Declination of Moral Values (A personal opinion)

Yesterday was a very reveling day in several ways and it caused me much thought as to my own personal beliefs of how a child should be raised and how society as a whole thinks discipline should be meted out or how a parent should impart moral values and respect to their child.

As I stood in the checkout line at a local department store I witnessed a young boy in a full blown tantrum as his mother stood helplessly by as the child ranted on screaming and yelling at his mom, cursing, telling her that he hated her, that she was a bad mom and he wished that he had a mother who loved him. I was embarrassed for her not because of what the child was doing, but because of what he was publicly putting her through and the sad thing about it was she really could not do anything about except leave the store. She could not properly discipline him in a public place as the young boy should have been, for if she did she could have faced criminal charges.

I thought back to when I was a child and what would have happened to me for such a display in public. First thing that would have happened is that I would have been pulling myself up from the floor after kissing it and hearing my father telling me that "we" would deal with it further when we got home and I can promise you now not another sound would have issued from my mouth, the punishment had already started. Once reaching home I did not have to be told to go to my room, I already knew from past experiences what was expected of me and my father would take his time in his disciplining, he liked the fact I was thinking about what was coming, what I had brought on myself and thinking about what was coming was his way of reinforcing in me that what I did was no one's fault but my own. When he did enter the room he did not sit and talk to me about what I had done wrong and why I should not have done what I did and that what was fixing to take place was going to hurt him far worse than it was going to hurt me. He knew it was going to hurt me and that point was driven home with every swing of the belt and he was very capable of making his point quite clear without words. The only thing that would be said was when he was leaving the room, "Maybe next time you will remember." It rarely happened again if it happened at all.

I am not saying that everything a child does should not be dealt with by corporal punishment, but I do believe that there comes a time when time outs, corner sitting and the taking away of privileges does not work because the child knows that these will be restored and under such punishment a child will just wait it out or divert their attention to something else. A spanking is not as detrimental on a child as some will lead society to believe and it does have a reinforcing action that there will come a point when a child's actions will warrant such discipline. The sad thing again is that society as a whole has turned away from corporal punishment in the home and that I feel is the decline of imparting on a child what their limitations are and have taken away from the parent this tool of last resort in an effort to "bring home" to their child that sometimes in life their actions will attribute to a more serious form of punishment. There are some children that you can talk to until you are blue in the face, until hell freezes over to try and get a point across to them as to why what they have done was wrong and it will only go in one ear and out the other, children have a most unique way of tuning a parent out and an even greater ability to make their parents think that they realize that through their wise words and sagged advice based on their past experiences that they have seen the error of their ways and learned a very valuable lesson from it. In other words they just told their parents what they wanted to hear when in fact all they were thinking was the would be glad when mom or dad had finished wagging their tongues because it was cutting into their social time.

Who is to blame for this? There are several reasons and each compound the other. I personally think it is due to a parent or parents being too lazy or involved in their own life that they fail to accept the responsibility to be a parent. That some do not realize that children are taught by example in a lot of cases and use the old rule "Do as I say, not as I do." and expecting the child to understand and the last reason is that government has set into place laws dictating what is called discipline and what is considered child abuse and the line defining the difference is very vague. They want you to be responsible parents and raise your child to be an acceptable member of society, but do it in such a way that you cannot discipline them in a physical way. It has become sad when a parent is held responsible for their children's action until they turn 18 and it is the parent that will pay for it until then and take away vital tools that have aided a parent for years in the past. In some states if you are held responsible for our child for a crime they have committed, even though you have no history of it yourself, you will pay the restitution and in some states a parent will suffer public humiliation for what their child has done, either by placing them behind a fenced in place in a spot where there is a lot of traffic or they have it placed in the newspaper where it even reaches a broader audience and in some cases they even broadcast it on the television news.

My daughter used to think I did nothing more than wait for her to screw up just to punish her. She seemed to think I got some kind of thrill inflicting pain on her and seeing her cry. I am not saying that she was the perfect child and I bear the scars all parents do when it comes to their children and I have suffered the threats of school counselors for my strict dicsiplining when my daughter told them I was phsically abusing her. I had no problem telling them that they had for 7 hours a day, I had her the rest of the time and as for determining what dicsipline is to implemented depending on what she did or failed to do would be decided by me. I was reminded at that point that charges could be filed on me based solely on my daughter's words and I could be prosecuted. That was when I looked straight at the counselor and told her if she thought she could do a better job I will sign over my responsibilities to my daughter to her and she could decide what was best for her as well as support her and meet her financial needs. That did not set very well and she let me know she had hundreds of children to deal with daily and that was not a practical solution to the problem I was facing. I told her the only problem I could see was that she had no right in telling me how I should raise my child and if she did something that warranted corporal punishment, then I would see to it that corporal punishment was rendered and not check in with her to see if I was doing the proper thing in the dicsiplining of my daughter. On the other hand my daughter also knows that I will not let anyone unduely harm her or suffer someone else's punishment. This she has witnessed many times and knows I am the first to protect her. As he high school principle learned the hard way when she was expelled from school when two other girls decided to jump on her in the halls between classes as he and other teachers stood by and watched. She saw me and the lengths I would go to to see that she was not harmed and I laid the law down to her principle that day as to how he was going to take responsibility for my daughter and her safety and that I woud hold him personally accountable for an harm that came to her up to and including his position in the school, I guess he thought I was bluffing. He no longer works in the Terrrell ISD. I told Kelly at that time that we all have a price to pay for what we do, and he is no less responsible for his actions than she was and when I discipline her it is not because I enjoy it, but because she has done something that is not considered acceptable or wrong. That there are different levels of discipline and she needed to accept that fact in life and learn to deal with it, because what works for one action may not be a sutible punishment for another and she needs to think about and understand the consequences that are involved before she decides to do something that is concidered unaccpetable.

The goevrment has taken it upon themselves to decide what is acceptable punsihment and was is considered child abuse, a public spanking when warranted can cause you great suffering through the legal system. But if we wait for the legal system to apply the appropriate punishment or as to what they think is appropriate, then a parent has lost the battle at the checkout line and they will never have any recourse in deciding exactly what type of punishment a child deserves for their actions.

Spare the rod and spoil the child...

Later...

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