When I was four, for some reason, I can’t remember, my mother whacked my backside with a cutting board, cracking it in half, and giving me fodder for my future tales of childhood torture.
To be fair to my mother, and to the wood’s tensile strength, it was one of those long cheese-type cutting boards, and it was already cracked, but still. Ass. Cutting board. Broken.
My mum liked to swat me. I was probably ornery as sh*t, and maybe that was all she could think of to do with me. But because of the ornery thing, and my sassy mouth, and my mother’s chronic lack of patience, I got hit a fair amount. I don’t know what a normal amount of hitting was in 1980ish, but I got hit what I believe to be a greater than normal amount.
If I wouldn’t sit still for hair-combing, she’d hit me with the brush. She loved to take a wooden spoon to my ass. She’d periodically just smack me upside the head. She had a husband that hit me with a 2X4.
I don’t think I can say I learned anything from being hit, except for fear.
I learned to be afraid of her.
So when I had my first child in 1995, I wasn’t going to hit. Ever. There wasn’t any real mainstream discussion of “gentle” discipline then, but I knew what being hit felt like. I knew I did not like it. I knew I didn’t want my kids to feel it.
Until one day I got mad.
Until they were fighting and wouldn’t listen.