Summary: Don T Spank Your Kids

When I read the article, “Don’t Spank Your Kids, says 50 Years of Research” (Dicker), it took me back to the first time my mother had spanked me. It was the summer time and I had gone to visit my dad in New York, while my mother got us settled in at our new house in Delaware. I had found the aesthetic of the punk rock lifestyle displayed on television very interesting and wanted to replicate the way they looked and dressed. As I was only six years old and had no stable job to get the clothing possible, I went to the most accessible change that could match the look I had wanted: my hair. With a pair of safety scissors, I chopped up the sides of my hair leaving the middle alone and was very proud of the outcome until my babysitter walked in on
what I was doing and proceeded to call my dad to tell him about what I had done. My dad called my mother and for the first time ever I became aware of the fact that for the first time ever I was in trouble. Being in trouble was a new thing for me, I was the good kid who listened and understood but I knew from watching my rowdy cousins who constantly got in trouble with my Aunts and Uncles that what came next after you got in trouble was a spanking. When my mother came to pick me up, after spending the night planning on running away, I had accepted what was going to happen to me and waited for the time that she would do it. She didn’t do it when she had come to pick me up and saw the damage for herself and she didn’t do it when we were on the train and each time she looked at me the anger in her eye grew more and more. It was when we were back at home that my mother hit me a few times on my bottom and told me she was disappointed in me. The spanking part wasn’t what had affected me at all, although it had hurt nothing hurt more than being told by my mother that she was disappointed in me. After my first time getting spanked, I made sure to try