Use of the N-word at Circle K yesterday

Oops - Sorry. Duckmandu isn't a group. Just one (talented) guy - Aaron Seeman. Website here: http://www.duckmandu.com/

As Duckmandu says: "Shut the duck up and play your accordion!"
As Clifton Chenier said: "Aiyeeee! Laissez les bons temps rouler!" (Let the good times roll!)

 

Here are the 60 countries, territories and states that ban physical punishment of children. https://wgntv.com/2018/03/13/these-are-the-countries-where-spanking-is-illegal/
I am sure the citizens of Mongolia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Israel, Benin, Tunisia, Peru, Nicaragua etc. etc. will be surprised to learn that they are confused, sanctimonious and in Western Europe.

 

That's all right. Those were different times. When I was growing up, it was widely considered OK. When you were growing up, it was still pretty much the norm. Nowadays, you don't support it. Neither do I. But I won't be thanking my parents for whipping my backside (rarely) or mental punishment (almost incessant) either. I moved out of their house at 20 and didn't speak to them for nearly thirty years. Then they died.

 

Wow! I have been able to rationalise my parents' parenting behaviour very early in my life. As a youth, I was envious of those kids who got away with everything. However, i never wanted to be like the nice kids. Maybe my parents did found that balance for me, because i am grateful for those whipping. Growing up, some kids were abused. So even in that environment where corporal punishment was acceptable, there were norms on what was acceptable or not acceptable.

 

I suppose there were. But times have changed. For me, there were no such boundaries on mental browbeating. I hardly ever gave my parents anything you could call an excuse to hit me. I wasn't that kind of kid. The mental abuse was constant - no matter what I did or didn't do. Everything I did was wrong, wrong, wrong. And whatever my successes, they were never enough. I left their house over 50 years ago. They've been dead for over 25 years. Yet I still have a bad dream, once a year or so, in which I'm back with them. There had better not be a hereafter - that's all I'm saying. I don't believe in one anyway, so . . .

Over 600 years ago, St. Thomas Aquinas advocated indissolubility of marriages. He said that the father was vital to the children's education, for two reasons:

(a) He was more rational than the mother
(b) He was stronger and could hit harder, when punishment was necessary.

Soon after this was published, a German monk named Johann der Weise commented: "Oy, Gevalt!" *

* Forgot to tell you - he was a Jewish monk.

 

I sometimes think - no, I know - that parents who hit their children sometimes (likely often) do so for their own (the parents') psychological benefit. They like to either
(1) see themselves as whacking the kid to accomplish high-level problem-resolution, or
(2) do so just to get their ya-ya's out and feel better. Example:

A guy I worked with years ago had five kids - and heavy religion. They lived in the country. Two of his boys - the younger one seven or so - had gone out to a nearby farm to make a little money picking strawberries at 15 cents a box. They got a hole punched on a card for each box picked and payment at the end of the day. The younger kid came home crying, because they had taken a (permitted) break and gone swimming, wearing their shorts. He forgot his card was in his pocket and it had floated away. Gone - no card, ergo no money.

So Dad told me, "I pulled down his pants and whaled him good." I asked him how that solved anything - it certainly didn't make the young boy feel any better. He flashed me a grin. "No, but I sure felt better!"
He'd be an old man today. I wonder if his kids still talk to him ... does he see his grandkids?

 

A lot of my best parenting tricks involve the careful art of doing nothing. I can think of a zillion times in the past 23.875 years when the real consequences were better and more effective than anything I could have dreamed up.

P.S. that isn't the best method for every situation, obviously, we're not going to find out what happens when we don't wear our seatbelts, some things are non-negotiable.

 

Proverb 13:24 was quoted a lot, many times from the pulpit, ”The one who spares his rod hates his child, but the one who loves his child is diligent in disciplining him.” The Bible was used in the Caribbean to control people for centuries.

 

This is the way my wife and I have learned to do it. I know I come out like some MAJOR advocate for spanking, but a lot of that's just the typical curmudgeon, argumentative, provacateur vibe I exude. We seldom spank any of our children, and 100% of the spankings are reserved for the ones under eight. I cannot fathom taking a belt to a teenager--too weird, possibly a sign of deviance. Most of the time we just let matters take their course and let them live with the consequences.

