What It's Like To Be Switched

[Rosa]

It's not just the South - I live in the upper Midwest, and I have been recommended To Train Up a Child by people here in Minnesota, and I have a friend in Milwaukee who was given a copy as a baby gift.

I think it used to be common everywhere, like strict gender roles and nonworking wives, and it's being promulgated by people who think the past was better than the present.

[Patsy]

We had two games for sports carnivals at high school.

1- Find newspapers around the area - the type that are shrink-wrapped in opaque green plastic. These are swords, but more commonly (especially if they're the lone newspaper found) whacking sticks. Smash the everliving shit out of one another until you tear through the plastic and break/bend the newspaper itself on someone's thigh.

2- Find the lolly snakes in the communal lolly stash of the day. Use them as whips on each other's thighs. If you back down, you lose. No-one ever backed down but we hissed and howled. You don't need to use any strengh to make that sting.

Oh, and occasionally we'd go and run a race or throw a javelin, I guess.

Nobody needed to tell me, on first discovering the Pearls, that their methods hurt a hell of a lot more than they say.

[mirele]

My mom used to spank us with her hand until she broke a blood vessel. Then she started using a metal mesh flyswatter.

All spanking did for me was turn me into a better liar than I already was. My mom would look at me and say, "I know you're lying, but I don't have any proof, now get out of my sight."

I will say this for my mom, it was definitely punishment. There was no attempt to make it into "this hurts me more than it hurts you."

I don't remember actual incidents of spanking but I know it absolutely stopped once I had grown to mom's height (about 11 or 12). I do remember being so angry with my mother when I was 14 that I chucked a half-eaten corn cob at her across the dinner table.

However, I had more pressing things to worry about after my mother became a full-blown paranoid schizophrenic when I was eight years old. Getting spanked was the least of them. I remember dragging my sister into a bedroom and shoving a chair under the doorknob because my mom was in one of her moods...and waving knives around. That, and the fact that anything could set my mom into a raging mood, well, as I said, spanking was the least of my worries.

[deelaem]

I loathe Southern-style parenting. Loathe it. It's not effective. It's not at all loving. It's laziness. It's violence.

Word. The same could be said for all Southern redneck culture. Since moving here 6 years ago, I've never been as appalled at people's behavior, not even when I worked with drug addicts. What makes it so appalling is that is accepted as normal and natural, and any attempt to educate or lift one's self up is seen as bad. "Yer gettin' above yer raisin'" or some such nonsense. They are actually quite proud of their willful ignorance.

One of my friends posted this as her status update on FB a few weeks ago: "I have to laugh at people who are against spanking. My parents whipped my @ss like there was no tomorrow... I didn't hate them.. I didn't have trust issues with them because of it... I didn't fear them... But I darn sure respected them! I learned what my boundaries were, and knew what would happen if I broke them. I wasn't abused, I was disciplined.... *Re-post if you got your @ss smacked and survived it*"

Once again, fear is mistakenly called respect. I'm not sure that many people even know what real respect is anymore.

I hear this all the time. First of all, these folks need to define what "ok" is. A person's self-analysis is rarely accurate. You're ok, but you drink too much, verbally abuse your spouse and kids, and have a holier-than-thou attitude? When pressed, their version of "I was spanked and I'm ok" generally means that at least they aren't in prison and they have a job, etc.

I've said this to people before, "But just think how much better you could have been if you hadn't been disciplined with violence?" That usually goes over like the proverbial fart in church, but at least they've heard me. I also like to make the point of saying that if they had hit someone else's child to the point of leaving marks, they'd have been arrested for assault. Why is it ok for them to do that to their own child?

[emmyfair]

I was slapped, hit, kicked, had things thrown at me, chased, and screamed at pretty much all through my childhood. I was also moved a lot from family member to family member - I was a quiet, scared, obedient child, but I guess no one could handle me anyway.

I was terrified of my family. To this day, the sound of a kitchen drawer slamming, or someone yelling and crashing around makes my want to run and hide under the bed.

