If you refuse to listen to psychologists and psychiatrists and neurologists and therapists who have devoted years to study and research on these things, then hear me instead.

Because as you laugh and mock the studies showing how hitting and emotionally abusing your children affects them, I fight everyday to deal with these real-life consequences of your actions.

I know about the belt. I know about sitting for hours waiting for you to decide you have time to come and punish me. I’ve followed your directions to remove parts of my clothing that might block the blow because I’d do anything to prevent more punishment. I’ve watched the anger in your eyes as you swung towards young children. I’ve covered my ears as you spent hours hitting my not even 2yr old sister for not eating something you told her to eat. I know how to take hours of yelling over a mistake or a forgotten direction. I know how to nod and agree when you attack me so I won’t get in more trouble for telling my side. It never mattered anyway. I watched you slap my siblings over and over, and still feel the sting of shame from the one time I “talked back” and you slapped me into silence. So how dare you ask me as a teenager why I wouldn’t talk or share with you? You made it very clear that you were in control of us and not in a relationship with us.

Oh this kind of parenting may lead to kids who behave in public. People commented all the time on how well-behaved we were and you wore those compliments like a badge of honor. I hope you bask in those compliments, because I spent 5 years of marriage never fighting or arguing with my husband because I could not lose the one person who truly loved me. Because I didn’t believe in myself enough to venture into an argument, because I will concede at any sign of confrontation. You took my voice and I’ve spent my life avoiding situations where I have to use it. You tore me down so now I immediately crumble at any hint of criticism or anger or disappointment from someone.  I’m just now finding relationships that can disagree and be at odds and still succeed.

I hope you slept well last night. Because last night I was frustrated and grabbed my child a little too roughly and spoke in anger instead of kindness, then the rest of the night I dug nails into my arms, wishing for blood, and cried myself sick on the floor because I know the end result of doing things like that and there’s just not room for grace for myself as a mother. 

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Friend after friend who finally get to a real conversation show they actually have little to no sense of self-worth and if you pay attention long enough, you find that worth was taken from them as a child.

Why on earth do you think that you hitting a child would not cause them to want to hurt others? Why do you think you somehow possess this superior knowledge of the line between acceptable hitting and abusive hitting? It’s completely subjective, and even if you could make a case for this “line”, I don’t know anyone I would trust to never, ever, ever cross it in anger or frustration.

I don’t know the Jesus that you do, I guess. Because Jesus doesn’t talk about children as “snotty brats” who just need taught their place and that are so awful you want to stop at the closest liquor store to drink away their misery. I also don’t know where this idea came from that Jesus somehow favors the southern portion of this one country in the western world over all the other places on the globe. I don’t think he’s impressed by your cowboy hats and berating children.

Jesus who said “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” and “Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger.” So it’s ridiculous to me that you would use God as your basis.

I don’t understand why you believe an almighty, just, all-loving God who created brilliant, creative children with a will to test and experiment and push and learn, but who can only be sculpted through physical punishment and tearing down. We don’t even treat adults that way. You cannot argue that children don’t learn through example rather than being told, so what result do you expect when you disrespect them and others and control them in anger?

From my limited experience with but extensive reading and following of work done for child victims of sex trafficking and exploitation, I can’t tell you how insane it seems that you think you can teach body safety and prevention while also intentionally physically hurting your child. When you say “I don’t need to be my child’s friend” that tells me that your child won’t ever feel safe telling you about an incident of abuse. I can tell you that if a boyfriend in highschool had pushed me to go farther than I wanted or I had made a mistake of drinking too much and been taken advantage of or a respected person in church had touched me, I don’t know that I would have trusted any adults to confide in. I thank God that never happened, but stories like those are buried in my friends’ pasts.

Look around you at the adults who cannot function in relationships, who have addictions (to alcohol or drugs or food) and mental illnesses and do not possess the skills to express themselves. So yes, likely some of them don’t know how to raise their children in a balanced way because they’re afraid of doing it the wrong way. It’s called a pendulum swing.

If you’d like to have an intelligent, calm, informed discussion on parenting brave, healthy, balanced, kind children I would be happy to join that. One where we can let our kids wear helmets because science fucking shows it protects them from brain damage, but also let them play in the dirt and have a childhood.