Raising Children with Violence

"Above all, I believe there should never be any violence. In 1978 I
received a peace price in West Germany for my books, and I gave an
acceptance speech that I called just that" 'Never Violence.' And in
that speech I told a story from my own experience.

When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me
that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in
striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a
tree was standard practice at the time. But one day when her son was
four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking -- the
first of his life. An d she told him that he would have to go outside
and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long
time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, "Mama,
I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that you can throw at me."

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from a
child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it
makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with
a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried.
Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself
forever: never violence. And that is something I think every should
keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery -- one can raise
children into violence." by Astrid Lindgren