The last and worst happened when I was 16. I was working at a health food store, and after my shift I was waiting outside with some of my co-workers for the bus. I mentioned to one of the girls close to my age that I had a really bad headache, and when I got home I was going to take some tylenol. She leaned forward, gave me a hug, and then kissed me on the forehead. That's when I saw headlights flash in the parking lot; a family member had been waiting to pick me up, and had been watching me.

They wouldn't even let me explain when I got in the truck. I was screamed at all the way home, and smacked around when I got there - totally humiliated. Over something so stupid. Shortly after I turned 17 and left home, but to them, I've never lived this down. When I got married, none of them came to my wedding, but I got lots of comments over the phone expressing relief that I had married a man and didn't marry another woman. As if it would have mattered if I had... :roll:

I have minimal contact with my family now. My Mom, whom I lived with the least, is trying really hard to mend our relationship and has said she's very sorry for everything that happened. I'm still pretty confused about this, but I'll see where it goes.

I don't spank my kids, I don't think I could without being sick after. I almost didn't have kids because I was so scared I'd treat them the same way my family treated me. It didn't help me, I don't love my family more and I'm not a better person because of it.

[AnnoDomini]

I was spanked as a kid, and while I do believe that a very, very few parents CAN do it effectively, in love and without violence or anger, I don't think I can do it to my kids, because... well, I associate spanking with the bedroom now. Go figure.

My parents also were big on the 'we hate having to do this to youl, just hate it' but once I heard that my mother and a church friend were talking about how 'best' to spank the children. Things like, spank slowly, that makes it take longer so more humiliation for the child, and also it maximizes the sting developing on the skin before the next smack. I never liked that woman and hearing that just made me dislike her more. If parents hate spanking so much, how can they possibly TRADE TIPS on making it worse for the child and not be too upset to talk about it?

[Mompom]

I was spanked often on a bare bottom with a wooden spoon, a dowel rod, a belt and a hand. I was spanked at age 16 by my father (pants still on, thank goodness, or I'd really be a mess) for mouthing off. And experienced getting spanked while everyone in my family laughed at me.

My brother had extra hair growth and discoloration on his rear end from being beaten with a dowel rod up to 150 times at once. I remember feeling anger and fury, like I could kill someone. I remember, wiping my tears and putting on my sister's makeup to hide my feelings.

To this day, anticipating pain makes me afraid, but they always comment at the doctor how I am the only patient who can be like steel when getting any procedure done, even painful ones. I am able to withstand many things, by going into a silent place.

My parents have apologized, cried, and feel horrible, but I still wouldn't let my kids go to them for guardianship, should my husband and I die.

I'm not sure my brother will ever fully recover. And that breaks my heart more than I can say.

[anniebgood]

I'm 58 and I can remember only 2 times when I was spanked. It wasn't a beating, it was about 5 swats on my butt and I was crying. My dad did it. We weren't spanked, we were sent to our rooms, our books taken away (for me that was a punishment 10x worse than spanking) or sent out to do yard work.

My parents were older (29 and 54) when I was born, and I think since this was my dad's 2nd marriage perhaps he was less inclined to spank.

I spanked my kids, and now looking back on it, it wasn't worth it. We stopped and found other methods to discipline them.

[AnnoDomini]

After I got too old to spank, my parents pretty much didn't do anything to discipline me (except send me to my room when they didn't want to deal with me--they still do, even when my father is clearly in the wrong. I'm the wrong one for not respecting him when he doesn't deserve it). They couldn't ground me, they didn't have anything to take away. I had no friends I saw more than three times a year. I didn't have a television. Didn't play games or have the internet on my computer. No school, no programs, nothing.

[QueenMother]

I have avoided reading this thread because it brings up horrible memories for me. My mother never raised a hand or anything else to us. Never. My father was a different story.

My mother was raised in large southern family in rural southern Alabama. There was no spanking, for discipline, in her family which I suppose is why she didn't find it necessary to introduce spanking to her family.

My father was raised an Irish Gypsy. Corral punishment was how he, and his 14 siblings, were disciplined. Harshly disciplined. It was all he knew how to do. However, culture does not make it OK to do.

