Biting as a Form of Corporal Punishment
 |
| This picture has nothing to with the subject of this article |
The current trend in child discipline in United States
culture (with the exception of Mississippi which still uses food as punishment)
seems to be to abandon spanking in favor of other methods of corporal punishment,
most notably biting.
When I was a kid back in the ‘60s, we got beat on a daily basis whether we needed it or not.
In the morning my mother used to poke, prod and whack us with a wire rug-beater to get us out of the house and off to school, even on weekends and during summer when there was no school.
At night the old man would come home from a long day at the docks (and the bar) and would usually have his belt in hand ready to go before he even came through the door.
There were nine of us kids and even though all of us were in bed by then, he’d still make the rounds to both bedrooms and just flail away blindly in the dark till his arm gave out and he collapsed on the floor. Sometimes you got hit, sometimes he missed and you didn’t. More often than not, you got hit.
Over time we became inured to the beatings. My mother sensed this and it was she who thought up the idea of biting us instead of using the rug beater or the belt.
Well once that biting business started you never saw nine kids move so fast in your life, whether it was getting ready for school or church, or just tending to chores and dressing rabbits.
It was a terrible thing to be bitten like that by your own mother, but I must say it worked wonders and I recommend it even today as a way to get unruly children in line. I don’t care if they’re eighteen years old or 18 months old. I bit my own kids and they in turn now bite theirs.
So go ahead and bite ‘em. Trust me, it works.
I refer you to the book by Dr. Ida Bittem* of the University of New Hampshire, one of the world's leading experts in family violence, including the biting of children. Her year 2012 book compares commonly held beliefs about biting with the results of carefully made studies about the positive effects of biting.
This is a book aimed at the general public. Customer ratings at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com are five stars out of five.
When I was a kid back in the ‘60s, we got beat on a daily basis whether we needed it or not.
In the morning my mother used to poke, prod and whack us with a wire rug-beater to get us out of the house and off to school, even on weekends and during summer when there was no school.
At night the old man would come home from a long day at the docks (and the bar) and would usually have his belt in hand ready to go before he even came through the door.
There were nine of us kids and even though all of us were in bed by then, he’d still make the rounds to both bedrooms and just flail away blindly in the dark till his arm gave out and he collapsed on the floor. Sometimes you got hit, sometimes he missed and you didn’t. More often than not, you got hit.
Over time we became inured to the beatings. My mother sensed this and it was she who thought up the idea of biting us instead of using the rug beater or the belt.
Well once that biting business started you never saw nine kids move so fast in your life, whether it was getting ready for school or church, or just tending to chores and dressing rabbits.
It was a terrible thing to be bitten like that by your own mother, but I must say it worked wonders and I recommend it even today as a way to get unruly children in line. I don’t care if they’re eighteen years old or 18 months old. I bit my own kids and they in turn now bite theirs.
So go ahead and bite ‘em. Trust me, it works.
I refer you to the book by Dr. Ida Bittem* of the University of New Hampshire, one of the world's leading experts in family violence, including the biting of children. Her year 2012 book compares commonly held beliefs about biting with the results of carefully made studies about the positive effects of biting.
This is a book aimed at the general public. Customer ratings at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com are five stars out of five.
* Dr. Ida Bittem, "Biting the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment for American Children," Transaction Publishers, (2nd edition; 2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment