Was the Adrian Peterson case overkill? Minnesota Viking Peterson was arrested for supposedly beating his 4 year old kid with a tree branch. Let’s walk this one back a bit. Could some of these charges be hyperbole?
The classic switching is well known to many kids and adults. Many kids even had to go select their own switch. Could a switch be also called a “tree branch?” Of course. Forsythia probably makes the best switches, especially if you let the shrub grow freely.
Switching really isn’t racial. Parents and grandparents have been switching kids since the dawn of time. Race never entered in to it, to my knowledge. The question boils down to whether people believe corporal punishment for kids is ok or not ok. I am not so sure we can tell parents they can’t switch their own kids.
Those who get on their high horse about spanking children are also some of the same people who would criticize parents for not disciplining their children. Funny how that works out. I have seen many childless couples pontificate about the dangers of mild spanking completely alter their opinion after having a 2 year old.
Many of us would have gone to jail a long time ago if we were held to the no switching standard. My parents would have probably gotten the electric chair because my mother had two weapons of choice: the dreaded fly swatter or the long reaching yard stick. How many of us have gotten the smack in the mouth for talking back to our parents? My hand is raised. I was also a pretty good mouth smacker myself, back in the day.
Kids are pretty undisciplined today. Go to any mall or grocery store and then come home and tell me today’s kids are better off. You can’t. Those public places are filled with little monsters abusing their parents. I almost always come home wishing someone had smacked their kid squarely in the mouth.
The debate to spank or not to spank has been going on for ever so long. Those who want to “spare the rod” often are seen as having the most obnoxious kids on the block. Those who don’t spare the rod very much defend their right to discipline their own kids as they see fit (within reason). It’s that “within reason” that gets some folks in big time trouble. Bruises and other injuries on a child can land the parents before a judge. When I was a kid, I am not even sure that a broken bone would have gotten your parents in trouble. Things have definitely tightened up.
More information will be out about the Adrian Peterson case. I am not sure we will know then what really happened. If Adrian Peterson simply switched his kid, good for him. He cares enough to teach him right from wrong. If he bruised his kid and tore up his skin, then he went into overkill and has some problems. People who practice corporal punishment must do so very judiciously. It was wise to bench him until the entire matter was straightened out.
I am smiling, thinking of George Harris’s grandmother as I type. That lady had every right to whup the tar out of George!!Discussion?
here are the pics – http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/12/adrian-peterson-indicted-for-child-abuse/
4 year old boy, bloody lacerations … to me, it’s child abuse. At least in 2014 it is.
If those are really pictures of his kid, I agree with you. I am curious how TMZ got them though. Lacerations and bruises shouldn’t be part of disciplining people or animals.
I have mixed feelings on this subject. My siblings and I were subjected to the flyswatter, switches, and the belt. The problem was that we’d run from my mother and her flyswatter and then she’d threaten us every time we got within earshot with “wait until your father gets home”. He’d come home from work, probably just want to relax and have a beer, and have to discipline the kids for something he never witnessed. It set him up as the bad guy – though we never held it against him because he was the parent most actively involved with us. My sister, a CPS investigator, often told my parents that she would be investigating them had they pulled out the belt now.
Children probably push their parents buttons because they’ve figured out what gets a reaction, when the parents don’t want to create a public scene, or when the parents are too distracted to bother disciplining them. My nieces, nephews, and grandniece have never caused any problems when they’re with us but when their parents show up,a couple of them start to push their parents’ buttons.
Funny thing about when the parents show up….my grandkids are always worse when their parents are around.
Your mother should have gotten a yard stick to replace the switch. My mother said she wanted her weapons to be closer.
I did get the forsythia switch a time or two when I was young.
