Beat Your Kids

This topic has been on my mind for a while. I spent the holidays surrounded by family including 7 nieces and nephews - all 5 and under. Some of them are bad. I mean not bad like evil-bad, but they are so spoiled rotten that I couldn't stand to be around them for more than a short time. There were a few times I had to go into a bedroom to get away from the screaming, crying, and temper tantrums.

My 3 siblings don't spank their kids. They pretty much give them whatever they want, even after they've said "No" 5 times. If a child nags long enough for something, they receive it. This bothers me. At times I wanted to snatch up a kid myself and wail on them but I know it's not my place and that I'd be the bad guy - even if the boy is setting his sister on fire.

I was raised by a military father who beat us at least once a week. If it was Friday afternoon and I'd not yet received a "whupping" that week, either Daddy was out of town or I thought the world was coming to an end. When I say "beat" I mean, he threw his back into it. This was no spank-with-the-hand-across-Daddy's-lap. This was a "Go outside and get me three green switches," type beating, where he had to hold your left arm, lest the pain make you fall to the ground as you ran around in counter-clockwise circles yelling for help and pleading for mercy. (I realize now that the "Go get a switch" thing was an opportunity for Daddy to calm down. If he didn't feel like giving you the opportunity to escape the severest beatings, he simply whipped off his 3" x 1/4" leather belt and let loose on your backside - butt and legs included.)

I remember telling myself I would never beat my kids because I felt we were borderline-abused. One time my oldest brother got whipped for wearing all white. Seriously. OK, I know that is a bit extreme and I plan not to beat my kids unless they actually do something wrong, and it would only be if there is no alternative and they refused to learn from the previous tongue-lashing. But at younger ages, there is no reasoning with some kids. Children these days seem to be given too many liberties. I have friends who are buying their 2-5 year olds their own laptops (one for each kid) and elementary school kids all have cell phones. Am I wrong for thinking this is just a bit too much? Don't kids need to learn to share? Don't they need to learn to want for a few things and realize that not everything in life comes so easy if you just whine for it?

I feel like if they are this out of hand before kindergarten, how will they fare when they have to share things at school and learn that they can't have everything they want. I feel like they are being set up for some major disappointments. Granted, we didn't have much when we little, so we learned to appreciate what little we did get - whether hand-me-down clothes from our cousins, or sneakers from the Freds Drug Store. Kids these days don’t know the value of money or things that cost money (which is pretty much everything they want). They don’t seem to understand the word “No”.

I may be a few years off from having kids (assuming I do eventually), but I'm seriously reconsidering my self-promise to not beat them. I think my siblings and I all turned out pretty darn good even though we got more beatings than we could count. Are kids these days even learning the repercussions of acting up and screaming for no good reason in public? Not my nieces or nephews. They can yell and run around restaurants and do whatever they want - with absolutely no consequences. Their parents don't even seem to think there's a problem with it. I seem to be the only one who's embarrassed with other people stare at the pack of 3-5 year olds running around messing up tables which their parents are not seated at. Is it just me?