[arymanth]

I started out VERY punitive in my parenting. I did not realize at the time that I had been abused by my own parents... I thought that what I had experienced was normal. The church I was in when my children were young preached spanking and harsh discipline big time. My kids never had a chance.

What made me change? Believe it or not... it was Ezzo! LOL My mom had heard about "Growing Kids God's Way" and told me how wonderful it was and how I needed to try it with my kids because they were so out of control. (which they were, being ADHD and having a psycho-spanking mother!) So I got online and looked up Ezzo... and found an Ezzo debate board. Now, being a totally UN-scheduled person myself, I naturally thought his stuff was junk... but I hung around just to find out what he was all about, since the church I was going to was very big on Ezzo, too. I was disgusted by what I was reading... how mean!... how cruel!

Then someone posted a link to a spanking debate. I thought I would peek in, just to see what their arguments were. Of course, this was one place where Ezzo and I agreed... and somehow that was sort of creepy to me. I went to the debate thinking that I would present my air-tight "biblical" case to a bunch of New Age hippy airheads who would give me their own "touchy-feely" reasons not to hurt little Johnny's fragile ego by spanking him. Boy, was I surprised to find out that (at least on that board) the spankers were the ones who were angry, defensive, and WITHOUT A GOOD ARGUMENT! I didn't post, but just hung around and let the other spankers ask my questions and present my arguments, and every time there were half a dozen really sweet, gentle non-spankers who would answer with logic and reasoning I could not argue with!

I decided to go to the Bible myself and find out what was going on. After all, I had been taught all my life that spanking is BIBLICAL.... surely God couldn't be wrong.... but these people were making so much sense. I had been to Bible college, so I knew how to do a good word study on this subject... I got out all my resources and started digging.... and I could not find ANYTHING that supported my position. The verses I THOUGHT promoted spanking turned out to be FIGURATIVE (the "rod" verses). So I started doing a word search on OBEY and OBEDIENCE.... and in nearly every instance those words were coupled with the idea of LOVE. If you LOVE me you will OBEY me. Not as a form of emotional blackmail... but a simple statement... if you LOVE ME... obedience will naturally follow.

I started looking at my picture of God, and I was shocked to find that He wasn't who I thought he was. I realized that I had always seen GOD through the filter of MY FATHER. Now my dad is one of the most godly men I have ever met, and I know he really does mean well.... but he is also excessively punitive and just downright spiteful sometimes. I realized that I had a distorted image of God because of my Father. I started thinking about how my children see ME.... was I giving them an accurate picture of what God is like? The answer was "no".

God has really been working on my heart since then, and I still have a loooooong way to go, but that was the moment God touched me and showed me that what I was doing was hurting my family. I never meant to be a mean momma... I was just trying to be a GOOD mom! But I was abusive... just like my parents. I slapped, I screamed, and I was MEAN to my kids... in the name of "discipline."

I don't know if I have influenced anyone else or not IRL... but I have been on more than one debate board trying to be the kind of person who influenced ME to rethink my own parenting style. I have had several people say that my posts have changed the way they look at things. That's a start!

I think that what impressed me the most about the non-spankers I talked to on the debate boards was that their gentleness and peace really came through in their posts. They were not angry and defensive, they were patient and gentle... everything I really WANTED to be as a mom... and something that spanking and being punitive never allowed me to be. How can you be peaceful and gentle while you are hitting someone? Even when people attacked them or said harsh things to them, they always responded very calmly and rationally and didn't let their own emotions take over. Not that they were not passionate about their side, but it was always a tender passion... their concern was not only for the kids who were being spanked, but for the MOMS who were doing it without realizing the harm they were causing... like me.

Just like the love of God draws us to salvation... it can also draw us away from sin. God's love is so attractive, especially to those who know only harshness. If we can just DEMONSTRATE God's love, we will DRAW people to us who will want to know more about what makes us this way. If they can see this sweetness in us, they will be more open to hearing what we have to say. Just having well-behaved, obedient kids isn't all there is to it. I was a mom who had fairly obedient kids... but I was grinding my teeth and whispering threats all the time to keep it that way! I was stressed out and frustrated. I so desparately wanted that PEACE that I saw in other moms. I wanted to experience that LOVE that they had for their kids... something that I did not have as a child, and that I could not seem to achieve with my own. I was taught that you had to EARN love and acceptance. "I will love you as long as you are GOOD ... if your room is clean, if you are nice and do what I tell you... then I can love you. If you make yourself UN-lovable... well, that's not my fault, you will just have to suffer until you decide to be GOOD." And I still struggle with this to this day....holding my children at arm's length until they "measure up" to my standards. God forgive me!



Well, this has gotten a lot longer than I intended... but I guess you get the idea.

Stephanie
Fledgeling Gentle Mom to my five fabulous kids!