Monsters
I don’t follow sports. But I’d have to be Amish not to know Ray Rice pummeled his fiancé and dropped her unconscious body trying to drag her out of an elevator on camera or that Adrian Peterson has been accused of whipping his 4 year old with a switch till he drew blood on the fronts and backs of his thighs and sent a text message to the boy’s mother saying he got the boy’s scrotum by mistake. I figure this is all for the courts and the NFL to sort out.
But tonight, at my parents’ house, watching Fox Business, there it is– The difference between what Rice (allegedly) did and what Peterson (allegedly) did. I saw a man (who may or may not have some football background) tell the other hosts or guests that the difference between Rice beating his wife and Anderson beating his son is that Rice punched his WIFE and Anderson was disciplining his son. Are you kidding me? Evidently there is some kind of consensus like this out there. Rice is a monster and Anderson is just some dad like the rest of us trying to get his kid to mind.
First of all, I don’t understand the comparison AT ALL. That’s like comparing salt in the wound to tabasco sauce in your wound. Like asking if you’d rather be cut with a razor blade or a k-bar. Dude. I’m pretty sure both suck. I supposed the talking heads are trying to justify the NFL’s response to either situation but why?
But, since we are keeping score, whipping your kid till he bleeds in a fit of rage is worse than knocking out your wife.
Rice’s wife, like most wives in the U.S., is an adult. Yes, being abused causes all kinds of emotional problems that mess up your thinking but in the end, a woman is still an adult. She is an adult who chooses to stay or go. I chose to stay. For over 10 years. Right, wrong, indifferent. I chose. She chooses. Women can choose. Sometimes they fight back. Sometimes they even start it. I know I did.
If they do leave, women have the benefit of having overcome. Having gotten away. Of being free. A child does not have that benefit.
That little boy, stripped naked and whipped by a damned NFL football player. He cannot choose. He cannot fight back. He cannot run. He can’t even hide. A child cannot defend himself. There is much debate about the propriety of spanking and pretty much any punishment these days. But can we all agree, that if someone whips a kid till he bleeds, not in just one place, but in a dozen, that that kid has been abused? Mistreated? And an abused kid has no hope for relief until he is finally a man. Would there be more outrage if it was a little girl, stripped naked and whipped?
The man who beat his wife- and showed no remorse when he knocked her out, he’s a monster. The man who whipped his boy till he bled is a monster. Let’s add to this list the apologists who claim it’s a man’s right to wound his child in the name of discipline. You sir, are also a monster.
Category: Society
Really? A monster? No, the real monsters are the muslimes cutting heads off.
True dat. These guys are just garden-variety thugs.
Oh, I didn’t know they had a corner on the market. Excuse me. 🙂 Unfortunately, that wasn’t what I was talking about here- but if I’d been asked to, the essay would have been very short. sort of like this: The entire region should be decimated. How you do it- completely up to you. Carry on.
Well said, the NFL is trying to sell a family product without recognizing the type of people it uses to create the product in the first place.
You have cheats, liars, and felons making millions working on teams owned by billionaires.
Even the players who provide a charitable foundation with funding are often doing so to create a positive spin on some personal ugliness.
In any organization there are problem personnel, but in the NFL the value of a man’s ability to throw a great pass or run for a few yards allows him to be a criminal murderer of animals and regain his position. It allows him to be a would be rapist and have morons interview him on national TV and talk about what an inspiring leader he is as quarterback for the younger players on the team. It allows a super bowl winning coach to cheat and pay a million dollar fine like it was 10 dollars and keep his job.
What other business in the nation allows a senior executive accused of violating serious business rules the ability to keep their job? Certainly none that I’ve worked for. I’ve seen men making nice 6 figure salaries lose their job over the perception of a conflict of interest without any actual corruption taking place.
No worries about that in the NFL….I haven’t watched the NFL in close to 40 years. The problems of millionaire criminal athletes playing for billionaires is hardly of interest to me at this point in my life. Spending 4 hours to get through a fucking one hour game is so tedious and obnoxious I would rather watch paint dry or old people fuck than have to sit through an NFL game. It’s only slightly less boring than golf or baseball.
