To Spank or not to Spank I reach over and swat her on the butt. She's taken by surprise, and the usual wail begins to escape her lips. Her lower lip curls down, her face becoming elongated. The look says it all, "What was that for, Mommy?" Less than a minute ago she had ever so nonchalantly placed her hand on her baby sister's head, and shoved her backward - - this little baby girl who is just starting to learn to creep across the furniture, and just starting to try to climb the stairs :\
Was I wrong for swatting her on the butt for that? That look she gave me made me feel so bad. In a split second I had to make that quick decision. Swat her on the butt, time out, quickly grab her and firmly tell her "no"...? I had to get her attention, and quickly, so she'd know what she did that was wrong. I also have to be consistent, every time she does that, so she gets the message that it's truly not okay. Mommy really means it when she says "no".
Swatting her on the butt: was that truly that bad? In the back of my mind I hear words from dozens of articles speaking to me, saying to spank is to just teach violence as a way to handle conflict. Have I done that to her? Is that why she's been ever so nonchalantly pushing her sister around? Does she feel entitled to tell her little sister what to do? After all, she is bigger than her, as I am bigger than both of them. Or is it just simply sibling rivalry? Maybe I shouldn't have swatted her on the butt, but I was only trying to get her attention - - and get it quickly, before the message lost its affect.
She is at such a vulnerable age right now, learning how to handle her emotions. At one point she was the only child. All she saw was her's: her toys, the attention we gave to her, the space around her. Then her sister came along, and she had to learn to share all that.
When I spank her am I really telling her that this is one way to handle her issues - through violence? I see her do so many things I've done. She loves to imitate right now. She tries so hard to tell her baby sister "no" before she shoves her out of the way - just like I tell her "no" before I resort to spanking her. At this age it's a little hard to reason with her. If she were about two years older, maybe I would be able to tell her how it's my job to discipline her sister, not her's. The time outs don't always work. When I send her to her room she sometimes just finds a toy to play with, and goes on about her business. Other times she just takes a nap. Rarely does she scream or cry, letting me know that she got the message.
I guess I should have grabbed her and firmly told her "no". That's what I would be forced to do if she wasn't my child. That's what I have to do when I'm watching someone else's child at our house. That, and I put them in a time out. Are they really learning the lesson that way, though? I feel so bad, thinking of the possibility that she sees the difference between how I get her attention and how I would get some other child's attention - the attention of some child that isn't my own. I was forced to do that as a teacher: finding some alternative way to discipline, besides spanking or paddling. You'd think the alternatives really worked, otherwise many parents wouldn't seek so much teacher advice on how to raise their children. You'd also think the alternatives worked because of all of the articles against using corporal punishment. The kids I had to discipline, in some shape or fashion, were usually the same kids day in and day out. I had my "projects" throughout each year. They would just be replaced with new "projects" every new school year. I don't know if anything could really get their attention, even spanking. The problem is that spanking could not even be considered in the equation. So we don't know whether or not that would have worked at all.
So what was the difference between the kids who rarely go in trouble and the ones who seemed to rarely find a day they weren't in trouble? Are the well-behaved kids just born that way, or is there something different about how their parents bring them up? All I remember telling myself, and others, when I had to face another day with the "projects" was, "If that were my kid, he'd be getting a spanking". Or I might say, "She really needs to be bend over a knee. That'd teach her a lesson." I'd hear other teachers say similar things about their "projects". All I know, at this point, is that I am truly responsible for my own little girls. I know I don't want them to be some teachers' projects year in and year out. I wish I knew why some of the kids were "projects" and the others were pretty good kids.
Is it the time we spend with out kids, making them know that they matter to us? It has to have something to do with consistency, but it has to be the right kind of consistency: making sure we ge the point across of what's not okay, but also not teaching something else that's wrong along the way. The students who were "projects" might have been in and out of foster homes, with no clear set of rules and no consistent people in their lives to count on. They might also have been the ones who appeared to belong to a family who seemed to have it all together, but in essence were ignoring their children. The almighty dollar might have been more important than spending time with their kids. The common denominator seemed to be that there was no solid preson in their lives to be accountable to. Yeah, a teacher could matter some- but they'd get a whole new teacher the next year, and have to start over again.
So what does it boil down to? How do I best be my points across to my little girls? What I do know is that I really need to be consistent. What I also know is that I need them to know that they truly matter to me, and that I'm there for them no matter what. So I swatted her on the butt for shoving her sister down. I don't do that very often. I usually don't have to swatt her on the butt at all. Spankings, to me, are the last resort. It's not like I'm smacking her around, and it's not like I spank her day in and day out - - every hour of the day. Then there'd be a real problem. I was spanked once in a while myself, when I was a kid. I don't find myself smaking someone upside the head when he cuts me off in traffic. I don't find myself smacking lashing out at the woman who cuts in front of me at the supermarket. So would I really be teaching my girls to do that when I occassionally spank them? I don't think so.