It's a comin' lil 'o', r r r rr

http://caymannetnews.com/2006/01/1005/letter3.shtml


LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Muddying the waters on spanking
Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Dear Sir,

I host a website, http://www.nopaddle.com/ about school corporal
punishment as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment. Many
of those issues are also common to home "spanking."

Ms. Rose, in her recent commentary, "The Issue of Spanking,"
recently tried to "clear up confusion." Well intentioned as she may
have been, however, I'm afraid she only further muddied the waters.

It is almost comical, if not so sad in its effect, the way just about
everyone who supports "spanking" has such a wide variety of
"lines" that if you cross them, spanking becomes abuse.

In her case if you don't spank with a paddle or some other societally
approved object long after the event with a cool, calm demeanor, then
it becomes abuse. You can easily find many other spankers who think it
should always be immediately done, done only with the hand, etc., or
else then it becomes abuse.

We now know for a fact that hitting children for discipline, with any
implement or lack of it, is never necessary.

Every study has shown buttocks hitting to be somewhat neutral at best
in mild clothed cases with young children, and harmful at worst in just
about every other scenario.

Millions of people worldwide, in some cases entire countries and
religions, are now almost entirely spank-free, with superior results in
academics, crime rates, etc.

Historically "CP" has been applied to adults as well as children,
and its history is a far cry from the illustrious "good tradition"
that proponents commonly espouse.

In the Old Testament slaves could be legally beaten to death, as long
as the death occurred the following day, and the slave owner merely
lost his property (Exodus 21:20-21).

Beating of adults and children was common in this primitive society,
and in this context King Solomon, and he alone, recommended Old
Testament Jews beat their children as the adults themselves were
subject to.

Solomon was not a prophet, and no Old Testament prophet, i.e., someone
who claimed to speak for God, ever claimed hitting children to be a
revelation from God.

If we did want to follow the "Old Testament," however, we also need
to beat adults and slaves, and we also need to offer animal sacrifices,
and stone to death anyone who does any amount of work from Sundown
Friday to sundown Saturday (Numbers 15:32-36, etc.).

The New Testament that Christians claim to follow does not have one
verse that instructs a parent to hit a child, or for anyone to hit
anyone. There is no Christian rationale for hitting, and no scientific
one either.

European descendants and the people's affected by colonization and
"christianization" around the globe were indeed left again with
seemingly "biblical tradition" of the buttocks beating of the young
that Ms. Rose referred to many times as the prime reason to continue
"spanking, but that "tradition" has no basis whatsoever in
Christianity.

Religious buttocks beating to cure sin or for control or exploitation
actually has its roots in the human propensity for dominance and
submission, sadism and masochism, learning the lessons of brutality
from pagan Rome, from 700 years of European tortures of "heretics"
during the Inquisition to "relieve them of sin," and through 350
years of slavery in North America where the vaunted "paddle" Ms.
Rose mentioned was invented as a tool of physical and sexual/sadistic
abuse and exploitation of slaves that did not reduce their market value
as much as the lash.

We should correct children in ways that do not involve violence or
violation, however mild or severe that may seem to the hitter.

Very often such temporary "cures" actually plant thorns of hidden
dissociation disorders and sexual dysfunctions that strongly harm the
children for life, and the parents seldom know.

"Discipline" means to make a disciple. Children learn far more by
what we do than by what we say.

If we model non-violence in solving problems, they will learn
non-violence, even if it takes a little longer or seems a littler
harder to us at the time.

If we respect their sexual regions, they will likewise give and demand
that same sexual respect from others. There is no reason to hit any
child, and every reason not to.

Jeffrey L. Charles
Roseville, MI