Friday, April 10, 2009

On How to Raise a Happy Child and Keep Your Sanity

By J. Green

Like most “modern day” children, I was unforgiveably spoiled as a child. The youngest in my family, I was coddled, soothed and nursed for the most part. Grit and fortitude I also learned, but for the most part I was handled with kid gloves and to my parents good fortune I was an easy child to rear. This belies what I later learned was the key to parenting as taught to me by my own child: beatings are they key.

I can already hear the sighs and groans of so many naïve, inexperienced mothers and hesitant, would-be fathers out there. Gasp! No! Beatings are inhumane and violent! You are teaching the child violence and you are abusing him! To disabuse you of any visions of savage physical attacks, allow me to clarify. By beatings I mean spanking. And by spanking, I mean, for the most part, a few light taps on the derrier, the likes of which wouldn’t seriously harm a baby dove.

For you see nearly everyone under the age of 50 misses the point of spanking. Spanking is not really spanking. In the words of the late Jackie Gleason “that was just an attention-getter.” As anyone with two eyes and kids knows, standing still and making idle chatter and empty threats demonstrates your willingness to DO nothing and that is the best way to be ignored and run roughshod upon. You are literally volunteering to be your children’s whipping post, their own personal Welcome mat.

To understand this, you must first accept the fact that you children are 42 times as smart as you by the time they are 3 or 4; if they are girls, subtract 2 from that number. Lesson 2, your kids are not darling kids, they are young, budding animals. You’re an animal too, but years of fluoride and too little science in school has led you to forget that fact. We are all animals and these ones are smart and always seeking out their own best interest, including testing your limits constantly, especially when you’ve had a hard day and are not prepared. They get you when you are weak and beaten down; they have nothing but time, energy, and cunning. Accept it: you are already beaten.

You are weak and they are strong, but there is hope yet. You are older and more sophisticated, so you will reason with them. This is tantamount to climbing up a telephone poll slicked with axle grease. You will get nowhere and waste a lot of time. Yet everyone tries. Its as if there is a bag of money and sex at the top of the poll and everyone needs to be shown they can’t get it even if they try. Your child loves your attention and talking, nay, negotiating, over how much they will get of what they want is fine by them.

Success is not always arrived at pleasantly. This is no different. You must think of living before we had society. Think of the time of hunter gatherers and the brutality of nature. This encompasses thousands of years. Combine this with the fact that the modern day couple has 20 minutes a day of free time. Now we have arrived at our solution, the same one your parents, grandparents arrived at 80 years ago: spanking.

You are going to cut through the bull that kids use like a drug dealer uses heroin to keep their addicts in line. You are going to DO something. This your kids will understand – you outweigh them by 150 pounds. No animal on earth is ignorant of that fact. If they are, they are soon eaten by something else. Your child’s animal instinct will command them to respect you like you never imagined. Talk and you’ll talk for a lifetime. Spank and you’ll save the rainforest with the oxygen kept in the atmosphere. Tasks are done the first time you ask when spanking has been established and is brandished for effect.

Now you think your kids will hate you and fear you. Think again. Your kids will always love you and now, what’s more, they will respect you. Why? Because you are showing them that you know them and you won’t play their games and insist they perform their best. Every kid alive is elated to perform their best. You are helping them through their fear and anxiety and frustration at not wanting to brush their teeth and go to bed on time. When they are spending more time playing and doing more things themselves, they can only be happier – after all, wouldn’t you be? Recruits to military boot camps are miserable for the first 9 weeks. And after that? Then they’re proud. Proud of themselves and the capable, respected people they have become. This is no different.

Now this is how to spank: offer the child the choice to do as you say. They will ignore you. Fine. Tell them if they don’t do it, you will do something: you will spank them. They will look at you hard and think, then go back to ignoring you. Pick them up and put them across your knee and lower their pants, they will panic and beg and plead and squirm – don’t give in. This is about your credibility and your credibility will insure peace later. Spank them a few light times on the naked butt. They will scream as if you just cut their heart out with a dull spoon. You will feel bad. Toughen the eff up. You are an adult. You know they are fine and the screaming is a tactic and nothing more. You have tactics too and its time for brass tax.

The next time you ask them to do something they will ignore you. Tell them you will spank them. They will not move. Stand up. They will dash off like lightening to do your bidding. There you have it: the laws of disincentive. The law of nature. They can hurt you or help you. Right now, I can guarantee you that your kids are using the laws of nature AGAINST you. Why? Because they are tiny, little, results-driven organizations. They get what they want. You don’t. Kids play hardball: they know when to play helpless and needy and they know how to manipulate you. Kids can be easy and sweet and innocent and delightful - just not while they’re being spanked.

I had children with the world’s biggest children-excuse-creator. She enjoys our 7 year old son very, very much. Everyone remarks about how well behaved he is and how polite and considerate he is. Why? Because when he was pushing the two of us around at the age of 2, I figured out his ways and spanked him half a dozen times. It doesn’t take much: kids are not slow learners. His mother nearly went hoarse reasoning with him until I rolled up my sleaves and did the dirty work. My young, foolish, gentle friends who have children? They are worn, miserable shadows of themselves at the tender age of 30. Their children use them like the dishrags they resemble. Their kids run the house. Others play with me and my son in relative peace, order, and harmony. Later, they visit other young people with kids only to return breathless and wide-eyed, exclaiming “Those children were complete ANIMALS!” No one knows better than children what an animal is. Your delusion that they are anything else enables their behavior, mocks your intelligence, and gives the keys to the asylum over to the inmates.

God did not design your world to be run by a 32 pound dictator. Spank. Spank well. Spanking is right. Spanking is good. And spanking is better for everyone, especially the kids.

J Green