reaction #3

Reaction Note #3 Positive Parenting
Wednesday; in class we acted out situations and then parenting methods of how to deal with those situations. My group was in charge of physical punishment and non-physical punishment. The former style of punishment was composed of mostly reasoning and sitting down with the child to explain why and what behavior is expected. I could not help but to think about how frightening physically punishment can be.
Our group skit (although poorly preformed) included a two identical situations with the children “drawing on the white board” i.e. two college students imitating toddlers and drawing on the white board. I would like to think about the second situation first; the mother (other college student acting) came into the room and explained that until they were old enough to know how to use markers they could not use them, and that she would like to have them give her back the markers. While we were walking out of class a group of students and I made our way down the hall laughing at all of the things we remember being too young to know how to use: glue guns, paint brushes, and knives just to name a few. At the same time we laughed at the specific times and days that we were finally, finally old enough to use those items.
The first mother on the contrary came in screaming and yelling and told her daughter that she was going to have to give her, “like five spankings” because she was drawing on the wall. When the first mother said “like five spankings” the entire class started to laugh. It sounded so odd. The group of students I walked out with commented on how ridiculous this all sounded.
The ironic thing was that in our little mock skit both of the stage parents were reacting to the same situation, but all of us viewed the one mother’s response as ridiculous and the other mother’s response as practical. It really did get me thinking about adult relationships. The idea of how I would feel if another adult who I trusted came up and started beating me.
Questions like: what would church be like if the Bishop beat all of those members who confessed to him their sins? What would the testing center look like if every time you failed a test someone was just waiting at the bottom of the stairs to pound some sense into you? The truth of the matter is that if I know the Bishop was going to beat me after I confessed something to him I would just not confess, and you can forget about taking the stairs out of the testing center I would just jump out that little window on the second floor. There are lots of things that I would do to avoid someone beating me up, and more over I would avoid that person who I thought was beating me up. There is no way you would catch me walking right up to my bishop with a question about Isaiah if I know that the last kid who went into his office came out with a black eye. I imagine that children do the same, and that they would avoid their parents if they felt threatened by them.
I also started to think about proportions. Imagine how large a parent’s hand is to a child’s hand. Personally I am not a very aggressive person, and it is hard enough for me to imagine myself fighting with someone my own size, but I cannot even begin to imagine how frightening it would be to get in a fight with someone three times my height and four times my weight. Let’s see I am about five feet and six inches and I weigh about 135 pounds… that puts me getting beat up by someone who would be sixteen feet and six inches tall; they would weigh 540 pounds. That is huge! If I saw someone walking down the street that was that big I think that I would automatically be in the fight or flight mood and they would not even have to do anything.
The somewhat ridiculous skit that we did in class really did get me thinking about the actual fright that physically punishment can have on a child. In sharp contrast as mad as I was at my parents when they took the scissors from me and told me that I could not use them until I was older I can still remember when I was considered old enough to handle the scissors by myself; I felt so grown up and mature because I knew that only big-kids could use the scissors. The “punishment” of taking the scissors away with an explanation was naturally followed by the “reward” of becoming mature enough to use scissors.