corporal punishment! are we better off?

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child

        Having suffered several beatings myself from my step Dad with a belt, I was never fond of Ben Franklin or his sayings. But then again Ben Franklin may have had full good intentions at his time and maybe a rod would be better than what some people I have witnessed used in my life time. This is a story of a beating I witnessed years ago not of myself , but of a friend of mine who I might say needed beat once in a while, but never to the extreme I saw his dad beat him that day.

     Some of you may remember Tom Gottsman who lived in the Bowmandale area and was a member of our Bowmandale gang unofficially, but still he was from here and at times he was the butt of a lot of poor jokes. At times he could be a real dufus, the slang definition meaning a cross between a fool and a goof, of which Tom was both at times.

       He prided himself on how many whacks he could get in Mrs. Finley’s class in the 5^th grade, having achieved 56 in one year. He would act up in class purposely just to get the teachers attention, one time hauling a girl into the closet in the room and closing the door and groping her. For this act Tom was eventually given a couple of day’s expulsion from school. This didn’t deter him and in fact only made him more determined to act out even more having nothing to lose. Nothing was out of bounds for Tom except when he went home.

       His Dad was a mean one. An old school kind of guy whom I had met on a few occasions but for the most part avoided, as i had enough of my own Dad doing his fair share of justice and I needed little help from Tom’s Dad in that area so we just avoided him. Tom would tell us stories of how his Dad would beat him and that how his Mother would do little to stop him or could even think about doing such. Still Tom never seemed to learn much from all those beatings as he still would go and do the craziest things without thinking once about what the outcome was going to be. He was a dufus and only in a way Tom could possibly be.

     It seemed the teachers just passed him along as he was kind of hopeless and in those days, you wouldn’t see a counselor or a school psychologist, instead you would possibly receive time off from school or a letter from a principal saying how ill-behaved your child was and that you needed to take the situation in hand before it spiraled out of control.  The school would allow paddling but would never try to understand Tom as if anyone really could at times. We lived in a different time back then. Now they would just pump the child full of Ritalin, have him see and army of psychologists and then buy him an assault rifle to shoot small animals as a relief for his hidden anger towards his parents and school officials, while encouraging the parents to adopt a hands off attitude toward the ill-behaved child.

     Back then it was up to the parent to dish out the justice needed to keep your child under control. Tom’s Mom wasn’t able to help at all in this area and instead left it up to his dad who would come home from work and without knowing the full extent of toms misdeeds would commence upon beating Tom senseless about his body with his fists. Tom was about 14 at the time a little older than me as he was put back a few years because of his poor grades until the teachers felt they needed to rid themselves of him. It seemed that mainly all Tom needed was someone to pay attention to him, and by acting out it was his way of getting that attention. Another time off from school and another bad beating from his Dad and Tom decided he was going to run away from home as a means of escaping the almost daily beatings he was receiving from his Dad at that time.

    So Tom not knowing where to go to avoid the beatings, he ended up in Bowmandale park which was at the end of our lane, where  he set up a tent and had food and a radio and was living in some comfort for a couple of days. My brother and I would visit and share some food with him we had brought from home. Tom didn’t bother trying to go to school and only wished that he was older so that he could go to work and finally rid himself of his Dad and his heavy handed way of life, never once thinking about modifying his behavior to prevent the beatings from happening. After a couple of days of his Dad and Mom not knowing where he was, they became real irritated with Tom as he would slip into his house and steal what he needed to survive when the family wasn’t home. They knew he was around but just didn’t know where.

      Somehow, someone squealed and I think it was his sister Rhonda with whom  Tom shared information with to frequently, and then one day while my brother and I  was visiting Tom in his hidden little tent city, we hear his Dad ‘s pick up come spinning his wheels into the park creating a cloud of dust we could see through the briars hiding Tom’s tent and at this point my brother Jim and I decided we needed to go out the back door so to speak and we were off through the briars and just over the hill where we laid  down quietly and looked back ,  as we watched Tom get the beating of his life.

     His Dad never once said he missed Tom or asked him anything instead he commenced to pounding on Tom, with his bare fists, and all the time calling him a son of a bitch, while telling him he would never pull a stunt like that again, then he started kicking him towards the truck and away from us where we laid unable to help Tom except to hope it would all be over for him soon. His Dad was relentless with the pounding, forcing Tom to the truck and yelling obscenities along the way. Tom never returned a hit instead had his arms over his head to deflect the blows aimed at his head and face.  No person or child should ever be treated that way and yet in the end I think it was Tom that was fighting for his fathers and mothers attention that started this in the first place. They had gave up on Tom years ago as a hopeless case that only understood one thing and that was correction in the form of hitting or paddling in an effort to conform him to meet their standards.

     After a couple of days of healing Tom returned to school and it wasn’t long before his family took off and moved back to Missouri  after that incident, his Dad having been offered a chance to run a dragline in an area where his parents were from, so he took the job offer and moved the family away.

   Years later Tom returned and I was able to visit with him. Somewhere along the way he had grown up some, having married and bought a farm to live on in the Missouri area. It all seemed to make things ok with him and I was glad in some ways to have visited with him seeing things finally turn around for him.

    Seeing Tom get beat that day was something I would never forget. Sure Tom was a dufus and sure he acted out but I think he needed someone to try and understand him and I doubt he ever received that while living at home. Maybe after he had been out on his own and no longer needed his parents help or wanted it that Tom finally manned up as they say. It would be a little hard to believe knowing Tom that he would ever be the stable person he claimed to be when he visited me, but in the end hope for Tom’s sake it was all true.  Still I hear of parents beating their children and it sends chills down my spine when I think of what I saw that day. Never having kids myself, but instead step children I can remember back to days of their punishment for acting out and how myself seeing Tom get beat eventually ended up having an effect on me and how I treated my step kids.

    My ex would tell horror stories of how the kids were and how I needed to beat them when I came home. I would spank if I saw them doing something wrong, but to just hit them at someone else’s word because she couldn’t control them was beyond me. She would even go so far as to threaten the kids with what I was going to do with them when I arrived home. Eventually I had enough of all that and refused to punish the kids at all and eventually breaking up with her. I was not going to be her means to an end. She was not going to make me into one of those Dads kids love to hate. And hopefully I never was.

     Still in today’s society we still hear of abuse of this kind and it always has an effect on me. I can understand parents trying to control their children but at what cost is it to their child’s psyche that beating is going to accomplish. Still at times I think back to paddling and corporate punishment in schools and remember, we were in fear of being the one singled out to receive the paddling and I am sure it prevented a lot of things from happening in the first place. I wonder if things are better now that they have abolished paddling in schools altogether. After a couple of school shootings I often wonder.