I remember one time when I was 7 years old, I was down the street playing outside, in the front yard, when my dad apparently came out to call us all into the house for supper. I didn't hear him and kept on playing. Then I caught glimpse of my dad hurrying toward me with something in his hand. Turned out it was a heavy file from the garage (he was a mechanic) and he proceeded to beat my bum with it, hard. At the same time he was yelling at me about not listening to him call me to come to dinner, and everyone else came but me so he knows I heard him. I was crying. I was humiliated to have this happen in my friends front yard with everyone watching.

I cringe thinking about this. My mother was furious with him. That night after my bath she marched him into the bathoom to look at the bruise forming on my backside bum, thighs. She told him if he ever touch one of us in an angry manner like this again she was packing us all up and leaving. Leaving for ever.

That was the end of spanking in our home. He neve spanked or raised a hand to any of us ever again. It didn't stop his name calling when he'd get mad with one of us, but the corpral punishment stopped.

[Koala]

This thread makes me sick to my stomach. Giant hugs to those of you who suffered through such hell as children.

[thoughtful]

I have avoided reading this thread because it brings up horrible memories for me. My mother never raised a hand or anything else to us. Never. My father was a different story.

My mother was raised in large southern family in rural southern Alabama. There was no spanking, for discipline, in her family which I suppose is why she didn't find it necessary to introduce spanking to her family.

My father was raised an Irish Gypsy. Corral punishment was how he, and his 14 siblings, were disciplined. Harshly disciplined. It was all he knew how to do. However, culture does not make it OK to do.

I remember one time when I was 7 years old, I was down the street playing outside, in the front yard, when my dad apparently came out to call us all into the house for supper. I didn't hear him and kept on playing. Then I caught glimpse of my dad hurrying toward me with something in his hand. Turned out it was a heavy file from the garage (he was a mechanic) and he proceeded to beat my bum with it, hard. At the same time he was yelling at me about not listening to him call me to come to dinner, and everyone else came but me so he knows I heard him. I was crying. I was humiliated to have this happen in my friends front yard with everyone watching.

I cringe thinking about this. My mother was furious with him. That night after my bath she marched him into the bathoom to look at the bruise forming on my backside bum, thighs. She told him if he ever touch one of us in an angry manner like this again she was packing us all up and leaving. Leaving for ever.

That was the end of spanking in our home. He neve spanked or raised a hand to any of us ever again. It didn't stop his name calling when he'd get mad with one of us, but the corpral punishment stopped.

I'm glad you were able to come to this thread and tell us this story. Your mother's courage and common sense are an inspiration.

[Guest Anonymous]

Being beaten until you wet your pants, defecate, and seek only respite from an authority who you are supposed to love and trust as a child is to invoke damage that is spiritual and emotional. Some of us worked through and beyond it, some are still struggling, some have submitted. We cannot forget those that still struggle, and those that have submitted.

[MamaJunebug]

Guys. I've read your stories & cried & rejoiced w you.

BigMamaJunebug NEVER HIT US.

She primally screamed, one night, and broke a broomstick over her own knee, but never hit us.

Like you, she broke the cycle of mindless punishment. For her own parents - frustrated, starving, impoverishedPolish immigrants for whom the wrong intonation merited a slap against the wall - it had been S.O.P., bur BMJB dared to stop it.

And si have all you who don't beat your kids or who have opted not to have kids to ensure the violence will stop

In my mother's memory and honor, I bless you all.

[roddma]

I am from Tennessee and was rarely spanked,two or three times for me and my brother at the most. No bruises were left. My mother retired from human services so they knew how far to take it. Then the never had a need to spank us.

I am so sorry you went through this debrand and mompom. There is a difference between spanking and beatings. A parent can just slap a hand gently or swat a bottom to get a point across. They don't need plumbing lines or belts. The pendulum has swung dangerously from the no spank Dr.Spock generous to darn near abuse. Extremes either way are bad. I'm not sure whose side of the spanking debate I am on.

[roddma]

Word. The same could be said for all Southern redneck culture. Since moving here 6 years ago, I've never been as appalled at people's behavior, not even when I worked with drug addicts. What makes it so appalling is that is accepted as normal and natural, and any attempt to educate or lift one's self up is seen as bad. "Yer gettin' above yer raisin'" or some such nonsense. They are actually quite proud of their willful ignorance.