VOV…Well said sir. The NFL and NBA are about money, I get that. The “love of the game” and “furthering of the sport” mindset is long gone in the wake of big money as long as I can make it and play. For the owners, they are like thoroughbreds bought to race until they can’t anymore, then put out. The ethics of fair play and sportsmanship, on and off the field has long gone. Playing for less money for the love of the game, has been forgotten. When you open the doors to thugs, criminals and former gang associates, you’re also getting the mentality that goes with it. Money only makes an ass hole a wealth ass hole and in most circumstances, they revert to their baser instincts and thought processes. I can see the days of “RollerBall” coming. Now people who call themselves fans, want a win at any cost regardless of the character of the player they are telling their kid to look up to and root for. I still follow baseball because they are somewhat better at policing their own and…I truly love the game. The other “professional sports”, nah. I won’t watch a guy get several million a year to catch a ball down field and then show his ass dancing in the end zone, only to go home after a loss and take it out on his wife, girlfriend and others.
Exactly! My opinion of professional sports in general and foot ball in particular is this: the group of 20-something millionaires that I cheer for is going to beat the group of 20-something millionaires you cheer for. In the meantime, we’re both making less than $50k a year.
The sad thing is they have basically turned college football into farm teams. The highest level of football I’ll watch is DII. I do love me some minor league hockey, though!
Orenthal James Simpson was allegedly a pretty decent football player back in the day. Is currently serving prison time (unrelated to the Nicole Brown Simpson & Ronald Goldman murder case). Yeah, OJ claims he will never stop searching for the killer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDf9LuGEA-U
I heard that before he got himself locked up he left NO golf course untouched by him in his search!
When getting ready for A-stan, I had someone bitching to the CoC about this “insensitive” cadence I called during a PT run:
OJ Simpson took a knife
Cut the head off his ex-wife
When he saw the blood and the goo,
He cut up Ron Goldman, too
Whoever bawled about it, Fa’queem!!
AP, didn’t whip his boy till he bled, I saw the photos and there were welts on his thighs, but that happens with a switch, it fades in a day or 2. When I was a kid, I was spanked in bare bottomed with a 3 ft canoe paddle, it didn’t leave welts, but it was worse then a switch. Before my father went with that, my siblings and i had to pick our own switch. I don’t know the circumstances of AP’s situation or what his kid did that warranted the spanking, but it is hardly child abuse. He may have been excessive, but that isn’t my call to make, I am not the child’s father. If more people whipped their kids, we wouldn’t have the rampant juvenile delinquency problems we have today or the over crowding prisons. I support AP, and hope more parents remember the old moniker “spare the rod, spoil the child”.
Ray Rice on the other hand, while I have always been a fan of his, can not be defended. As a louisiana boy, I was raised that under no circumstances do you raise your hand nor your voice to a lady. Violence against women is, in my opinion, the worst kind of crime there is, and is sadly down played in our society. If i were to meet Ray Rice, I’d probably take a swing at him, there is about the same size difference between he and I as there is between his wife and him, so I figure that is fair.
Your dad used a canoe paddle when you were 4? Or when you were a teen…
There’s a difference here to be sure, at 4 years of age anything your kid is doing is easily rectified by picking them up and moving them where you want them to go.
Beating a 4 year old with a stick is more than a little fucked up, regardless of your personal history or mine (I had old school Germans for parents and am old to have grown up when teachers could smack the shit out of you without fear of litigation).
A teenager getting hit with a paddle or a stick is a different matter to be sure, sometimes that stiffer implement makes an impression on the seriousness of the offense.
4 year olds don’t need an ass whooping with a fucking stick…unless you are some kind of fucking moron you can handle a 4 year old quite easily…
Was still a switch at 4, I think the canoe paddle was when I was 8
Switch, electric cord, high-heeled shoe, paddle, belt you name it; I was disciplined with it.
Too many folks out there wanting to raise and discipline other people’s kids. A mark of liberal society.
And I can name a few that should have been disciplined instead of always being told how unique and special they were.
Those photos were 4 days after the fact, not a day or 2….
