Astrid Lindgren on Spanking...

"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

As a child, I was spanked. I had a great-grandmother who lived with me.
She would now be 132 if she was alive. She didn't believe in
spanking, never spanked her child, and tried her best to protect me.

I married a wonderful man 23 years ago. He had never been spanked and
couldn't believe there were people that actually advocated hitting their
children. His mother was horrified that people still hit children. She
chose to not spank, because she said early in my marriage that she
"couldn't imagine anything a child could do that would be bad enough for
her to hit a little child."

My husband and I raised two children without hitting. They are
wonderful children and I am so glad that I never resorted to hitting in
the name of discipline.

LaVonne