Spare the Rod, Save the Child

The cult taught me babies are born liars. My kids taught me I was wrong

I saw this Facebook post the other day titled “How to Teach Gratefulness.”

Some mom was bragging, well, basically bragging, that she almost “slapped” her twelve-year-old for ruining the Santa magic because her kid didn’t compliment her hard work, rather the kid just asked, “Are you proud of yourself?” and the mom lost her shit.

Eight years ago I would’ve been in the comments like “YES girl, give her something to cry about.” Today I read it and felt sick.

“The only person who ever needed the smack was me.

A hard, educated, wake-the-fuck-up smack.”

I know spanking. I got it. I gave it. A lot.

In the cult I grew up in, you had kids who could sit dead-still and silent in church by eighteen months. That shit doesn’t happen by magic. It happens because you beat it into them: red asses, thighs, palms, flicked lips if they dared talk back.

You teach a nine-month-old to wave and say “hi” to every adult who speaks to them or they get a “lickin’.” Babies are born deceitful little sinners, obviously, so thank God for the rod of correction, right?

My oldest caught the worst of it. Cold showers, spankings, the whole fundamentalist starter pack before he even hit kindergarten.

I’m telling you this because I was that parent. Deep-in-it, brainwashed, smug parent who rolled my eyes at anyone talking about “validating feelings.” I literally laughed in people’s faces. “What that kid needs is a good smack across the mouth,” was standard dinner-table talk in our house.

Turns out the only person who needed the smack was me. A hard, educated, wake-the-fuck-up smack.

When they finally kicked me out of that cult, I was still so twisted up I didn’t even know what I’d done. I thought I was keeping my kid from turning into some “worldly brat.” In reality I was just passing on the same trauma that had been beaten into me.

Fear doesn’t teach. It just breeds more fear.

I was spanked once in my childhood and I remember it like it was yesterday. Trauma lingers.

I was the problem, not my kids, and yeah, it’s possible to crawl out of that hole, admit you fucked up, and do the long, ugly work of changing. I’m proof.

But getting free? That shit is brutal.

I didn’t just stumble into that cult; I was born drowning in it. The brainwashing was my oxygen. By the time I was thirty and finally saw daylight, my wiring was so fucked I had to rip it all out and start over from scratch. Undoing thirty years of “spare the rod, spoil the child” programming is some of the hardest, ugliest work I’ve ever done.

The reflex to swing, to demand instant obedience, to treat kids like basement gremlins who should be seen and not heard; that’s the path of least resistance. It’s easy. It’s muscle memory.

Choosing the other road (naming feelings, sitting in them, teaching my kids how to feel them without imploding) was not some cute Pinterest moment. It took me getting educated first, because you can’t teach what you don’t know. There was no fairy-godmother switch flip. It was slow, messy, exhausting.

The one thing that did change overnight? I stopped putting my hands on my kids. Cold fucking turkey. That part I could control the second I decided it was over.

What replaced the hitting was time. So much time. Hours on the floor, hours perched on dressers, hours parked in my car in random parking lots or driving aimlessly while my kids unloaded everything they’d been holding in. We cried, screamed, laughed, sat in silence, said the uncomfortable shit out loud; hour after hour after hour; until there was nothing left to hide.

That’s where the real healing happens. Not in some perfect parenting handbook. On the floor, in the car, in the middle of the goddamn night when nobody’s watching and you finally let yourself feel it all.

And I’m still doing the work. Every damn day.

I’ve taken courses on how the brain actually develops. I’ve done internships in child education. I keep choosing; actively, deliberately choosing; to be the parent I never had and to burn the generational fundamentalist fear playbook to the ground.

My kids talk back. They say no. They don’t wave or say hi if they don’t feel like it. Nobody gets to touch them without enthusiastic consent. They can name every feeling on the Feelings Iceberg and a dozen more nobody ever taught me existed. And my hands? They stay in my own goddamn pockets.

What my hands do now is wrap around my kids in hugs they actually asked for.

Education does the teaching.

Love does the hugging.

Connection does the raising.

But the cult always said, “Too much learning makes you proud, and our God is a consuming fire of wrath,” so yeah, it all tracks.

By the way, in reference to the start of this blog, I responded to the mom on that Facebook group with this: