First, I need to preface this entry with confessing some truth I've never told anyone. I say this not to explain away what I did or to say it was okay, but to help others realize that the hormones of pregnancy and post partum are very real. When James a probably a year old I got so mad at him that I slapped him in the face and he even got a bloody nose. When I was 8 months pregnant I used the F word a lot. So much in fact, that Andrew started saying it too... luckily he couldn't say his "f's" so I was the only one who knew what he was actually saying.
Notwithstanding the weaknesses of being human, I have never spanked my boys. Ever. And I didn't intend to ever have to.But if parenting doesn't do anything else, it definitely teaches the exceptions. Well, today we had to follow through on one of those exceptions: spanking. And even worse, it had to come from me.
Andrew punched a girl yesterday. We told him that if he did it again we would have to spank him. And the very next day he did. Well, after checking him out early and visiting with him, I knew he needed to be spanked. I also knew that with our relationship, I needed to be the one to do it. And so I did. 3 times harder than I wanted or expected, and not nearly enough to even make him flinch. And in the end, I was the one crying.
It takes gritty parents to raise gritty kids, and spanking this precious little child was one of my hardest parenting moves.
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