Serendipity

Wooden spoon for spanking? Last week a YouTube video went viral on the internet, showing a Texas judge using a belt on his disabled teen daughter, which then caught media attention. If you haven't seen the video, this is it:  (Warning...very disturbing footage.) When I first watched this video, I could only stomach the first 30 or 40 seconds of it and then had to stop it. This is beyond appalling, and this by a judge who decides the fate of others in his courtroom?  Unbelievable! This is a beating in its truest form...the judge didn't care where he hit his teenage daughter, man-handled her like she wasn't even his child, and wasn't satisfied with one or two or even three strikes...he just kept going on and on.  The child's mom then joins in and gets her whack in...for what purpose, it's unclear, but you can hear the mother say to the teen something to the effect of 'turn over and take it like a woman'!  (I wonder if mom could have t...

Do they? Really? Over the years, it has become a pet peeve of mine as well as a great concern over how a child should be disciplined. Maybe it's something that comes with age...but maybe it's something that no longer seems right...because doesn't violence breed violence?  I'm not talking about spanking a child with your hand on their butt...I'm talking about hitting them with a belt or paddle. What the law now refers as corporal punishment.  Where did we humans get the notion that hitting a child with something hard was discipline? "Spare the rod, spoil the child".  Biblical reference?  Not at all.  In fact, it came from a 17th century poem titled “Hudibras” by Samuel Butler. The actual verse reads:  “What medicine else can cure the fits Of lovers when they lose their wits? Love is a boy by poets styled Then spare the rod and spoil the child.” At the time that this was written, it referred to the spanking of a woman,...