How were YOU punished?
Switches? Soap in the mouth? Food deprivation? Cold showers? Spankings? Cayenne pepper?
Call my naivety what you want, but I am appalled to have recently learned that the above punishments are actually considered “acceptable” by a disturbingly large number of parents. How this could be is completely and utterly beyond my farthest stretch of logic, because quite frankly, I don’t believe for even a second that you could starve, beat, or shove soap in your child’s mouth out of “love”. That’s total bullshit. Barbaric. Inhumane. Absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt appalling.
The same parents will often tell you that these children “need” these types of punishments. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. You raised them to be this way - of course its your fault that your child is a raving brat. Don’t make matters worse by taking your own failures as a parent out on your child. Didn’t *your* parents ever teach you that violence and anger solve nothing?
Oddly enough, it seems that few to none of my Canadian friends were raised this way, yet many of my American friends were… So I’m curious to know: Were you punished as a child? How? If so, looking back now, do you believe that it “fixed” anything, or did it make matters worse? Would you punish your child in the same way?
Your second dose: The Cicada
Last month I brought you the Aye-Aye. This month, I bring you… the Cicada!
Feel free to stare in horror for as long as you’d like.
Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter
Meet Aye-Aye, the love-child-gone-wrong of Gollum and a Cornish pixy:
Now excuse me while I have nightmares.
