was in the middle of ignoring her bark, when my mom hit upon the idea of whacking the unsuspecting lad over the head with a heeled shoe (I think it was my sister’s). The youngster dared her, with far too much arrogance, to discipline him. And my mom got two good wallops to his noggin.
But then he bled.
As my mom tried to nurse him and punish him at the same time, the injured boy whined and screamed, more out of shock than out of pain, that he was going to die, and that it served my mom right. He asked piteously, “How do you know I’m not going to die? How do you know that I will be fine? Look at all the blood!” And then, after a brief interlude to check on the quality of the bloodletting, he issued the strongest condemnation. “It’ll serve you right if I do die. Then you’ll be sorry!”
I swear to God all this happened – (yes, the dialogue, has been fudged a bit.)
And the point of it all is simple. My Mom and Dad swatted and smacked and belted with some degree of regularity, though being the middle child I tended to escape more than not. Their nine kids, raised with a fairly healthy dose of love and domestic violence, all turned out all right. I mean, we ALL turned out more right than wrong.
I honestly believe that part of the problem with the way we’re parenting is that there isn’t enough corporal punishment going on in households across the country. I know that there are parents who disdain the rod, so they mostly spoil the child. But they also manage to maintain some degree of discipline in their houses. These parents are the exception though. It’s not so much that every kid needs to be beaten regularly, although I think it should be discipline method number one or two at all times before the offspring’s teen-hood. More specifically, the problem is the general consensus that kids shouldn’t receive this brand of punishment.
I am here to announce that all those namby-pamby psychologists are WRONG! - every one of them. One of the worst things the field of psychology ever did was to tell people that they were monsters if they used the rod to instill a healthy fear in their children. Fear is a natural reaction, and one that should keep humans from engaging in all kinds of dangerous behaviors. However, these pantywaist psychologists have told parents that they’ll damage psyches and self-esteem and all of that garbage.
Before I go any further, you should know that I am not in favor of beatings. Overpowering your child and throttling him or her - this is a great way to create a monster. It’s common sense. If I learn that people who say they love me are going to knock me senseless, then I am definitely going to get some screwed up ideas, not to mention some pent-up hostility toward others in general. The brand of corporal punishment that I’m talking about is reasoned, calm, and never spontaneous. In fact, if a parent is ever under great stress, he or she should send the offending child to his or her room. Then he should schedule time for a good solid lickin’ when he or she is calmer.
Why spankings? Reinforcement of the fear instinct. People should learn and relearn that they have every reason to be afraid of things in the world. Fear is probably the primary motivator and inhibitor of human behavior. We go to work because we’re afraid of being poor. We try to be nice to our neighbors because we’re afraid they’ll turn on us. We stay out of lightning storms. Many people act with morals and values and ethics because they are afraid of going to hell. And if hell is only a theological concept to some, then prison should substitute nicely in a pinch.
Fear is good. The world is not a kind place, and the parent’s job is to instill the mechanism for fear in his/her children. We should teach children not to consort with strangers, not to hitch hike, to avoid certain places after dark, never to use credit cards to accumulate high interest debts. You know - all the regular things.
But we as parents should also be teaching our kids to fear the repercussions of their rudeness, their irresponsibility, their smart mouths, their boldness, and their disrespect. They should be afraid of getting whacked immediately upon report of the performance. Eventually, the parent can attempt to explain why politeness, responsibility, courtesy, restraint, and respect are desirable. Before the age of fifteen, children should learn to display the behaviors of these traits for fear of punishment. If they learn the benefits of these virtues before that, that is great. In the meantime, they should know how to present the appearance of all these things.
Now, this may sound silly to you, but it isn’t. You, if you’re in your thirties or above, probably acted with respect and courtesy because you had abject fear of your parents’ reaction to the alternative. If you went to Catholic grade school, as I did, you learned to display the traits the sisters demanded, for fear of having a yardstick broken upon your behind. I was very afraid of the nuns until sixth grade, at which time I developed mere concern.
And if parents would whack their kids a little more, what major change would be wrought? None.
The truth is that none of this will help entirely unless parents and the adult community as a unified front hold our youths responsible for their behaviors.
If you, the grown up, see a child, any child, behaving in an inappropriate fashion - say, breaking bottles in the roadway, it is your responsibility to correct him. And don’t be dismayed or surprised if the kid shows you no respect at all. For awhile, you’ll be the first adult, maybe including his parents, to attempt to redress his behavior. However, if all the grownups of the world would fulfill their duties, the kid would be reminded consistently, and he’d start looking over his shoulder.
Before I conclude this portion, let me present a qualifier/disclaimer. If this sounds remotely similar to Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, please forget I said anything. I certainly aspire to more wisdom than the wife of a horse’s pitoot.