Sorry Smitty, but we must be looking at two different sets of pictures. The images I have seen clearly show more than just welts, and these were pictures taken 4 days after the incident.
You talk about the difference in size between Rice and his fiance and how awful that is but yet dismiss 6′ 1″ 217 lb Peterson’s actions against a 40 pound 4 year old who was hit with a stick so many times Peterson lost count and caused the kid to bleed.
We all see what we want to see, but I respectfully submit that you may need new glasses.
Difference is instilling discipline. It is not a man’s place to discipline his wife/significant other, and a punch to the face is never discipline. Even if AP went over board, it was a spanking for the purpose of discipling, not a beating because someone pissed him off. As AP said in the text to the boys mom, he may have gone a little over board, but kids are gonna know daddy ain’t messing around when it comes to discipline. Quote may be a little off but pretty close. Teach kids the severe consequences of not following the rules young and they won’t have to test those bounds when the penalty is prison time or worse
Great point.
Smitty, in no way, shape or form was that discipline. That was child abuse. All Peterson has taught a 4 year old is fear. And I am in no way, shape or form against spanking as a tool to instill discipline. But a 4 year old needs a swat to the ass and a firm NO and they will usually get the message. And if they don’t get the message, you show patience and try again.
Then the argument becomes him going over board. I am not the child’s parent nor familiar with what happened at the time, so I will not make that call. It does seem excessive, but I will not stand on the outside and pass judgment. I am only pointing out the difference between Ray Rice and AP’s situations. AP, while he may have been excessive was acting with the purpose of disciplining his child. Ray Rice was a drunk ass that punched out his fiancé, now wife in a rage. There is no comparison between the two actions
So you really think that being in a rage is part of “disciplining” a child?
You really want to go there?
You dismiss the rage between two drunk adults and condone the one sided rage of a man who took a stick to a kid who weighs 180 lbs less than he does?
In essence you seem to be saying that Rice’s rage against an attacker is worse than Peterson’s rage against a child who did something wrong in his eyes and was not attacking him.
Is that really where you want to go?
You think that an adult getting knocked out is worse than a kid being beaten so many times he was bleeding?
You call that “discipline?”
Both men were wrong. While you are willing to condemn the actions of Rice, it is mind blowing to think that you support the idea of a kid getting hit by his father so many times he will have scars and was bleeding.
That’s just sick.
If a person doesn’t have impeccable self control and strict personal rules guiding his own behavior, he does not have any business using corporal punishment. I spanked my older kids. I had rules that governed when, how and why I spanked them. My second husband was abused as a child. He did NOT spank his children. He did not feel that he could differentiate between what he experienced and proper discipline. So we do not spank the child we have together.
And, really, I don’t miss it.
I am sure I will be villainized for my stance, as one poster already has, but I refuse to tell a parent how they can and cannot discipline their children. AP may have gone overboard, but that isn’t my call to make. He may have been in a fit of rage, but that hasn’t been shown nor proven. I wasn’t there so I will not condemn or condone what happened. I am glad that you are willing and qualified to play God, but why don’t you worry about how your children are raised, and allow other parents to raise theirs as they see fit. AP does not have a history of child abuse, he does have by all accounts well behaved and respectful children. So I shall not tell him how to raise them. When/if I ever have children, you can feel free to keep your opinions on my parenting to yourself
You or I don’t need to “judge” AP on his parenting, thats why we have a legal system.
If you took a belt or a switch to someone you thought was doing wrong at your workplace to “teach them” your ass would be locked up. To think you can get away with it with a 4 year old simply because you are related is crazy.
Children need “structure”. physical punishment often just teaches them don’t get caught doing this. I grew up with kids who were so used to being beaten that it didnt phase them. They were also the first to resort to violence to solve everything. Like I have said before if you interview the most violent felons in the penal system you will find practically all of them were abused as children.
