The following is a narrative, not an opinion...
I posted earlier about my disciplinarian parents. I can trace some of my teen troubles & substance abuse issues to my moving to the United States & learning that not all children were beaten regularly. Once I was old enough, I just stopped coming home until I was ready. Why? Because the result would be a beating, whether it was 10pm or 4am.
Today, I tell my 13-year-old & 9-year-old boys how growing up with parents who used hands, canes and belts to discipline me made me feel. I will usually share this with them when I'm wishing I could light 'em up, and I tell them so at the time. However, because my wife and I choose to use a system of consequences instead, we seem to have eliminated physical violence as an option in our home--for adults and children.
The down side is that our sons tend to litigate issues with us like little adult fuckin' attorneys; they're constantly negotiating! On the positive side, our family and friends marvel at the fact that two energetic, athletic boys can play roughly with their buddies but NEVER fight one another. OTOH, we have a friend who's been heavy-handed with her kids (in her defense, she's an overwhelmed single mother) and the kids, in turn, are smacking the shit out of each other constantly.
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OPINION SECTION:
Having said that, how one rears one child can be a profoundly personal and controversial topic that depends on culture, family history and a number of other variables...![]()
"Wise men don't judge: they seek to understand."
-Wei Wu Wei




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...I'm out! Nice to see it on-point at least till page 4....

WTF?
Things got really violent in my household many times. Not because my parents are abusers, but because they have very poor impulse control, anger management issues, and never worked on communicting with one another.


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