My mother said she never read Dr. Spock until we were older. He wasn’t out when we were young or she hadn’t heard of him. She said all she knew was how to raise puppies so that is how she raised us. My little brother even got put on a leash when he kept running off. That humiliated him and he stopped whatever he was doing bad. Anyway, Mother said she read that you should never strike a child in anger. She said that was sick. She said she certainly wouldn’t hit one of us when she wasn’t mad at us and that anyone who did that was a sicko. I always thought she had a point.
While my mother said that she had a birch switch in the closet
and would use it if I didn’t behave, she never did use it, most
likely because I didn’t want to get spanked. And – she really
never kept a switch in the closet, she told me later. 🙂 I never
did get spanked, and I never spanked my kids except for a whack
on the rear when they, as toddlers, took off into the street.
Slapped my son ONCE when he sassed me. He didn’t do it again.
I’ve heard TV talkers mentioned that this kid was hit with a stick,
a tree branch, etc. which makes it sound as if it was a deadly implement.
Of course, raising welts on the skin is sign of pretty heavy handed use,
of which I don’t approve.
Afraid I did get the fly swatter and the yard stick some. My mother also had good aim and of course she cheated with the long handle. I guess tha tmade me easier to reach. She also could pop mouths that sassed. That happened a few times too. My father also took off his belt. I can remember that happening three times. It made an impression. I think it was too heavy handed and in all three cases he was really having a temper tantrum. I can remember all three times like they were yesterday.
I would say that belts are too heavy handed. switches, not so much. Yard sticks are good things to pop behinds with. It gets ones attention. I don’t even disapprove of a dedicated fly swatter. I say dedicated because my mothers was used on flies and kids. That was the worst part. They didn’t hurt but you knew what kind of guts were on the thing.
I agree with Rick – that’s too much for any four year old kid. Makes you wonder how he’d discipline an older child.
My mother usually couldn’t catch the two of us who played outdoors. The little homemakers who played inside with their dolls were more likely to get hit with the flyswatter (nondedicated as well). She used psychological warfare on the outdoor run aways. When we were little, she would threaten to give us away to Mrs. X. She’d pretend to make a phone call and then tell us Mrs. X was coming to get us if we didn’t behave. Pretty soon we figured out her trick – I think she never dialed more than a couple numbers on the phone. Even then we knew there should have been more spins of the dial.
Any physical discipline is not acceptable for the simple reason that it is not how we want the kids to behave when they get to school or grow up and someone else breaks the rules. We don’t want our kid to threaten to bring out the belt, stick etc on some other kid. That is a quick way to get suspended. Any adult who uses physical violence on another is likely to be charged with assault. One can’t swat one’s employees who show up late or don’t get their work done. Violence is not how a civilized society gets the weakest members of society to respect authority. Also, violence as a outlet for anger is a horrible lesson for children to learn.
Physical touch that gets a child’s attention or restraints to prevent injury are OK as long as the purpose is not to inflict pain. I’d put the fly swatter and some switches in the “get their attention” category. We were lucky that a raised voice or a sharp word was all that was needed. I’d give some latitude to parents that needed more a bit more to get their children’s attention.
I must disagree, I (and my siblings) got it with switches, wooden spoons (until mom broke her favorite one across my ass), radar guided right hand (could locate me in the back seat without aid of the rearview mirror) and of course that time tested favorite, the army belt. When mom said “wait till your father gets home” she meant it and we knew what it meant.
Needless to say, the mere threat of the belt usually (but not always) kept us close to the straight and narrow and I would suggest (stop snickering Moon), pretty damn well-adjusted as adults. Today’s little miscreants as a result of little or no corporal punishment seem to have a higher tendency toward anti-social and disrespectful behavior. If I spoke to adults in the fashion many of these little snot rags do, I would have gotten it thrice, once from the disrespected adult, once from mom when dragged by the ear in front of her and lastly from dad when he got off duty.
When my mother had to slap people in the back seat…it was dangerous.
MoM, how did you hear me snickering all the way to your house?