Old dog, physical discipline and corporal punishment has been used and effective for thousands of years before this new idea of modern parenting came along. Physical punishment teaches consequences of behavior the same as any other punishment, but in a way that an undeveloped mind grasps it. If, and that is a big if, physical punishment only teaches not to get caught, how does any other form teach differently? Also, how on earth can you compare parents switching their kids to switching a coworker, not even on the same field. That is what is called a straw man argument, nice try
I’ve got a slightly different take on all of this: I understand that occasionally there will be some intersection between sports and social/political issues and that sports networks like ESPN will cover those issues. What I don’t like is that they will go on and on about them. The other day ESPN had a writer on from ESPN(W)-their women’s network-to talk about “larger cultural issues” for 20 minutes. Look, there are half a dozen (at least) networks where I can get that kind of discussion, I go to ESPN because I am tired of hearing all that. I get it-people do terrible, wretched, horrible things, but I don’t have to be continually browbeaten about that while I am trying to relax. Just show me the highlights, I don’t watch sports TV to work on my social conscience!
I haven’t watched a pro baseball game ever since the world series was cancelled because they went on strike over money. I was a young (and dumb) E4 or E5 at the time and decided that anyone who makes more in one game than what I made in an entire year could just kiss the deepest darkest part of my lily white ass.
NFL, get in line behind baseball players.
NASCAR, don’t piss me off.
They’re both douchebags, not unlike “animal lover” Vick, rapist Merriman, et al. These dicksmokers are the stars. Meanwhile somebody who may not be the very best QB ever but is still pretty good, and a good guy, who doesn’t drive drunk, force himself on underage girls, or otherwise make an ass of himself, he gets sidelined.
“Professional” sports.
Do not forget the double murderer Ray Lewis and Ben “Rapistbourger”.
So everyone who commits a crime should be fired, not just from sports, but every job everywhere. In fact, according to the governor of Minnesota and the vikings, we shouldn’t even wait for a trial, everyone accused of a crime should be fired until proven innocent. Yall do realize that is what you are pushing I hope
I had a few memorable “beatings” from my parents as a child, and I could and did “spank” my own children.
Never, not once, were there any welts or blood involved. Not on me, and not on my kids. The only bruises that I ever caused were on my own hand.
These a$$holes were not fighting fair or disciplining anybody: they were acting in anger, and using their full, adult strength at a time when self-control was absolutely required. These actions were crimes.
We got spanked when we were kids. But my dad always said ‘Do you understand what you did and why I’m doing this?’ before he did anything else, and then we got three hard swats on the backside and ‘Don’t do that again’.
No paddle, no belt, no switch off the bushes, just the flat of his hand on the backside.
If I recall correctly, AP’s kid had punched another kid, maybe more than once, and his father whacked him for it, to drive it home. That doesn’t make him a monster. He may simply have lost patience and this was his last resort.
AP apparently doesn’t understand the line between discipline and abuse.
I got the belt as a kid, up until about 11-12, when my father discovered ways that would hurt me far more than physical discipline. Grounding. Taking away stuff. Working my ass off around the house until I was so sore I wish he had beaten my ass.
I’m as hardassed as anyone when it comes to the children under my roof–just ask my girlfriend. But I have never laid a finger on them, nor will I ever. And I don’t have to in order to get my point across.
When I was a kid we did get spanked. My daddy was a huge man and had huge hands. One swat on the rear with his open hand went a long way. But he did it seldom because, we learned very early, when momma and daddy said something, they meant it. So the lessons to reign in defiance were few and far between. When I was 13 or 14 my dad had a “Sam Brown” belt from a WWII uniform. Once and only once did he take me and my brother into the bedroom and give us about 6 whacks with it, through the pants. Stung like hell, left no marks, except on our dignity but it was a fair sentence for our travesty of misbehavior and defying his well known rules we had committed. But afterwards, he sat down and said, “Now, you boys know why you got whipped? Yes Sir. “Are you gonna do that again?” No Sir. “Do you know I still love you?” SIR??? “Do you know I still love you?” Yes Sir, I never doubted it. He said, “then go on out and play and let’s not have anything like this again.” We didn’t. He never mentioned it again and we never did that again. I miss my dad with all my heart.
(Stole his old, and only, two stroke lawn mower and took it to a friend’s garage for the week to take apart and try to make a go-cart. We ruined it beyond repair. We had been fairly, repeatedly warned, never mess with the lawn mower and never mess with his tools unless we asked first and NEVER, EVER steal or lie. We had done both.)
