Prior Conditioning

I used to think that it made sense that, at least occasionally, a child would require a minimal “smack-to-the-bootie” for insolence or major indiscretion. 

However, having experienced within myself how past trauma now sometimes affects synaptic firing – and noting how said occasional and rare “spank” never built safety nor rapport between a child and me in that moment – I wonder if the act of having been spanked horrendously (and often, without due cause) in my own childhood somehow imbedded at least a smidgeon of false reasoning – and that perhaps, we ought to never “spank” developing human beings, at all. 

Granted (as still occasionally experienced in my youngest’s growth process), an unruly youth-unit can seem “over the top,” with there being (at least in my mind) a need to immediately STOP, if not “correct,” poor behaviors when they are happening and being projected “vociferously” onto me.

But again, maybe this idea (and “need”) is just the bad past programming influencing…

Is it true that without corporal punishment we’d be an out-of-control or extremely passive society? Or is this a place worthy of “applying logic” over heatedly debated emotion?

Certainly, this “militaristic method” can be outed as a need for asserting dominance and/or control over a situation that – quite frankly – can get anybody flustered.