This picture could be anybody’s little sister blindfolded and hitting a piñata at her Dad’s house for another sibling’s birthday. But it isn’t. It’s my little sister. She lives in a different world than I did. One with her own bedroom and court-ordered visitation and Christmas presents from a kind stepmother. She has never been homeschooled. She does not remember a time when our family didn’t celebrate birthdays, or was too poor to buy a piñata, or was too “modest” for her favorite summer clothes to be allowed.
She could be using any stick to hit this piñata but she isn’t. She’s using the “red stick,” the most infamous spanking implement our family had. As far as I know, none of the younger siblings attending this party were ever touched by the red stick and I imagine just a few had been threatened, but the grim knowledge of what it was used for had been passed down.
The red stick had started out as a handle to a child-size broom and then when the broom broke 25 years ago, it became a toy (a walking stick, a bat, a pretend sword) left in the yard until my Dad picked it up off the patio one day, tapped it against his palm a few times and said “this would make a real good spankin’ stick.” Then it became something totally new. An object of fear. It stayed hanging on a nail or propped in a corner in my Dad’s bedroom or office for years except when it was picked up and used to threaten or to leave welts.
“Daddy, please don’t spank me. I’m tender.” No red stick today, only fodder for years of teasing. “Aww, is my little heatherjanes still tender?”
“Do you want a spanking? Don’t make me get the red stick.”
Mom catches one sister padding her underwear with toilet paper in anticipation of a beating. After that, its bare bottomed.
“Pull down your pants. Bend over.” Red stick.
Sitting in the “punish chair” corner ’til sundown, hearing the car crunch gravel in the driveway, shaking, hands going cold. Red stick.
“But I don’t want to try and eat a pickled pig lip out of that jar, Dad. It looks just like a pig’s lip.” “If you don’t try it, you’ll get the red stick. You’d better eat it and like it.” Tears. Gagging. Spitting chunks of pickled pork into the sink. Red stick.
Pain, shame, anger, fear. Yelling. Red stick.
Running, cursing, slipping, falling, being caught and dragged. Red stick.
Grabbing the red stick tightly, just as tall, if not quite as strong as the woman holding it. “Let go,” Mom says.
“No,” I say, “You’re gonna hit me with it.”
“Yes,” she says.
“Well,” I say, “I’d be an idiot to let it go then, wouldn’t I?”
It strikes me that this photo is the only known picture of the red stick. The only official proof of it ever existing or being used is in a pleasant scenario. As it happens, the red stick finally died that happy day, broke while connecting with the piñata and ended up in the garbage.
A sibling sent me a message informing me that the red stick had met it’s end and that when Dad was out of range, they had celebrated it’s demise. I was glad too, glad it was gone and that it did not die the way I had always imagined it would – splintering into pieces over a child’s behind. It would never be used to hurt anyone again and it had broken being used the only way it should have ever been used, in the original spirit it had once had – innocently in child’s play.
Becoming Worldly 
And once again, I am absolutely horrified by what your parents did to you. Any idiot knows the difference between a spanking done in loving discipline (such as teaching a toddler not to run out into the street for fear of being run over), and a beating. Your parents chose the latter, and sounds as if they enjoyed doing so. Which makes them abusers, plain and simple.
To be honest, I have no idea what a spanking done in loving discipline looks like or whether they exist. That is outside my sphere of experience.
I knew what happened to me felt like abuse but for years I wasn’t sure. My parents read “To Train Up A Child” and as an adult I see that the Pearls seem to have a rather sadistic sense of humor regarding spankings too. As I read up on the line between spankings and abuse it seems pretty blurry to a lot of people though.
I think what happened to me just made me more contrary and distrusting of authority, and definitely not more obedient. I have part of a fingerprint burnt off on one hand because I touched a hot stove when little. I’d had spankings (back then with just a hand) trying to keep me from it but I didn’t make a connection as to why so I guess I made a run for it when no one was looking. I think if someone had taken the time to hold my tiny hand up close enough to where I felt it was really warm while explaining it to me, that would have been better.
Also, I think the easiest thing to do when you’ve been raised abusively is to repeat it. I used to beat up on my siblings because I was beaten and it is something I am truly sorry for. When I have children I will not spank them at all but use time outs, conversations, and consistency with rules instead. My answer will never be “do it because I said so.”
I DO know what is called a “spanking in loving discipline”. Never in anger, always with a light, flat implement that stings but doesn’t welt, and always hug the child afterwards. I was disciplined like that regularly, and it damaged me in ways I am still finding out. You hit a child, you hit a child. Its semantics to say that those words mean anything different and kids don’t respond to pain the way you THINK they do.
I read a story over at Love Joy Feminism of Libby’s kid who would play in a chair the wrong way and get her foot stuck painfully every time. She was taught, through pain she caused, over and over again, what the consequences were, and she kept doing it. Do you know what my proper spanking, with love and without anger taught me? That my mom was supposed to hurt me, that there was nothing I could do save try not to be caught doing something wrong. It taught me that God wanted me to get hit. God wanted me to have pain so I would know I was a terrible human being, that I was loved, but still “sinful”. I stopped crying at the age of 9 years because it was better to “receive my discipline quietly”.
I BEG anyone who thinks a couple of swats on the butt don’t change a child except for good to examine why they do it in the first place, and what the Bible actually says.
I don’t really believe spanking is ever a good choice. Honestly spanking hurt my mom more than it did me, and I knew it and acted out just so it would hurt mom.
Ghaa! Hitting and then a hug? That kind of mixed signals is supposed to be a *good* thing? Who wants a child to connect love with pain, caring with beating?
And ghaa again for hitting a child just because they don’t want to try a new food! Meanwhile, when I want my son to try a new food, I just keep offering it, and then I cheer and clap my hands when he tries it, and he cheers and claps his hands, and he’s happy and then he tries it again and we laugh and we hug, and if he doesn’t want to eat something, that’s okay because there’s plenty of good food on this planet and it’s not the end of the world if he decides that he doesn’t want a particular something on this particular day.
Wow… You turned the red stick into poetry. Sad how true it all is, but really nice how you expressed what happened back then.
Reblogged this on My Blog.