My *click* moment

[SewingGreenMama]

I don't know how many of you read the open letter on the peaceful parenting blog "How Spanking Changed My Life" from a woman Beth to a pastor who teaches spanking as the only godly form of discipline; this woman's parents bought into his teachings wholly and only saw the wrongness of it far to late to prevent the damage. Her letter was telling her own story and confronting him on the reasons his methods were abusive, un-biblical, and did NOT produce the desired result, happy healthy kids/adults who follow Jesus, while she is a Christian she is far from happy or healthy.

Some things she mentioned about the sexual side of spanking opened my eyes on many levels. This makes many things clear, I was still dangling on the edge of possible spanking in the absolute rare occasion. Now I'm fully on the band wagon.

The Lord has been changing my heart so slowly but so fully, where things like spanking and time outs etc didn't bother me much, not even after I decided to gentle parent (mostly because I have a habit of following where God is leading even if I'm not fully convinced yet), now it is starting to bug me when I see stuff online and read friends punitive posts on FB.

Just wanted to share.

Read Letter Here

BTW what are the rules on sharing links...this letter is a hard read but I would like to provide the link, most links I see shared are broken...could I add the link broken? To the site as a whole or can I link to the specific page with the letter?

[Can Dance]

You can share a link if concerned about content then break it

[Maggirayne]

Links that have things that GCM doesn't support aren't allowed to be clickable. But say, a specific youtube video on cloth diapers is.
But not to an article on Pearls' website.

[Llee]

So glad to hear of the change going on with your point of view on discipline.

[Whirlwind]

Thank you for sharing this important letter. It really is heartbreaking.

[GraemesMomma]

So glad you're hearing the Holy Spirit

I read that link, too. It's very important information and I hope it continues to get out to more parents who need to know.

[SweetCaroline]

yeah..you were the one who told me in one of my threads that you werent going to let your dh's occasional spankings bother you to the point of disrupting the harmony in your marriage.

i thought about that so many times and wondered "how" ????? i wished i could be like that.

im glad you realise how big a deal it is now..but on the other hand,i hope your dh can be persuaded to stop. its a very tough thing to not be in agreement on.

[tigerlily]

I *love* those little moments of epiphany. Usually there is so much that is going into to it.

[MaryPoppinsIAin't]

Oh, the "cheerful and obedient shell"... how well do I remember that. I wasn't good at it, not at ALL, so I got a lot of early spankings for "defiance" when I was really just angry because it felt unjust. I eventually learned not to show anger or fear, and never ever cry. It's affected me on a subconscious level that I'm not at all sure CAN be fixed.

A note on a kindergarten report card (yes, that says kindergarten) informed my parents that "Laura pretends to cry several times a day in order to get what she wants. Her face gets red and she makes crying sounds, but there are no tears." What the teacher didn't realize was that I had been spanked so often for "excessive" crying that my body was already learning how to cry without tears. I'm 29, and to this day there are a scant handful of people who have ever seen me actually cry. Most of the time I'm physically unable to do so. I tear up, my face gets red, I might get that first hitching breath in, and then the programmed response takes over and all physical signs of distress vanish in a heartbeat. Thirty seconds, max, that's all the crying my body knows how to do. A therapist saw me do that once, and she said she'd never seen anything like that before. I think it scared her to consider what must have happened to the child I was to produce such a repressed adult. It takes MONTHS of sustained stress and upset to get me to a point where the emotion overwhelms the programming and I can cry long enough and hard enough to actually get any release from it.

My father (who did the majority of the "in anger" spankings, and it happened so often that there are no individual memories, just background noise and emotions) still shows up in my nightmares. These are the only dreams where I forget that I'm dreaming. That it's not real and he's not there working himself into a screaming rage. The fear is cold, bone-deep, and literally paralyzing. I always try to scream, and because of that nifty chemical disconnect in the brain designed to keep us from sleep-walking, I can't. That inability to scream scares me more, so I keep trying, harder and harder, until I manage it and wake myself up (along with anyone else in the house). Or I did, until my husband learned to recognize the "trying to scream" noise I make (even while deeply asleep himself) and wake me up before I get there.

It was worse for me because I fought. I never submitted inside. I complied, to avoid being punished or "earn" a reward, but never in 22 years did I obey with a glad heart and a cheerful spirit.

[Wonder Woman]

I understand, Laura if it helps any...at almost 36, I am finally learning that it is safe to cry. I still can't cry everytime I need to, yet, but much more so than in the past.

[GraemesMomma]

(((Laura)))

[SewingGreenMama]

I understand the no crying thing, though not to the severity I've heard and read. I can cry about something silly, but anything personal I can't cry about, anything that actually touches my heart, except when i see how I have failed with my children.
I've begged God to let me cry, and it is getting easier, but still difficult, I shut down automatically, though I can slow it down now put it off for a time.

I have a hard time admitting how hard things are, I see it in other peoples eyes when I'm honest about what is going on and I see the shock in their eyes, and the comments let me know that they are shocked at how well I seem to deal. And to a point I do deal well, but too often I fall back from trusting God to simply ignoring the situation and pretending it isn't important.

[jenny_islander]

That letter really got me too, at a time when I still considered spanking to be the last resort in the toolbox.

I was consigned to the care of my teenaged sisters, two angry, deeply wounded girls who managed to reinvent punitive parenting all on their own. I couldn't cry until I was in my very first apartment, behind a big, solid wooden door with a lock and a deadbolt. Or rather, sometimes the tears came spilling out, but the only people who could prick me hard enough to make me cry in spite of my conditioning were the very people who found my tears disgusting (or exciting, or both). Only when I had a space that nobody else could get into could I cry without feeling terrified at the same time.