Politics 2009

This promises to be a short subject, but not because the topic isn't worthy, or because the subject doesn't deserve close scrutiny or broad commentary. Instead, the brevity is due entirely to the ridiculousness of the situation.

Recently, Republican yahoos created a controversy where none really existed for one reason: they perceive the standing President to be on shaky footing so far as approval ratings are concerned, so any and all methods for maintaining the political heat are desirable.

The White House announced their intention to have the President deliver a message to the nation's schoolchildren. The message stood to be similar to the addresses made by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before him - affirmation of the nation's need for scholarship, persistence, and integrity as they pertain to achievemnt in school.

Where's the controversy, you might ask? Quite simply, one didn't exist. But Right wingers needed a way to keep attacks coming. After all, they had been able to call the recent stimulus package a failure (even though the jury is still out, since not enough time has passed), and the debate on government usurpation of health care was still raging. The worry was that the majorities in the House and the Senate made passage of some type of government takeover of health care a foregone conclusion. If only they could keep Obama on the defensive.

The part that infuriates is what comes next. Left leaners immediately cried foul, declaring that the right wing fabricated controversy is predicated on racism. While it's true that the righties trumped up some ridiculous objection that the true purpose of Obama's education address was to 'indoctrinate' the nation's schoolchildren, the more ridiculous affect was that people bought it. Given the precarious state of the President's platform, turning the school address into a brainwashing exercise would have been politically stupid.

The fact is that I am not even remotely a fan of Obama's view of goevernment, but I didn't think for a minute that he had any such nefarious plan. He is not a stupid man, nor do I think he is unethical or malicious. In fact, I suspect that he is a good man. I think his politics are grounded in idealism and naivete`, as are the ideologies of all Democrats. People, even Democrats, are prone to ruthlessness, selfishness, and greed. Government programs are run by people bestowed with govenrmental power and authority. Therefore, government programs, regardless of the party line, will ultimately succumb to illnesses that are the inevitable result of the character flaws mentioned above: every government agency - ever - will ultimately become bloated, inefficent, and destructive to the good of the people. The only answer is to limit the number of government agencies and programs, and to regularly dissolve and reinvent the ones that are absolutely a neccessity.

So back to the school address debate. To add to the annoyances, those people who cried 'racism' at the backlash to the planned pep talk to school children were duped into keeping the negativity on the front page of people's lives. The effect didn't change any events, and they served to engender the next fabricated campaign against whatever it is the President wants to do next.

In short, our country still has a problem with racism of all kinds. However, the fact that we elected a minority to the highest office in the land suggests that racism is becoming less of a determining factor in the course of events. Republicans such as myself are going to object and reject future plans proposed by Obama and his staff. That objection will come because he and his advisors genuinely believe that collections of people with good intentions - government agencies - should be making decisions for us because the average citizen can't make those decisions for himself. Meanwhile, I want fewer and fewer government agencies. I want the government to handle the military, some safety nets for those who are in bad straits, law enforcemnt, international relations, justice, and not very many other things.

I am glad that we have a member of a minortity group in the Oval Office. I just wish he stood on the right side of the political aisle, preferably more toward the middle.