The Spanking: In Hindsight

While schools are closed this week and the families I work for on vacation in various warmer climates, I have temporarily escaped to the house where I grew up to visit my parents and take a little vacation myself. I love to come back here, as it often helps me to regenerate and reminds me of what really matters in life.  Yet again it has helped to put things into perspective and makes me truly appreciate the way in which I was raised, particularly because of the children I look after and their lack of discipline. 

I am the first to admit that I was not a perfect child. I can think of more than one occasion where I truly earned a punishment, but I can also vividly recall the lesson I learned and the way it influenced my future behavior. Privileges were taken away, desserts seized, and - on the rarest occasion when I was at my worst - I was spanked. Of course, at the time I cried and screamed and loathed my life. Now, however, I actually look back and thank my parents for being brave enough to punish me and teach me those lessons. It can't have been easy to follow through on those threats of "Bite your sister one more time and you are going to regret it, young lady", but I think they understood the necessary level of fear required with children in order to teach them to consider the consequences of their actions and to value good manners and proper behavior. I am not saying that this lesson must be taught with physical punishment, but I feel it must be taught nonetheless.

This is what is lacking in the households where I work: this necessary fear of consequence and authority. I watch the girls scream and yell and hit and scratch and kick their mother on a weekly basis and I watch her reward them for eventually stopping by giving them candy and sleepovers and little toys. I've watched this lack of fear and respect for adults grow to encompass their life not only in their home but on the playground, in the neighborhood, in the homes of their schoolmates. And then I am privy to their insights that "Mommy is not strict at all." They believe, from a lifetime of lax parenting, that their parents - and now all adults by default - are powerless. I can't say I disagree with them.

After experiencing numerous events where the children have emerged victoriously untouched simply because neither parent wants to take on the inconvenience of being the disciplinarian, I find myself in a position where threats are empty.  Completely.  I now secretly await the next time that the children will misbehave just so that their mother will have an  opportunity to punish them, to see if she will, in fact, punish them. Chances are, she won't.