I don’t think I have scars from growing up in a house that dealt out corporal punishment. I do think that kids today are ruder and less respectful than when I was growing up. The certainly aren’t better behaved.
The I-got-beat-up-by-my-parents-and-I-turned-out-better-than-kids-today meme is anecdotal chest thumping of little value. What we do know is that violent crime rate is down substantially between the baby boomer generation and the youngsters of today. One speculation is that reduced violence is because more people (including schools) have trained kids to be disciplined, kind and respectful without using corporal punishment. Or maybe we just found out how to medicate most of the dangerous ones. You pick.
Afraid I can’t buy the kinder, gentler kids theme. I don’t think they are. I just think mores have changed since we baby boomers were kids. Kids in school absolutely aren’t more respectful. They are far worse.
When I was a kid, you didn’t misbehave in school because it reflected on your parents. Trash let their kids misbehave in school. Now everyone’s kids have rights and know about them.
Also the fear of a spanking in school made a lot of us think twice about our behavior. If you got in trouble in school you really caught it when you came home.
Sometimes really bad kids need to get ass beatings, because nothing else works.
I used to tell my kindergarten teachers to go fu*k themselves and fight with other kids constantly. Mom was a joke. She once washed my mouth out with soap and I just laughed at her. However, my dad with his belt was no joke. Not funny at all. I got the message that my dad wasn’t cool with my extracurricular brawling and (ahem) “dialogue” with my teachers. I think I probably would have ended up in jail had it not been for ass beatings from parents, coaches, drill instructors, etc.
Anyway, my butt looked like the pictures above on more than one occasion. I’m thankful someone cared enough to do it.
Part of me agrees about some people just neeing a good ass whupping. Sometimes its just so the kid knows it can be done. But, drawing blood, breaking bones, and bruising just shouldn’t be a part of that scene.
I have known people that simply could not learn the lesson any other way.
Funny story – my grandfather used to make me pick my own switches up until the time I found his tree pruner. I went out and cut off every branch within a mile that could possibly be used for a switch (needless to say he was mildly pissed)
I think there were times I deserved the switch for sassing my mother, but I think a sibling and I may have been punished for our inherited genetic makeup – we were undiagnosed hyperactive fidgets who probably got on my mother’s nerves. My father supplied us with all the activity that wore off our energy – walking, swimming, fishing, bicycling, hiking, jumping rope. He was active for probably all the same reasons. My mother’s idea of entertainment – reading or quietly playing in the carport or bedroom – didn’t appeal to us so we were always in trouble with her.
My mother read a lot but she liked being outside also. Some of the worst trouble I got into was miscommunication.
For instance, a boy in study hall had given me this great rubber snake. He was very life-like and I really liked it,. I brought it home and inadvertently left it on the counter after making a snack. I got put on restriction for a week (which meant no dates!!!) because it scared my mother and she called my father home from work to kill it.
No one beat me but I wish they had rather than putting me on restriction. I had not done it on purpose.
I’ve always disliked the expression:
“Wait till your father comes home.” The poor guy, tired after a day at work,
would have to churn up some anger that the mother had felt hours ago
about something that he hadn’t even see happening. That’s just not fair!
Punishment should be swift IMHO.
I agree. I was the enforcer in my house when my kids were growing up and it isn’t fun to be the enforcer.
I just don’t get how beating kids makes them respect the beater. I understand that it makes them fearful and they will avoid pain. But I don’t respect people who lose their temper and use violence to get their way. I avoid them. How do you get children to respect you and want to spend time with you when they no longer fear the pain and have other options…like running away?
Seriously, do adults who got beat as children think they deserved it and how is that different from girlfriends/wives who are beaten and think they deserved it and don’t press charges.
No one here is advocating beating kids as in using ones fists or injuring. I think we are talking about spanking and switching. Getting the kids attention as it were.
No one is suggesting that the parent be violently angry.
@Moon-howler
“No one is suggesting that the parent be violently angry.”
