I am here to write about some of my experiences with corporal punishment. I grew up in a very conservative Christian home. I don’t think of my parents as being particularly strict, but there were rules that I had imposed on me the most children my age ( even Christian children) didn’t have. and the consequences for disobeying those rules was sometimes quite severe. I grew up with a big family. I have eight siblings. one older brother, four younger brothers, and three younger sisters. both of my parents used spanking as their main form of punishment. my mom used her large cooking spoon. my earliest memories are of a wooden spoon, however, she broke it while spanking my older brother when we were quite young. the spoon that she got to replace it was a dark green plastic spoon. I believe this spoon survives in her kitchen to this day. when we were younger, my dad always used his hand to spank our butts. occasionally he would get a spoon from the kitchen for more serious offenses. he would always grab the metal one. it was about the same size as the plastic one that my mom used. it had a black and white plastic handle with little flowers on the White side of the handle. when I was about 10 years old he started using belts on us. he had a belt in his closet that he used quite often. this was not a belt that I saw him wear ever. I don’t know where it came from but this was his spanking belt. it was a very old and worn looking dark brown leather with an old faded copper buckle. this belt was used quite often, but sometimes when one of us older boys was getting a spanking in his office downstairs he would go into our bedroom which was the next room over and get one of our belts from our closet to use on us. One of my belts was fabric with double holes throughout the entire length of the belt with metal grommets to enforce each hole. I would always move this belt to the back of the closet because I never wanted to be spanked with it. I had heard of a kid at school getting spanked with a studded belt. I didn’t have any like that and looking back on it the belt I was hiding probably wouldn’t have hurt as much as the leather ones that were getting used on me. a studded belt would hurt probably quite badly even if you weren’t hit with the actual studs but spanked with the inside of the strap simply because of the added weight. however they could have been a very light metal, possibly hollow inside, or they even could have been plastic. either way I highly doubt it was worse than the spankings I got from my dad as a teenager with the edge of his belt. these were very severe punishments that left black and blue bruises for about a week. I will tell stories of the most memorable spankings that I got from my dad as a preteen all the way to my very late teens. I will start with the very first time a belt was used on me at age 11 and end with the last spanking I ever got at 19 years old. I expect this to be a therapeutic for myself and I hope that others that can relate are able to sort through their own memories as well.
The spankings that I got from my mom were not very severe. she would smack the palms of our hands. when we were younger she would give us a choice to get spanked on the butt or hold out our hand. I usually chose hand. At some point I learned that if I tried to pull my hand away after three licks she would USUALLY stop. if I pulled my hand away before she got three licks in she would make me put my hand back out and I would end up getting more than three. occasionally, if she was particularly upset she would give more licks. the most I ever got was 10. all on the same hand. I tried to hold up my other hand but she made me use the same hand for all 10. I resisted at first but when she told me to hold out my hand or she would have my dad spank me when he gets home I decided to do as I was told. 10 spanks from my mom’s spoon had my hand burning for a few minutes. I probably took an hour or two for my hand to heal and feel back to normal.
My dad would always spank our butts, but when he first started using a belt instead of his hand he would give us the choice to bend over his lap or over a chair . I always chose over a chair. he was merciless with his punishments. anytime my dad gave a spanking it was an ordeal. at least 10 swats, sometimes up to 20. this resulted in a sore and tender butt that sometimes lasted a few hours while other times I took a couple days to heal with the most severe spankings taking about a week to heal.
I realize that many people only experienced the type of spankings that I got from my mom, and as a result they don’t think of spankings as a server punishment. while I am not against corporal punishment being used on children, I do hope that those who grew up with similar punishments as I did will consider whether or not this is beneficial to use on your own children.i don’t think it is wrong to use spanking on children. I even think some kids, especially younger children, need clear messages about who is in charge. at the same time it is important that they trust that the parents love them and have their best interests first. I’m not even against a long hard spanking in some instances. especially for a teenager that needs to be put in his place. this is so that the teen knows he still has to answer to his dad and his dad can and will still spank him even as he gets older and he knows it will still hurt. But while I think it can be valuable for teenagers to be afraid of punishment, I don’t think it is necessary very often. The regularity with which I was punished in this way and for offenses that looking back on as an adult I consider to be very minor, I don’t think this was very appropriate. it could have been worse. there were times that my punishments were well deserved. I don’t question my father’s love. I think mostly he was just using the methods of punishment that he received from his dad, and trying to instill the values of our church onto me. I don’t know that it crosses a legal line for abuse, but I don’t believe this to be healthy for the parent, the child, or for their relationship with each other.