Once again, fear is mistakenly called respect. I'm not sure that many people even know what real respect is anymore.

I hear this all the time. First of all, these folks need to define what "ok" is. A person's self-analysis is rarely accurate. You're ok, but you drink too much, verbally abuse your spouse and kids, and have a holier-than-thou attitude? When pressed, their version of "I was spanked and I'm ok" generally means that at least they aren't in prison and they have a job, etc.

I've said this to people before, "But just think how much better you could have been if you hadn't been disciplined with violence?" That usually goes over like the proverbial fart in church, but at least they've heard me. I also like to make the point of saying that if they had hit someone else's child to the point of leaving marks, they'd have been arrested for assault. Why is it ok for them to do that to their own child?

It is all too easy to make blanket statement about a region. There are good parents and bad parents from all over the country. I do not/have known anyone who uses the Pearl's techniques. I live in the Bible belt and never heard of the Pearls until the Duggars. I am ashamed these people live in Tennessee. It gives all the South a bad name.

[Lillian]

I am so sorry for what you all had to go through. It is sickening. :(

I remember being hit a handful of times, with a wooden spoon on the hand by mum. Primarily when my brother and I were fighting, she would hit both of us at the same time. Compared to the stories here I got off very lightly, and i'm thankful for that.

[Vex]

In Australia, no one I know was ever switched or smacked with anything worse than an open hand. The only exception I can remember is the teacher hitting one of my classmates with a wooden ruler when we were in the third grade, and that was illegal.

My parents spanked me when they were at their wit's end. I don't remember what I did to trigger it, but it always happened in the midst of a screaming match. I was spanked on the bottom a few times as a little girl, but as a pre-teen/teenager, I was slapped in the face. My mother did it just once that I remember (and I once 'slapped' her, though I didn't have the nerve to do more than a pat), but I remember several occasions where my father hit me in the face for talking back.

In fact, to be perfectly honest (and I've never told anyone this), he still threatens to hit me in the face to this day. He'll raise his hand in my face as if to slap me - only I'm a 26-year-old woman, not a sullen teenager.

I never flinch, but only because I refuse to let him intimidate me. I do love my dad, but I find it hard to respect him. When he's angry he says some pretty horrible things to me and the worst part is how hypocritical he is. He'll utterly lose it if I do one thing, and then he'll turn around and do the same and if I dare comment on it he'll absolutely go off at me. My dad desperately needs medication but he refuses to see a doctor - it's easier for him to take his problems out on my mother or me.

It certainly hurt when my dad slapped me in the face, but the things he says are far more painful and the sting never goes away.

[zcccrv]

The stories here are just awful. I was spanked a few times as a kid but nothing as severe as many have experienced. The worst part for me was the threat. When I was misbehaving my Dad would hang a belt on a door handle as a warning. So I totally agree with whoever said that the ceremony of it was far worse than the plain old smack out of anger or helplessness.

Not that I approve of spanking. I plan to not do it to my kids. But I babysit my niece almost every day and have experienced what it's like when a child is being a pig headed brat who just shuts down her brain and keeps up the destructive behaviour. I have allowed myself to get angry and to get physical with her and was VERY glad to find out that even in that situation my instinct wasn't to spank. I did however, in 2 instances, use my strenght to lift her of the ground and carry her to the bed or the couch against her will where she faced me without further physicalities. It did serve a purpose of startling her and it didn't seem to frighten her but I did later on question whether it was a violent act or not. I still do a little bit. Opinions?

[mbeezer]

It breaks my heart to hear some of these horror stories. I wasn't beaten but definitely smacked around by my mother. I think the most unusual thing she ever hit me with was a skirt, yes she actually whipped me with a skirt. I also got smacked in the face pretty regularly for being "fresh mouthed". When I finally moved away from home at 18, she wondered why I didn't call or visit more often. :roll:

Throughout my childhoold I had a running list in my head of what I would NEVER do to my children, it's quite a long list and being hit was on the top of that list.

I have never struck either of my kids and they've both turned out to be successful loving adults and my husband and I have a very strong loving relationship with both of them.