Like I said, I’d give anything to be able to talk to him just once more.
Sparks,
I hear you on the one more shot to have a nice chat with the old man….
one of my more idiotic transgression was getting my younger brother to climb a tree with me and leap into the back of my dad’s moving pickup truck loaded with wood while he was moving it around a construction site…it ended just about like your story…
What pisses me off is the apologists who say that due to their upbringing or “cultural” differences, beating your wife or your children is excusable. That is bullshit and perpetuates so many negative stereotypes. It also is a subtle attempt to use the race card to defend the indefensible.
We have to also remember, many professional athletes are not rocket scientists, they are able to throw or catch a ball better than you and I. They have been coddled since they were young due to their athletic gifts and do not have to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions. This sense of entitlement leads them to believe they can do no wrong or at least someone will come along and excuse them for it. In the case of Ray Rice, this almost happened. And Adrian Peterson, after being inactive for his game last weekend, will be back in uniform this Sunday.
Mrs. MGySgtRet. and I were both spanked as children. We had children later in life and as a result, both of my children are still pre teens. My wife and I made a decision not to spank. We are both capable of crushing the hopes and dreams of our children without the use of physical force. We prefer to use psy ops. I do not disagree with corporal punishment at all, just do not practice it myself. From all the reports I have read, Peterson did not use corporal punishment. He abused that 4 year old child and left marks. Unacceptable. You cannot lose patience with a small child. You may have to count to 10, you may have to go to another room for a few and calm down. You may have to do any number of things, but you do not lose patience with a child that age and beat them bloody. EVER.
I think you said this better than me. I was focused on the fact that the guy said one was worse than the other- but you described how it should be handled very well.
I do not object to spanking, personally, and I have done it. Keeping it rare is best.
But not being able to control your rage is not acceptable.
I am a firm believer that the fastest neural connection on the planet is between a kid’s butt and his brain. That being said, it should be brief and personal, not using a belt, switch, or whatever. My son-in-law at one point spanked my grandson with a belt, but after a brief discussion of how bulletproof he wasn’t, decided that a simple and brief spanking was a better future course. No one gratuitously hit my kids, and no one gratuitously hits theirs either.
When I was in high school, there was this boy who was on the football team in my classes that would get all withdrawn and intense on game days. Others did not. I heard that was part of his game preparation.
Do professional teams use emotional preparation to induce hyper-aggressive mind states? If so, do they teach people how to let it go?
Not all that concerned about the details of either case because they will both be adjudicated in criminal courts. They do both represent something terribly broken in our society. That concerns me.
Heard Rosie O say something, quoted somewhere this morning, and surprisingly agree with it. (Yeah, I was shocked.) Her words were something to the effect of, “Not excusing it, but can understand that players who are highly paid to beat other people up and are praised for it crossing the line off the field. It’s still wrong, of course, but I understand it.”
The whole thing really IS confusing. They are paid to be bullies and thugs. Is there an off/on switch that they forget to throw occasionally? Sure. Some don’t even make the attempt, and are too infrequently held accountable for bad behavior.
Youngsters need to be taught early and repeatedly that the kind of thuggery that is encouraged on the field among athletes is unacceptable off the field.
I have never seen a player praised on the field for “beating someone up.”
Not once. Not ever.
And this comes from someone who spent a long time on the field as an official.
If anything, the situations with Rice and his fiancee / Peterson and his son are a lot like issues that draw fines and penalties on the field.
For example, Rice and his fiancee are clearly yelling at each other before the get in the elevator. In the elevator she comes at him. At that point in time, he has the legal and some would say moral right to defend himself. However, that legal right of defense is proportionate to the amount of force he is facing. The punch is way over the line. Then to drag her out of the elevator like a sack of potatoes is over the line as well.
On a football field, you can block, but you can’t throw punches.
The same thing is true with Peterson. There are very few people who are not defending his right to discipline his child and even using a stick or paddle to do it. But the blood and excessive number of hits appear to be way over the legal and moral line.