Made a lot of mistakes with our first, trying to force her to be the kid we wanted rather than understanding that she was what she was and the best we could do was help direct it. Somehow, in spite of us, she has ended up being a functioning adult, tax accountant, grad student, wife of bank VP and mother of soon-to-be two children. Now she's the one irritated at us for the laissez-faire attitude we've adopted in middle age when we watch her son frequently (as is necessary given her outrageous schedule): "Why don't you discipline my son like you disciplined me? You used to whop me regularly! He's becoming spoiled, he won't listen to us after being with you for the day, there's no discipline!" We just tell her "Honey, we're old and tired and we figured out long ago we don't have all that much influence on any of you. You are what you are right from the womb and we're just along for the ride. Justin will be OK. If you want him disciplined, you do it."

 

I still think it's true because I believe the Bible's an accurate reflection of God's plan for humanity. I also think it's darned good--nay, perfect--advice. Realize also that the rod wasn't necessarily a tool of whipping. That was a shepherd reference, and any shepherd who used his rod to regularly beat the sheep rather than directing them away from the wolves would've likely been hung from the highest tree by the estate owner.

 

I think you've actually got some pretty good wisdom, and that's coming from one who's spent over two decades raising nine children. The rub, of course, is in applying it. That's where I fell down so many times as a young, stupid parent.

 

Totally agreed with this. That dad was a punk. I dare say if there was a time to flash a little righteous violence--and that time certainly does exist-- it would've been at a dad like that, who probably needed the stuffing knocked clean out of him. What a sadist. All religion, no Jesus.

 

He went after the moneychangers with a whip immediately after dumping their tables over (presumably to the delight of all present, one can only imagine the frenzy as people scooped up all the jing). He ran them right out of the temple yard; I assume a butt might have been whipped along the way. Or perhaps not. In any event, they ran for their lives and hides. It's possible they were acting at the behest of the corrupt ruling religious types of the day, because this action, perhaps more than any other, seems to have sealed Jesus' fate with the unholy alliance of religious leaders and Roman authorities. As for the Creator of the Universe line, I sincerely believe Jesus is that creator, believe it whole-heartedly. Without a hitch. I understand He's likely not very impressive to you--or am I misreading you? The claim is pretty clear, you know, and Jesus certainly did claim to be God, over and over. Perhaps that was the thing that sealed His fate with the ruling religious authorities of the day.

 

Yes, you are misreading me - possibly on purpose. It's YOU I'm not impressed with - imagining the Creator of the Universe is on your side, giving His full approval when you whack your kids. That's plain nuts. I don't think your children are corrupt religious rulers, are they?

I have no issues whatsoever with any of your other beliefs about Jesus or God. I'll stay out of yours and you stay out of mine.

 

Ah yes, I try to be the least bit of conciliatory and well, you just have to be such a Johann about it. Did you read my other post in which I agreed with you regarding sadistic dad? It's right there above. I absolutely was not doing any strawman jackassery with you. Scratching my head here, because that's the LAST thing I'd ever do to you. If I have a beef with you, you'll hear about it straight and cold, I won't use some fallacious nonsense to try and trap you. I may be an ass's ass, but Johann, I don't play games with people like that. Never.

The reason I believe that I have the backing of my Creator is because I believe the following: "Don't fail to discipline your children. They won't die if you spank them." Proverbs 23:13, New Living Translation; "Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them." Proverbs 13:24, New Living Translation.

So, yes indeed, absolutely and unequivocally, I do believe that the Creator of the Universe is on my side on this one when I whack my kids, so long as it's done in love and not out of selfish motives, so long as I don't exasperate them (also spoken against in that Bible, Ephesians 4 to be precise), and so long as my first and last impulse in so doing is to help them, to be kind to them, like one of those lowly shepherds trying to care for sheep, willing to lay down my life to protect them, rather than to whack them because they're inconveniencing me or I had a bad day at the office or because I'm a sadistic monster who gets a kick out of hurting people. I have read what said Creator thinks about the matter and I believe that King Solomon was writing under the inspiration of said Creator when he penned those words in the collection we call "Proverbs". That is, of course, a foundation of my beliefs and those of other orthodox Christians, that the Bible's an accurate reflection of God's opinion on matters and useful for things like child-rearing. So you can see where I'm coming from, can't you? It seems that the matter's been addressed in the book inspired by the Creator, no?

 

You can count on it. Some things are non-negotiable.

 

This place reminds me of my family life. Lots of strong, quirky personalities, angry exchanges, yelling, laughter, back-slapping, holding your side while you say "No, no, I can take anymore of the laughter!"

 

You raised your kids right!