I don’t know about that. My children are getting of the age when certain adult beverages tend to disappear from the garage fridge and I can assure you that if the last bottle of frosty beverage disappears necessitating a trip to the store so as to quench my thirst, I might get violently angry.
We all do what we have to do.
THAT is understandable.
Was never hit by an adult. Parents or (hold on now) nuns. Nursery school thru HS I was never hit by a nun, I never saw a nun hit anyone and I never knew anyone who was. My parents used their words and some scary looking stares. Come to think of it so did the nuns. It worked with all six of us. Odd I guess.
My dad never spanked, etc. out of anger. They had sort of a cool attitude about it, more like “you know you’re going to have to take a beating for this, right?”
A partial list of what I did to earn those beatings, all before I was 12:
Stealing their cars
Stealing their liquor
Stealing their ATM cards and withdrawing all their cash
Hopping a freight train to party next town over with aforementioned stolen liquor
Shooting the old neighbor lady in the ass with a BB gun
Dropping the C bomb on my mother repeatedly
Calling my teachers every filthy name in the book and then making some up
Taking a bus to Florida to go to Disney with aforementioned stolen cash
Vandalizing stop signs
Shaking the neighbors apple trees until every apple in the orchard was on the ground
Dipping my baby brother in the sewage pond and telling him it was good for his skin
Yep, I’m fairly confident I deserved every beating I got.
It sounds to me like you were ED and probably you needed more than a beating. Its sounds like intense counseling and medication would have done you a lot more good. Those are behaviors we don’t expect from the average 12 year old.
If you were my kid you wouldn’t have any teeth left btw. C bomb would have done it. I am also surprised they had another child.
@Cato the Elder
I can to the list of earned beatings before 12:
Sinking the Jon Boat with a 12 gauge while hunting Cottonmouths
Setting 10 acres of woodland ablaze
Destroying multiple mailboxes with M-80s
Breaking lightbulbs in a neighbors driveway
Events that led to my little sister puncturing an artery in her wrist
Trying to drive an unattended bulldozer
Shooting the local farmers hog with a load of rocksalt
Opps, “add to the list”
Gee, I was pretty tame compared to you guys. My friend and I only shot the heads off all her mother’s tulips with our bb guns and plastered together all the bricks her father had stored for a project.
See, this is part of the problem. My parents modified my behavior without chemicals. Nowadays everyone’s got an excuse. It must be some ED condition, etc. etc. etc.. It couldn’t possibly be that the kid is just a rotten little shit, right?
I always tested very high and pretty much made straight As (when I wasn’t suspended). I was just a bad little mofo who desperately needed a whupping from time to time.
I meant emotionally disturbed, not erectile dysfunction. Sorry, I wouldn’t want to make false accusations.
It sounds like you were very rotten. Do your parents even speak to you now?
Oh and I’m quite sure that I will pay for my sins when I have a child…
Oh I hope you pay and pay and pay….and I am sure you will.
@Moon-howler
Oh yeah, it all worked out in the end. They did their job and I’m happy they did.
In retrospect, why did you do all those things, Cato? Was it simply not thinking past the immediate pleasure of whatever popped in your mind? Did the beatings help you focus?
Or do you not have empathy for others and therefore no mechanism in your brain other than physical pain to keep you from engaging in destructive behavior?
I give parents wide latitude in figuring out what works, but I am unable to raise a child that needs regular beatings. I think medication is more humane.
@Ed Myers
I can’t top Cato’s exploits, but I can tell you why one disobedient kid did what she did. Boredom. My father worked from about 7-6 every M-F. My mother seldom left the house, seldom interacted with us, always wanted us to play quietly. Most of my sisters remained on the carport or in their bedrooms with their dolls and nurse’s kits. Sometimes we played basketball or croquet. But I would get bored and meet a friend who lived about a mile away. We did plenty of things we weren’t supposed to do – look through all the boat houses, walk to remote areas along the creek, ride our bikes with outstretched hands and feet on the handlebars. We were kids and felt entitled to enjoy ourselves. The only spanking/belting I got that I felt was unjustified was one from my father when he hit me for hitting my sister. I laughed which only made him madder because of the hypocrisy of it.
