Forbidding Gesture.

Rejection. I’ve read consistently that when we’re young, all we know is whether our parents love us or hate us. That more or less sets the scene for our entire emotional landscape. Or, at least, giant mountains of it.

A scene that occurred a number of times. Yet, I can’t remember how many times. Was it twice? Was it five times? Was it only once? That doesn’t matter.

Couldn’t tell you what I had done. All I knew was I had Misbehaved. I was Bad. Pants are pulled down, bum’s exposed, and a SPANKSPANKSPANK. Off to my room with me. GOTO YOUR ROOM.

Rejection.

I’d probably cry in my room. Again, what had I done? Beats me. Probably couldn’t even have told you then.

I was terrified. I felt horrible. Mommy and Daddy were mad at me. I was Bad. They didn’t love me anymore.

I’d hide in my room indefinitely. I’d be terrified to leave my room out of fear of further punishment. I wouldn’t want to anger them further.

But, I couldn’t hide out forever. I had to pee. I had to go across the hall, five feet, to pee.

So I had to disobey. They told me to GOTO my room. I had no permission to leave. But, I had to pee. I’d scurry across quickly, do my thing quietly, and scurry back. Praying I wouldn’t be scolded again. More often than not, I’d just stay there until morning.

I’ll never understand why people think spanking is a good idea.

***

For lack of anything else to do, I figured I’d read chapter two of the self-esteem book. Then I felt overwhelmed. “I CAN’T READ AN ENTIRE CHAPTER.” Okay, I said to myself. We’ll read two pages. I ended up reading half the chapter before deciding to stop so I wouldn’t overload my brain with information. I want to parse it small pieces at a time so I can fully dissiminate the information.

veracious jess

October 16, 2005

Don’t even get me started on spanking. Seriously. The kids in my own class have sometimes done some of the most frustrating, maddening, difficult-to-deal-with-and-correct things I can possibly imagine – and never ever have I even vaguely wanted to change the behavior through violence. (Even if it wasn’t illegal in schools, which thank heavens it is now.) GRR. It makes me so sad and angry.

ryn, hand holding = happy though yeah? So thanks 🙂

It’s hard. It’s reallyreally hard. I would never ever want to hurt Jameson in any way, but sometimes when he’s acting up and getting on my last nerve, I am shocked that I find myself really having to hold back from smacking him. Once, he pulled my hair HARD, and I involuntarily smacked his hand without even thinking about it, and he started to cry. I felt SO BAD. I don’t know why I feel the need

to respond to bad behavior with violence, but I guess I’m not the only one. Now, when J is being bad and won’t listen to me when I tell him “no!” or otherwise reprimand him, then yes, he will get a firm swat on the butt to let him know that HEY! MOMMY IS IN CHARGE HERE! but it’ll never be hard enough to hurt. Just to get his attention.

I ABSOLUTELY understand.

Scorpio Frost

October 17, 2005

I live in the south. Nuff said. Honoring the Self. It’s a book by Nathaniel someone. I’m at work right now so I can’t look at it. All I know is that I’ve had it for about two years and it’s so intense that I’ve never finished it. It’s the only book I own that I’d consider re-reading (I usually don’t re-read books because I know everything that happens and it loses my attention).

*sigh* Spanking. Parenting. *cries* It sucks. And you won’t really understand the full suckiness of it until you’re a parent. And I’m not trying to talk down to you in any way. But you just won’t.