Save the rod

I know I make this point a lot, but it's good to beat children. I was on the metro today when some kid was apparently swearing at his mother. The mother was furious, but sadly she was also white. The punishment for her child was reflected in her whiteness, "When we get home, you will spend five minutes in your room!"

That's a punishment? It brings me back to the days of my childhood. Swift punishment in the form of spankings set me straight early on and I was for the most part well behaved. But my youngest sister. Oh man, did she used to get some harsh spankings. I'll tell you the sign of a true disciplinarian. When you're willing to spank your kids in public, that's going the extra mile. And my dad didn't care where we were. My youngest sister used to really act up when she went out and my dad would give her a good spanking, mall or no mall. My mom would make the mistake of waiting until she got home after saturday shopping to give my little sister a good spanking. My middle sister and I would see the car pull up in front of the house, Mom furiously dragging my youngest sister up to the house. We all knew punishment was imminent. And if ever you've been around kids, you know that they enjoy watching their siblings get punished. I've seen little babies marvel at their brothers getting yelled at. It's quite a spectacle.

My dad would shake his head in dissapointment. "Why does you mom wait until she gets home?" You see, when the punishment is delayed it creates an opportunity. Now the offending child can decide whether or not it is worth a day of misbehaviour in exchange for an eventual spanking at the end of the day. Usually the answer is yes, it is worth misbehaving for the day to get a spanking later on, if misbehaving is your bag. Why? Because the punishment in spanking is the shock of it, the humiliation of it. If you know the spanking is coming, it's not much of a punishment at all. Certainly a spanking is not painful. Certainly it is not as embarassing at home as it would be in public. I mean, at home, everyone's seen and enjoyed your spankings already. It's like... a rerun. A spanking is defanged without the element of surprise.

I remember my cousin telling me with a twinkle in her eye, about how she saw a black child misbehaving in public swore at his mother. That child's punishment was swift and severe. You've never seen an ass-whoopin' like this... Upside his head... Upside his nose... It was terrible I tell you... TERRIBLE!!! But, I'm relatively certain that he strongly reconsidered swearing at his mother again.

So when I see cheesiness like a mother telling her kid, "You will eventually have to spend 5 minutes in your room." I scoff. Ridiculous. Whup that kid butt for both of your sakes. Now I've had some pretty interesting conversations with people on the subject. I hate to bring race into it but, generally speaking, non-white people agree in beatings, and white people are against it. I know chinese people get some interesting beatings with bamboo sticks and fishing rods. My dad used to use the flip flops he'd wear around the house to spank us with. Relatively painless, but effective. Belts are also classic.

I've spoken to one white woman who was passionately against beating kids. Her argument was something to the effect that beating kids screwed them up somehow and spanking kids is a relic from old-fashionned religious beliefs. The passage in the Bible goes something like, "Save the rod and spoil the child." Amen. You'll notice such people are usually suckers for barely coherent articles that say things like, "Most of the children who were spanked as kids grew up to be violent, therefore spanking produces violence."

A note about studies like this. People who write such articles are usually idiots. Why? They can't interpret data. I mean, if one kid was spanked more than another, it probably means that he was always badly behaved, not that the spanking produced bad behaviour. It wouldn't be such a big deal, except if you look at society today we can see the effects of such negligent data aquisition. "So, don't spank your kids when they misbehave, give them groovy drugs such as ritalin!"

Now that I'm about to defend my PhD, I feel I have the authority to give the diagnosis for bad behaviour; Light your child's behind on fire! Give him a beating he'll remember and he'll thank you for it when he's older. Some people say the best punishment is the one that you never have to give. I say, the best punishment is the one you only have to give ONCE! That's how dad did it... That's how ethnic people do it. And it's worked pretty well so far.