I don’t have any children – felt I did enough child rearing of my siblings as a teenager – but have always been able to entertain/watch my nieces and nephews without ever having to so much as raise my voice. One thing that I know that, perhaps, my parents didn’t is there are a multitude of personality types and they don’t all have to be clones of their parents. They’re entitled to be individuals. That’s not to say that kiddos might not need a switch occasionally, but their differences also need to be respected.
@Ed Myers
Probably a little of all of the above, I wasn’t really thinking about it too hard when I did it. Most of all, the males in my family are just genetically wired to be hell-raisers, so I come from a long line of miscreants.
I shouldn’t even say beatings. Beatings are what you get as, say, a young marine recruit. Spankings/switching was more like it, and yes they did teach me the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Yes, I think spankings can teach right and wrong. Some people don’t need to be spanked. Others do. For some, nothing seems to help.
Medication is generally to calm the kid down. It helps to engage the brain and cut down on impulsivity.
Cato, you are still fairly young, aren’t you?
And one more thing, I can appreciate your views on medication but the chemical path doesn’t really teach the kid the difference between right and wrong.
I assumed most children have a conscience that gives them the inherent knowledge of what is right and wrong. It doesn’t need to be taught. Discipline is simply focusing the child on listening to that inner voice and learning to look beyond themselves to become aware of the feelings of others.
@Cato, Am I right that you think that the automatic conscience is missing from your mind and that you compensated by developing a set of rules (learned via punishments) what is right and wrong?
Cato, your story and your perspective do fly in the face of modern thinking.
Hearing of a kid as wild as you were, I would think they have deep-seated psychological issues, and/or chemical issues, which would continue until they were dealt with.
But you really feel that you just needed to be knocked into line, and that this worked?
@Ed Myers
Well, yes but I don’t think the concepts are mutually exclusive. I mean, I suppose I always had the “inner voice” but I didn’t really know what it was or wasn’t listening to it as a child. Corporal punishment sent the message that yes, you need to listen to it. At least for me.
I don’t think kids have an inner voice, necessarily. The inner voice sort of blows a whole in Freud and those who came after him with their own versions of the id, the ego and the super ego (super ego being the inner voice we are looking for here.)
I think most kids are pure id with self serving behaviors being the controlling influence from birth on until parents start socializing their kid.
Simply put, some kids have more of an inner voice than others. Some kids are motivated by pure, unadulterated self satisfaction and instant need gratification. Unfortunately, some never outgrow it and become self-satisfying, attention-seeking impulsive adults.
@Rick Bentley
The short answer is yes. For me, it boiled down to having absolutely no consideration for people around me. Nowadays this is called a “deep-seated psychological issue” but back then I was just a kid who needed to be taught some damn manners, to use my Dad’s parlance. My parents used a lot of tools in the box, corporal punishment was one.
@Cato the Elder
Ditto
“I think most kids are pure id with self serving behaviors being the controlling influence from birth on until parents start socializing their kid. ”
Yeah – that rings true.
Cato, your posts are very interesting. I can’t really relate to that perspective, myself. But I never was especially wild.
I am just glad Cato wasn’t my kid. He might be 6 feet under and I would be in the slammer.
Well part of the problem was that I was taller than my mom by a couple of inches and outweighed her by a good 20lbs at the age of 12.
Come to think of it, it’s just like you would raise a large dog. If you don’t instill respect and manners while they’re still puppies you’re going to have hell to pay when they’re 125lbs and think they’re alpha.
You even have to do that with little dogs. Many of them have little dog complex. They think they are Dobermans when in fact, they are just ankle biters.