Thanks for the article. Timely, given the massive discussion on Ann Lamott's Salon essay a couple of days ago in which she discussed slapping her son.

Let me be the first here to reiterate:

Slapping your wife is domestic violence.... even once

Slapping a coworker will get you fired.... even once

Slapping someone else's child is assault and could land you in jail... even once.

This is not child-rearing. This is assault and it's domestic violence.

I normally don't give my full name when writing letters to Salon. In this case I'm going to, because I want to emphasize that I stand behind these particular comments 100%.

Christian J Burnham

425 Emerson, Apt 14,

Houston, TX,

77006

christianjburnham@gmail.com

Thanks.

I'm a homeschooling father and I have never, nor would I ever, hit my son. I worked for years with violent kids and never resorted to violence while getting positive results. That said, to suggest that spanking is always domestic violence is no different that saying that kids who aren't spanked will be spoiled.

There are plenty of caring, thoughtful, loving parents who have chosen to spank and there are plenty of thoughtless, aggressive parents who spank out of anger. There are plenty of clueless, neglectful, harmful parents who choose not to spank, as well. I've met every kind. Blanket condemnations are not constructive, nor are they realistic.

Christian

Your letter just oozes smug self-righteousness and shows only that (a) you didn't read this article all the way through or (b) you had trouble on the SAT "comprehension" test.

This is yet another typical Salon article that starts out sounding like it's going to report all sorts of nefarious news but in the end turns out to report nothing but a minor controversy. The reporter was actually quite fair and went out of her way to show that the Pearl's teaching, while it is certainly "different," is in no way abusive.

I feel it is irresponsible of the Pearl's to encourage parents to train their children through physical means under the veil of God's word. Unfortunately, I feel that most people willing to blindly follow their words or their interpretation of the words of a God they claim to represent won't be insightful enough in the heat of the moment to stop and ask themselves, "Why am I hitting my child again?" A few "trained" children may live on to be "happy" or "successful" people and "good Christians" but most will not; I personally just don't have that much faith in humanity.

...is about all we get in this debate. For what it's worth, we did very occasionally (perhaps 10 times in their whole lives) give our daughters a swat on the tush (with a plastic fly swatter in our case), and they are fabulous teenagers now. But it was coupling those very rare swats (administered only when they were very young and couldn't reason verbally) with plenty of (a) explaining the moral reasoning behind the things we asked them to do and not do and (b) modeling our own moral reasoning and living out our values in practice that has led to this good outcome, I'm firmly convinced.

Who would Jesus beat? This is perverse beyond belief, literally. We raised four children, and they are amazing, moral, productive, creative adults. We NEVER beat them, never had a paddle, and gave them probably two or three spankings (meaning a quick butt swat) in each of their entire lives, and ONLY for behavior that would endanger them (like running into the street), or open defiance. Time, love, patience, and no cudgels, whips, PVC pipe. My god, what are these heretics thinking?

God told me that "christianjb" was going to bring his hand-waving sanctimony and his thoroughly dishonest spin on the Lamott piece into this thread.

Lamott didn't engage in a systematic beating of her child in order to "break his spirit." She admitted a mistake she made in losing her temper with her surly teenager. She spoke of the remorse and anguish she felt over it.

And yet to you, O Saint, that wasn't enough. To you, O Saint, she's the same type of abuser that calmly orders a length of plumbing pipe to beat their child with.

You were full of it then, Christian, and you're full of it now. This is a totally different subject, and you know it. You got your ass handed to you in the Lamott thread and you're hoping to salvage your shredded credibility by lying about what Lamott piece was about here and hoping nobody calls you on it. Too bad it didn't work.

I'm not going to respond to your comments because of the name calling (and yes I'm aware of the logical fallacy in pointing this out).

Thanks,

Christian

The article came out better than I could have hoped for. Thank you for presenting all sides fairly. I'm just grinning my fool head off.

The term "train up" reminds me of the term "tune up" on NYPD BLUE. A "tune up" was when one of the NYPD detectives, usually Andy Sipowicz, would take a perp behind closed doors and beat him until he confessed to committing a crime. Of course, as NYPD fans knew, Sipowicz administered these beatings only out of love. It wasn't like he had any personal issues to deal with.

One can't help but think that if the perp had been "trained up" with corporal punishment, he wouldn't be in the jailhouse enduring the wrath of Lt. Sipowicz.

When I really F'd up. Whatever I had done to get hit I never did again.

Today, I have kids and have never hit them. I am not scarred or violent or angry about it.

I still love my mom and she loves me.

Is one person's experience relevant? If not, then why do we care about the people in this story?

This is meaningless.

... the Crazy Christians are animals. I figured that out at the age of five when my best friend's parents would beat her with a wooden paddle that had holes in it (so it could move faster and harder!) and then turn around and tell me that I and my family were going straight to hell because we were lapsed Catholics who didn't go to church. Freaks. Someone needs to take ALL their kids away, I swear to GOD!!!!!