[simplysweet]

My dad used to use his belt as a weapon daily. I think I saw it more as he rose it to strike me then I ever did him wearing it. Then, we went to visit a friend and she swore in front of the dads - her father told her to go outside a "pick her switch." I had no idea what was going on but her face dropped and she walked outside. When I went to follow her, her dad just grabbed me. She was gone maybe 5 minutes before she came back with a long, pinky sized branch. I watch as she walked over to her father, lifted her shirt and let him whip her on the back 5 to 10 times. She did not even wimper. Irregardless to say, my "father" like that idea better so after that I was switched. The pain of the strikes is nowhere near as bad as the going and finding the weapon that is shortly going to be used against you. Difference between my friends father and mine is that mine never quite until it broke.......... I still have scars on my back and legs from it.

My children will NEVER know that feeling!

[browngrl]

I am horrified to read what some on you have gone through. I hope you have been able to recover from the abuse.

[hoipolloi]

My heart goes out to all who've suffered this abuse.

[joe_mulcahy]

Good heavens! I am horrified at what some of you have survived, and yes, I use the term "survived" as switches, belts or other matter of proverbial rod seems like they are tools for killing a child's will and spirit. As a father of a toddler, I cannot imagine ever using any of those implements, and see absolutely no need to do so as redirection works sufficiently whenever he is doing something dangerous or inappropriate.

I was also raised in a home where my parents were adamantly against spanking. They were the sort of parents who would explain to me why an action was wrong along with alternatives to those actions, and since I was the sort of child who lived to get my parent's approval (perhaps being an only child made me that way?) I strove to do anything that would please them and myself.

One thing my father absolutely disapproved of was fighting/violence in school, and he spoke of it every now and again. It was easy enough to avoid, as I had many friends and was a teacher's pet also. However, when I was a teenager and saw some of my friends being bullied, something went off in my head, and I would take it upon myself to sort the bullies. If they were alone, I'd yell loudly and pummel them alone (I was not a particularly strong youth, mind you, but I think my sheer aggression was what intimidated boys stronger than myself), and if there was a group of bullies, I'd assemble some friends and sort the bullies that way.

Now I was careful to hide any evidence of this, lest my father think I was fighting in school. Well I was, but I thought sorting bullies was a necessary evil. Well one day I took on too much, and came home very beaten. I tried to hide my bruises with my mums concealer makeup (which is how I usually did it), but this time, I had cuts as well, and didn't know how to cover those up. My dad saw them and just went mental! He just jumped on me and started hammering on me until my mum heard and pulled my dad off me.

I don't quite understand why, but I learned then that being hit by your own parent hurts a thousand times worse than being hit similarly by anyone else. Punches from my dad were pure agony, whereas from the bullies they hurt still, but did not reduce me to tears and echo through me. I must have cried for hours after that, and if my dad had been one of those fathers that told their children "stop crying or I shall give you something to cry about", I daresay I might have continued for a whole week or longer. My dad seemed horrified by what he had done and along with my mum tended my injuries and were extra gentle with me for the days following.

How much those of you who were switched by your own parents must have suffered. There is no pain comparable to pain inflicted by a parent.

[Hisey]

My mother was a depressed, troubled person and when she was angry she would run and attack me, slapping and hitting, while I cowered on the floor. As I grew older, she changed over to slapping my face--often this was completely unexpected. My brother and I used to fight to sit in the backseat of the car; sitting next to her might mean a backhanded slap if we said something wrong.

My father screamed and insulted my brothers all the time. But with me, it was different. He ignored me as a child. When I became a teenager, though, he felt the need to batter me as he had been battering my mother for years. This means repeated slaps in the face, throwing me down or against the wall, kicking me in the side over and over, spitting at me, etc. Once he threw me down a flight of stairs because he didn't like the way I was painting them, then he kicked me repeatedly. I was shy, quiet teenager, anxious to please, very gentle. This treatment just blew my mind away. I became quite introverted. He never stopped hating me, though the abuse stopped at about age 17. My mother knew what was going on but blamed me.

I was indoctrinated from an early age never to tell anyone what went on in my family. Although I've discarded most of my family's crazy beliefs, it is still very hard for me to share about this. But I thought it might help someone if I posted this.