I felt like I had completely failed as a parent. It hurt me not only because I had caused my child pain, but because I knew I had opened a floodgate I should have left shut. Once I had used corporal punishment, it seemed like there was no going back. Whenever his behavior got too out of control, I would resort to spanking. I felt like anything less would have no effect now. I had read the cases against spanking.
I knew the science. I knew better. So why was I unable to do better? I would tell myself this would be the last time, but it never was. It was a lack of control on my part, and each time I spanked him that feeling of failure buried me all over again. I cried over it. If I was, I would know how to discipline better than this. Then one day I lost it. My son had been playing in the backyard, and suddenly he was gone.
I called for him, and there was no answer. I screamed for him, and there was still no answer. It took no time at all for a million horrific thoughts to flood my mind. I was coursing with adrenaline, and I spanked him without warning and without restraint⦠as if my anxiety was his fault, as if my fear, my unpredictable emotional state was supposed to weigh on his shoulders. When I calmed and started to see straight again, all I wanted to do was hold him.
It should have been my first instinct, not my last. I had broken his trust, and it could not be repaired yet. I had known for a while that the spanking had to stop, but this time it was different.
I had seen the animalistic part of me that this violence stemmed from, and I never wanted to see it again. To this day I wonder how deep the damage is from those few volatile months.
