[xoxoxoBruce]

From

SPANKING IS NOT A PARENTING CHOICE
You know, other countries have already tried this. In 2007 New Zealand banned physical discipline in all forms, including two fingers on the wrist. What happened? Teachers couldn’t control their students. It created a nation of uncontrollable demons. Two years later, over 80% of Kiwis voted to bring back the smack. I’m not making this up, you can research it yourself (as you should all claims made on Tumblr).

Of course there is such a thing as child abuse. But physical discipline is not it. Pain goes straight to your brain. It cuts through the fog. It works. The thing about discipline is, it’s being administered by someone who loves you. It’s being done out of love, so that you will learn. That learning is for your benefit. Later on, when you’re a teenage boy, your friends will beat the shit out of you when you are being an asshole. Again, this is a gentle beating, administered by people who care about you. Boys who do not receive this kind of beating run the risk of getting a broken bottle in the gut the first time they mouth off to a psycho stranger in a bar. That stranger does not love you. They will kill you.

I must say, I’m not surprised at this attitude, given that so many young people today are disrespectful shits. Of course they’re against discipline, they deserve some.

My mom used to hit us on the back of the knees with a fly swatter. I bet she only had to do it twice in my life. After that, all she had to do was say “where’s my magic wand?” and we’d behave. One time she did it, it was because I had ridden my bike out into traffic without looking, and a van ran over my bike. I was lucky I wasn’t killed. I was punished for my action, and that punishment probably saved my life. If she’d just put me in the no-no corner, given me a time out, it wouldn’t have hit home. She was saving my life. I am eternally grateful that my loving, caring parents cared enough about me to whup me one when I really needed it. I grew up into a person who was not completely incapacitated the first time I was attacked. I’ve seen it happen-
I saw a guy who was obviously raised too gently decide to jump on stage during a music concert and try to fuck with the band (it was because they had a chicken as a “lead singer” and this person thought that was animal abuse. The chicken seemed fine). The bouncer grabbed the guy, hit him a few times, and threw him out on the sidewalk. As I left the show, he was wailing, “Nobody seems to realize that I’VE RECEIVED A BLOW TO THE FACE!” He was trying to drum up sympathy, but everybody knew he deserved it. Jump on stage during a concert, try and fuck up the show, get tossed out by the bouncer. Bouncers aren’t known to be gentle. A good whuppin would have prevented all of this.

Fast forward. I lived in the ghetto in Chicago for ten years. I ran a kid’s club with bikes, a sort of earn-a-bike. Many of my kids didn’t know their given name. They couldn’t get into other bike programs because they had no parent or guardian. They were sweet kids, but get a bunch of them together and they were hellions. Once they had something to prove to the other kids, they were out of control.Since I got around Chicago on a bike, I quickly learned that the most dangerous foe on the streets was a pack of 12-year-old boys. They start getting that testosterone, start showing off, but lack the judgement not to fuck with me. I was jumped many times by these feral packs. I’ve fought my way out of a crowd of little kids many, many times. Sometimes they were young, like 7 years old.

But I never had a single problem with any thugs or gangstas. By the time a kid reaches 16, 17, he’s learned the hard way that you don’t start a fight you can’t finish, that actions have consequences. But at 12, when there’s 20 of them, they’re dangerous.Now, believe me, whenever I could I’d run away. I was on a bike and so many times they didn’t catch me. But sometimes they’d wolf pack me, spread out along the block and then rush at me from every direction. Who knows if they wanted to steal my bike or just beat up a punk. They’d pile on me and I’d have to throw elbows and kick my way out of the pack. So I got sick of fighting kids, and I started carrying a car antenna. As soon as that first kid would reach for me, I’d whack him on the hand with the antenna. That sent a jolt of pain straight to his brain. He’s start to realize there was going to be a consequence for fucking with me. I bite.
It wouldn’t really hurt him, wouldn’t do any lasting damage, but it hurt. Even though I didn’t have to, I cared about the kids, at least in the abstract sense, because I had so many just like them in my program that I knew that they weren’t really awful, that individually they were probably just scared and bored and full of rage.

In a sense, I was disciplining them just a wee bit, in that they probably thought twice before they tried to jump the next punk they saw. Because THAT punk just might stab them. I saw that happen, too, saw a white suburban kid of about 18 get stabbed once, right in the heart, and die right away. Over nothing, over a stupid argument. It was a tragedy. Had to sit with the body until the cops were done, because it happened in the alley behind my house and the garage door was open at the time and so the garage was part of the crime scene. Who knows if that kid could have learned not to mouth off to strangers? Obviously the psycho murdering bastard is to blame. But as long as the world is a dangerous place, kids need to know not to disrespect strangers. Heck, even if the world was a peaceful place, kids should still be respectful of strangers. I should not have to carry a car antenna to whip kids with just to avoid having to punch and kick them. But it was safe to say that nobody was disciplining those kids.

When I lived in Ghana, I saw how they disciplined kids there- if a kid was acting up, the nearest adult would immediately smack him. Didn’t matter if they were a relative or not. It was true “it takes a village” style discipline. And it worked, too: Ghana is one of the most peaceful societies on earth. Physical violence between adults is extremely taboo. I saw drunk guys in bars, SCREAMING at each other, nose to nose, and it would never come to blows. It was a great example of how immediate and painful consequence raises adults who do not resort to violence like we do here, that is to say, as the go-to once you’ve already failed. Basically any grown man who is starting a fight is doing so because they’ve already lost. They can’t resolve the situation any other way, and so they just want to hit things. Meanwhile, for those of us who’ve never started a fight in our lives, but won a lot of them, we NEED to fight for survival. We live on a dangerous planet.

I can guarantee you, you start a fight with me, we’re going to be fighting on the ground. None of this stand there and fisticuffs shit. I hope you’re used to fighting on the ground, because that’s where we’re both headed to resolve things. And yet, I never mouth off to strangers. I’ve had too many psychos try to kill me because I yelled at them, say for hitting me with their car. They jump out and want to fight. Or they pull a gun. Or they’re undercover cops with guns and kick the shit out of you and you can’t do anything about it. You just never know if you’re dealing with a complete psycho. I’m not about to lose my teeth because some meathead in a bar thinks I cheated at trivia by knowing the names of the old guys on the Muppet Show. I just walk away.
You gotta be respectful, or you gotta get yourself out of the situation. And if you weren’t disciplined as a child, you won’t have that respect. You’re sending your child out into the world as a ticking time bomb of danger. The worst thing you can do to a child is not discipline, give them everything they want, not make them work, and make life easy for them. An easy life makes weak, entitled, shitty people.
Thank GOD my parents spanked me. BRING BACK THE SMACK!