Physical Punishment Has Its Place In Raising Kids Letter Of The Week: From Jan. 29

After reading Bob Vernard’s Jan. 13 letter, “Spanking is beating and is wrong,” I was compelled to share my experience with childhood and my family’s discipline values.

I am the oldest of eight children. It was difficult, as a youngster living in the country, to find creative, fun things to do without some form of mischief attached. My minor mischief of letting out our farm animals to create a state of emergency would always get me a free ride to school in the car instead of on the bus. Entering my teens, drug and alcohol experimentation came with new kinds of mischief.

Hooky, theft and disobedience were under way until I would receive a harsh scolding from my mother, whom I heard but didn’t listen to. My father would come home and hear the stories of his disobedient son, who was the “example” for his kin. Frustrated, he spanked, slapped and fed soap anytime it was deserved.

I’m now 25, carry an honorable discharge from the military, hold a stable job and own my own home. Had my father been a soft man without giving physical punishment, I would have run over his authority, as I did my mother’s. I was an individual child who needed special direction. My brothers and sisters have never felt father’s hand because, as a whole, they didn’t have the same problems I did.

Vernard is right. Children are individuals who need respect at all ages. But because children are individuals, sometimes just scolding and talking doesn’t cut it. Aaron C. Bryant Spokane

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