Once again, you can block in football, but you take your helmet off and start swinging, there are going to be repercussions from the referees, the coach and even the NFL office.
Playing within the rules – either on a football field or off – is required and stepping outside of those rules should never be tolerated or accepted.
I have read some reports that when the fiancee advanced on Rice, she actually spit on him. If true, was Rice’s response still disproportionate, given this provocation? Should he have restrained his response? Does he deserve his punishment despite the provocation? Yes, yes, and yes, in my opinion.
But, it did make me think. What if Rice was involved in a heated argument with another man, and in the course of that argument, the man spit on Rice – and Rice then decked him? Now, some might still say the response was disproportionate, but I’m willing to bet that plenty of folks would say that the spitter should have known better and that he got what was coming to him – even if the man was a skinny runt that posed no physical threat to Rice. I think that many of us (myself included) have differing expectations of how a man should respond to provocation, depending on who the provocation comes from. I think the sex of the provacateur makes a difference. I think the relationship between the parties also makes a difference – it’s shocking that people who supposedly love each other can do such things to each other.
I could see punching her in the face (I’m female, btw, but I could see it happening with either sex especially with alcohol involved.. ) His response was disturbing to me, tho. Like, she’s unconscious. He doesn’t seem even startled. I think I might at least check for vitals. lol
MrBill: The hippy freaks taught us in the 60’s that punching is not an appropriate response for being spit upon. It wasn’t until the mid-80’s that it sometimes was viewed as assault. Being spit upon by someone with whom you presumably are already trading spit would remove the exposure to disease thing which makes stranger spit in the face an assault.
Anywho, proportionality is always significant in determining whether the response to an assault is excusable. Short of the fb player knowing that the women he punched out was a world class martial arts master who could kill him by looking at him, there was nothing appropriate about his response to someone, male or female, half his size.
Git, you are welcome to use whatever words you wish to describe it, but the handful of professional athletes I have known described themselves as being “beat up” following whatever type game they played on any given day. That’s why they spent so much time in whirlpools, under orthopedic care, and played with taped and splinted limbs/joints.
What removing helmets and throwing punches (on the field) has to do with it is beyond me. But thanks for playing.
While their bodies may take a beating, they are not praised for “beating others up.”
As for throwing punches on the field….
On the field: a hard hit is acceptable and legal. Throwing a punch is not.
Off the the field: defending oneself is acceptable and legal. Using disproportionate force is not.
On the field: a clean block is legal and acceptable. Swinging a helmet is not.
Off the field: Disciplining a child is acceptable. Hitting a child with a switch to the point where they bleed is not.
The point is a simple one: even in cases where people are required to be physical, there are still lines on the field that are not crossed without penalties.
The same is true off the field.
Sure takes you a bunch of words to demonstrate that you apparently agree with the point I made. The fact that you may not want to consider that activities which are legal on an athletic field but illegal in the parking lot can cause confusion to some individuals, particularly if they are never held accountable for committing those acts when they are illegal, is rather irrelevant.
Incidentally, we all know that there are lots of violations which are not noticed by the officials no matter how conscientious they might be. That fact also contributes to the culture of getting by with everything you can to injure the opposing team.
I was spanked as a child. Never excessively and only when I deserved it. Never had so much as a bruise from it.
When the time comes, I will do the same with my daughter and our other kids yet to be had. I dread the day that I have to lay an open hand across my little girl’s backside, but I will do it when it becomes necessary.
That said, I will never, ever do it more than necessary. A few months back, my wife was changing my daughter’s diaper on the bedroom floor. Not paying attention, I accidentally stepped on her tiny little hand. She was okay, but I was so distraught at having nearly injured my baby girl that I stuck my hand in a desk drawer and slammed it shut. Almost broke some fingers doing it, and got yelled at by my wife in multiple languages for hurting myself.
My wife and I argue like any couple. Sometimes we really poss eachother off. Sometimes she gets me to the point that I knock my head against the hardwood wall in frustration. But no matter how mad I get, I’d sooner shoot myself than raise a hand to her.
