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Some Thoughts About Spanking
There have been a lot of articles lately about spanking children, some
in favor of and others opposed to it. It's occurred to me that my position against
spanking in some way empowers those who still justify it as a tool for getting children to
behave. Is not a self-righteous position flailed (even silently, non verbally) against
spankers itself lacking compassion and abusive, does it not invalidate, strike out at, and
hurt the spanker?
Let me explain: It's important for those of us who are against spanking
to notice that our position isn't having the effect we say we want. Our position is
adversarial. It's similar to one's position about peace. "Peace-niks" in the
60's were every bit as violent as the soldiers in Vietnam. That is to say, any position
automatically brings forth an equally powerful opposite position.
I know also that my position against spanking is loaded with self-righteousness;
it's culturally and intellectually biased. We "enlightened" ones
for human rights are so right that it automatically gives rise to the opposite position. I
have had no space for a local parent (one born and raised in Hawaii) to strike out in
anger at their child. They are wrong, and I am right that they are wrong, and, for
"reasons," they keep on doing it. They argue, violently, "It's my child and
it's none of your @#$&* business" (parents use anger to keep
teachers from getting to the truth about what's happening at home).
Something about how I/we have been communicating keeps producing more of
the same. It's as though spankers have to keep hitting me where it hurts, to make me
wrong for my self-righteous position.
No matter how loving I think I may be I have a sense of what it must be
like to be a mother in the supermarket on the receiving end of my stink-eye masked as
compassion as she verbally and physically abuses her child. I first talked
with and eventually reported a neighbor who was hitting his children.
Nothing seems to ultimately work. If anything, it looks as though my efforts
as a communication consultant these past 33 years has had the opposite effect.
Teachers also are frustrated. They can tell which students are yelled at
at home just by looking at their faces. The hurt, the sadness and daily invalidations takes it's
toll; the brightness, the inquisitiveness, the beauty, slowly disappears. An
"attitude" creeps in. Misbehavior and poor performance draws attention to the fact that there's a
communication problem at home. After a few "tries" at getting into communication
the teacher resorts to lowering grades. Real low grades replaces the verbal communication-skills necessary to effect a transformation between the child and his/her parent(s).
In my profession we say that spanking is what adults resort to when
they've lost their ability to be in communication (verbally) with their child. After the
very first spank, family members unconsciously agree upon an imitation of communication
within the family thereafter.
Yellers and spankers are unconsciously programmed to not seek out a
communication consultant. Why? Because a consultant, in the process of coaching the
family in creating a new communication model, would reveal that the child has been merely
drawing attention to some
out-integrity, some
unacknowledged
perpetration,
conscious or not, within the family. Usually this out-integrity is an
addiction. It's something that no family
member is even willing to address let alone give up, such as lying,
alcohol/drugs, taxes, car insurance, or some deception. Children are integrity meters. They know
intuitively when something is wrong. They do what it takes, even get hit,
fail in school, or make themselves sick, to resolve it.
My purpose in writing this article is to share these thoughts. I offer
no solution. Many of my/our solutions aren't working, other than to upset spankers and
make them feel badly, or less-than, which results in more violent yellings, harder swats
or more vigorous shakings.
Hitting and yelling is an addiction just like alcohol or marijuana and
it's equally difficult to acknowledge and stop. What I have never done is share with the
community at large my experience like I'm doing through this article. Have you? I'd like
to read other's thoughts and experiences about spanking. For me, it hurts to see a child
spanked. I was spanked "from love" with a hairbrush more times than I can count.
Only now do I know that my mother and I had absolutely no choice but to communicate with
each other that way. My mother never learned how to get into communication with me to find
out what I was trying to communicate nor were there any relationship communication
consultants back then. Worse yet, I knew it was right to hit a child and that I deserved
to be hit because the "nice" relatives, teachers and neighbors stood by and non
verbally supported it.
It's clear we haven't had enough conversations about this subject to
make the kind of difference we'd like to make. I support you in clipping this letter and
giving it to someone, even anonymously.
All the
effort and money spent on preventing, eliminating, reducing, or controlling
abuse is to no avail until we agree on a definition of what it is. —
Spouse Abuse Tutorial — Kerry
Kerrith H. (Kerry) King
Interpersonal/Organizational
Communication Skills Consultant/Coach
Pres. Community Communications
Send us your comments or share your thoughts
Contact Info.
A link to another site with
more articles about spanking.
Integrity & Out-Integrity
Integrity:
Whole and complete. Nothing missing, nothing added. Also an experience, as in, an
experience of integrity. An experience is outside the mind. The mind may find itself
explaining or justifying a broken agreement or why a student is failing. The very
preoccupation of the mind with the subject matter is proof that something about the
experience is incomplete. The person is not whole and complete, something (the
justification) is added. Truth needs no justification.
Out-integrity:
Something you've done that goes against your own code of ethics.
It puts your integrity out. You feel badly about it. It conflicts with your personal
standards.
For example: For me, eating things that contain refined sugar is out-integrity.
Another is, I used to be able to lie to a police officer and swear I wasn't speeding as
much as they said I was. Now it wouldn't work for me to do that.
Note: When I was
young I had many unacknowledged lies, unacknowledged to myself and to others. I did not
know back then what the source of my unhappiness was. I had no idea that there was a
connection between lying to a police officer and my experience of integrity. In fact, I
had so many small lies going that I had no experience of integrity, I was oblivious to
such an experience. Later, as I started to clean up my messes, my perpetrations, I began
to experience the effects of even a single (for example: "I'll be with you in a
minute.") lie.
An out-integrity can be an incomplete, something that I've been procrastinating. It can
also be a thought withheld, such as a criticism, judgment or acknowledgment, a badmouthing
of another, not having the integrity to communicate it to the person's face.
Most often, an incomplete is something for which you have not acknowledged
responsibility, something that you are blaming someone else.
In our Communication Workshop Facilitator Training Program we have an Acknowledgment
Process. The average Facilitator Candidate takes about 60 hours to complete the process.
It simply consists of another asking the following and other similar questions, "For
what incomplete would you like to be acknowledged?" Each of us have hundreds and
hundreds of incompletes; they serve as barriers to being.
Back
perpetration
Perpetration:
A perpetration as used here refers to something you
have done that feels bad or that you judge to be bad. It may or may not have
anything to do with a law. There is always guilt attached. Often it's
something, a thought, you have been withholding or hiding from someone you
love and respect. It may or may not be thought of as being bad by another. The
fact that the thought, to share it or not, exists proves that it is an
incomplete. Incompletes persist only in conditions of out-integrity. When
one is in-integrity there is an experience of wholeness and of being
complete, there is no mind-chatter about sharing or not sharing, justifying
or rationalizing. Non-verbalized, withheld perpetrations serve as barriers to
the experience of communication and love. Students have a harder time
hearing subject matter being presented when they have an unacknowledged
perpetration floating around in their mind.
For example: A friend of mine once stood for a
half hour, in front of 30 friends at an Advanced Communication Workshop,
hemming and hawing about this terrible thing he had been hiding from us. His
anguish was evident and such that we thought the worst. So terrible and
obvious was his guilt and embarrassment that we thought perhaps he had
committed some felony. He was however determined to get it out of his system
and come clean with his friends. Finally, with a burst of tears and grief he
said, "I eat candy bars." Well, everyone inappropriately broke
into laughter. We communicated, "You mean that's what we've been
waiting for, that's your perpetration?" Yes. To him and his experience
of integrity it was. It did shock us because he had been presenting himself
as junk-food-free and not un-selfrighteous about it either. He's been
considerably more compassionate since then.
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