I grew up (and currently live) in a community where it is ok to give an occasional whooping to your child, and its "normal" to yell at your kids.
Everybody here loses their shit.
And we laugh about it.
Or at least I used to.
La Chancla Majica we call it. The magic shoe. It's sad, and it is embedded into the culture, you can even see it in a scene in the movie: Coco.
Somewhere along the lines, I realized that intimidating your kids into following directions was not the way to go.
But it took me a while.
See, here in these parts, we don't have problems that the rest of California has (aka Northern California, specifically the Island of Alameda). Here, children are respectful to their elders.
You won't find a child here who yells at Mama. No you won't. And, when a child shows disrespect to their elders everybody has a problem with it, and everybody has something to say and a consequence to give.
We just don't put up with that here.
I remember being a high school teacher, and hearing from co-workers about "popping their kids in the mouth" cause they "weren't talking right."
They weren't proud that they let their kids get to that point, but they weren't ashamed to share their solution.
I never beat my children, but an occasional ear pulling, or even a swat on the butt when they were being "too much" felt guilty... but worked.
My oldest got it the worst. My middle child got it a lot less. My little boy only got his ears tugged, the one in my belly will hear the stories and not believe them. Just like my oldest daughter can not for the life of her believe that Grandpa used to make us pick the belt...
Then one day I realized that it was just plain wrong.
And then it took me another while to figure out how not to let things get to the point where a little shoe to the little butt wasn't necessary.
I finally got there.
Soon after, I realized that yelling is just another form of abuse.
That has been a little more difficult to eradicate.
But I am currently there.
No yelling, no spanking.
It takes a lot more mindfulness, and a whole lot of work. Especially when you are surrounded by it. My across the way neighbor screams and yells for a full hour... but you can still hear the vacuum going and the washer running, and see the windows being cleaned.
I'm over here trying to get the kids to pick up their lego's while my little boy laughs and says: "No yelling mama, it's not kind."
My biggest fear used to be that I would be too bland and would raise disrespectful kids, but I have learned, that spanking and yelling, if you don't do them with heart, don't work anyway. And, since I am no longer willing to pass off abuse as culture, I am taking another route.
I will succeed. And my children will be better people because of it.
They cycle of abuse stops here.
And I am very sorry that it took me 13 years of parenting to realize that it was abuse.