That’s how I was raised by my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. There’s a big and clearly-defined difference between corporal punishment and violence. And you never raise a hand to your wife, ever. Period fucking dot.
no. with that mindset it would follow that nearly every man on this page had an excuse to beat his wife and child. This is the very thinking we’re trying to eliminate from the societal psyche.
imo.
You either read my rant on facebook yesterday or we think along the same lines. The second should scare people.
https://www.facebook.com/jason.ellenburg/posts/10204726833195174
Ok, I see your point where the MONEY and Fame is still heaped on them and makes them feel like they can do whatever they want. But I don’t think the violence of their jobs leads to violence at home.
Whip a 4 year old child with a switch, in one incident destroying the childs soul while drawing blood, leaving scares and potentially renderring him sterile … THAT IS A MONSTER TO ME!
The one way boxing match in an elevator between two thugs … One is a MONSTER and the other is a MORON!
I dont know, I may be outdated in my way of thinking.
It seems to me that one of the jobs of the bigger people is to protect and keep safe those that cant do it for themselves.
Now I am 6’4″ tall, about 270 or so. The average person poses little to no threat to me. The average woman taking a swing at me may hurt but nothing like me taking a swing at her.
I also have the ability to walk away.
As for taking a switch to a child, I grew up in a house that had the spare the rod, spoil the child idea.
I have thought long and hard about spanking a child. there are a very limited number of circumstances where the lesson must be reinforced by a spanking. To a child the knowledge that a spanking is possible is more than enough most of the time.
Im all of the spanking I received as a child I can never once remember my parents being angry at the time of the spanking, I also know now that they never spanked very hard, more often it was the idea that I was going to be spanked after many warnings that upset me.
later in school I had more than one occasion to reflect upon my sins as I was paddled with “The Soul Burner”
My school used the “Board of Education”, applied to the “seat of knowledge”.
Basically, a cricket bat, with holes drilled into it.
If you go to any Federal Lock-up and talk to the hardest convicts you will find that every one of them were bought up in the “Adrian Peterson” school of child rearing.
When you beat ( and thats what he did, not “spank” or “discipline”) a 4 year old like he did that kid is marked for life.
I haven’t read all the comments, but there is a difference between a spanking and a beating. My little ones get a swat on their rear ends every now and then, but when I get really mad at them I walk away until I calm down. I refuse to lay a hand on them when I am angry.
Professional athletes are just like entertainment types and the uber rich.
They get away with everything. Even if there was team owner or organization with a moral compass the player’s union prevents any real action from taking place.
Any player who makes the 40 Man roster, especially a starter will play as long as he isnt in handcuffs.
I have a son who is 6 and a daughter who is 4. I believe in discipline, absolutely. When they are out of control, they get spanked, but what Peterson did is NOT spanking. It was a beating. Spanking is a firm swat on the rump with an open hand, just enough to make them take notice. The idea isn’t to cause pain, the idea is to get their attention. Small children sometimes get to a point where they simply aren’t listening. They get a little sting on the butt and they start paying attention.
If you’re hitting a preschooler hard enough to draw blood, there is something wrong with you. I would never spank anywhere but on a (clothed) rear end, never with any object and never more than twice. Discipline and respect are integral to parenting, but there is absolutely a line that should never be crossed.
I won’t villainize you because it is pretty clear that you don’t know what you are talking about. Being a parent does not give anyone the right to physically abuse children, and that is what happened in this case. Of course communities pass judgement in these cases, and in most communities the threshold fr reporting potential abuse is visible signs of violence. Peterson hit his child with a stick hard enough to leave welts and there is compelling evidence that he’s done it before. This is a 4 year old we are talking about- its true that the child is defenseless, but more importantly this child is completely incapable of processing the punishment as a consequence of his behavior. Instead he is traumatized learns to fear his parents, and taught to use violence to solve everyday problems.
This wasn’t just a spanking, this was torture. Believe me, I’ve had switches, belts and extension cords used on my bare penis and you can’t imagine the pain. And this kid was only 4. Normal parents do not strip their kids and whip their bare genitals with anything.
I think in the end the kid is going to be more fucked up by the media coverage then he is the switching…