Reader's feedback, Feb 2003


Here are some letters from readers of this website, the newest letters on top. All e-mail addresses and names have been anonymized to protect the sender's privacy. Brackets in red (...) indicate deleted portions.

Some people request non-anonymization to allow other readers to send them feedback. If you want to reply to these people, please send your reply to the email address in the header of their mail, not to spankwithlove@hotmail.com. Thanks!
 


 
From:    n...@hotmail.com
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: Spoil the Child
Date:    Thu, 27 Feb 2003

Dear Spank With Love,

Why aren't testimonials like the one in this month's (Feb 2003) Feedback section put in bold on your homepage?

It doesn't matter how well-meant a spanking is, or whether an appropriate "technique" is used, it should never be done now that people have come forward with information like that.

Reading the comments from people that you have received, I can't help sensing that there is an unconscious sexual element in a lot of their approaches to spanking, not to mention the impetus behind devoting whole websites to the fact that one spanks one's offspring on their bare bottoms.

My parents spanked me. By age 6 I was masturbating to the thought of being punished. By age 12 I was hitting myself.

With love...
 


 
From:    c...yahoo.com
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: (none)
Date:    Sat, 22 Feb 2003

I would like to respond to the many people who have written saying that receiving spankings as a child will cause a person to be sexually aroused by that sort of behavior. This cannot at all be proven. Although I'm sure some people who find spanking sexual were disciplined that way as children, that does not in any way prove that receiving nonconsensual spankings as a child caused this. I myself love spanking play when it comes to sex (I'm married, straight and monogomous, I haven't ever had spanking play with anyone other than my husband and we both saved our virginity until our wedding night) and I was never given one good hard spanking as a child!!

My father believed in spanking, but was overly demanding; he punished for things that were not true disobedience. My mother spanked as a total last resort and it was only when she was in extreme anger. There weren't any spankings like the ones described and recommended on this site ever given in my house. Furthermore, I never received a sapnking at all, my younger sister was the only one who pushed my parents to their limit.

My point: at a very young age, I knew I was interested in spanking. And yes, I am very turned on by the removal of my clothing, being put into position and receiving the swats. But none of that ever happened during discipline in my childhood. Therefore, some people are just naturally going to be turned on by that kind of thing; you can't say discipline spankings cause it. And when I say I knew it interested me at a young age, I mean young. My father did give me one swat on my clothed behind when I was 8 or 9, and already by that age, it just made my bottom tingle and made me embarassed. Even at that young age, I never thought the embarassment was because he had done something sexual to me, just that if he really thought I deserved a spanking, he should have made it really hurt, otherwise he was just touching my bottom for no reason.

I also struggle with feeling that my parents didn't love me enough to discipline me because I never got a spanking like those described here. I wish I had!

Anyway, my point is that just because one person who was spanked as a child grows up to have sexual interest in it CANNOT prove that the one thing caused the other. Parents need to really know their children so they can know how to discipline them properly; spanking can be detrimental to some kids. My advise then isn't "spank your kids!" or "don't ever spank your kids" but KNOW them! You should be able to tell if a spanking makes your child truly sorry or just embarassed and uneasy. You should also have an open relationship with them so that they can discuss it with you.
 


 
From:    j...@yahoo.com
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: spankings
Date:    Sat, 22 Feb 2003

I want to say first of all that my wife and I have been grateful for for your website and its advice on child discipline. We are young Christian parents seeking to bring our children up in an upright manner. Unfortuanately, inherent in that task is an occasional need to administer spankings.

You know, until we came across your website a year and a half or so ago, I was the only one I thought who as a child received "bare bottomed spankings". I thought my mother was the only parent cruel enought to go as far as pulling my pants down to administer a spanking. I was enlightened to know that it is farely standard procedure.

I did want to receive some input on a topic within the realm of spanking. I as the father am often the one to administer the discipline to our three children. However, when it come to the area of spanking, I have refrained and delegated the responsibility to my wife, C(...). My thinking has been that since men are usually the stronger gender, there is a much higher risk of abuse for a man to be the one to spank.

So, when one of our children acts in such a way that we deem warrants a spanking, my wife and I proceed with the child to a private part of our home. I do most of the talking and explaining while C(...) ends up being the one to actually do the deed of administering the spanking.

I am just curious. Is my approach right or wrong? I am certainly open to some input one way or the other.

(in another mail:)

Let me say that your website is so on the mark. In a day and age when children are showing less respect for authority, are given fewer and fewer boundaries, and have just have a overall lack of discipline, your website helps restore some age old principles that have been lost over the past couple of decades or so. My wife and I are a young couple of thirty years old raising three young children. It has been so refreshing for us to see that there are other parents out there that are still trying to raise upstanding and godly children using age old principles.

What has been most enlightening to me about the other testimonials I have read is that there are that many parents who practice the "over the knee, bare bottom" approach to spanking. I will be honest with you, I was not aware of that. I had thought for about twenty-five years that my mother was the only one of very few that practiced that approach. Now there are some children who will never behave in such a way that would justify that drastic of action. But for the strong willed and highly defiant child, I personally do not think there is any other viable method.

For a yongster that is being compulsively disrespectfuly and defiant, simly giving him(her) a swat on the fully clothed behind produces negligible results at best. I will say that my wife and I pattern our child discipline techniques largely after the techniques both of our set of parents used with us which are very similar. We do not use spanking as a primary method, but it certainly ranks way up on our secondary list. We also use some of the conventional methods such as time out. It is our experience that about 90% of the time, putting our misbehaving child in time out is all the action that is needed.

There are those rare occasions though when time out and rational talking become insufficient. It is at that point when the child is taking back to the master bedroom, and given an over the knee down with the pants blistering. Let me say that my wife usually ends up being the one to actually administer the spanking. I prefer it that way. In my opinion the father of a home should be the chief disciplinarian, but since men are usually the physically stronger gender, the actual act of spanking should be delegated to the mother. Especially when the spanking is administered bare bottomed. I would encourage every house hold to abide by that principle. The only exception would be in the case of a father being a single parent. Obviously then that option is not available.

Those anti-spanking advocates who overly emphasize non physical alternatives, I believe are mostly clueless. They often fall back on methods that are just not sufficient for the chronically defiant and rebellious kid. When a child is being blatantly and openly defiant, merely sending him (her) to time out or taking away priviledges is insufficient. Basically you are giving an anecdote that is way to week for the disease. It is like putting a band aid on a gushing wound.

Not long ago I was eating lunch one day in a local cafe. One table over, there was this kid who got upset over his mother taking a toy away from him in which he was using to poke his sister. I have seen many of children pitch temper tantrums in public places over the years, but this one topped them all. He got so loud the entire restaurant could not enjoy their meal. What was so incredible was that it went on for about fifteen minute before the mother took action. It took that bratty kid picking up a piece of food and throwing it at his mother, for the mother to finally do something. What did she do but stand up, walk him to an empty table and set him down in a time out seat. I thought to myself how times have changed. Had that been my mother, that child would have been in the nearest restroom with his pants pulled down to his knees getting his bottom blistered red. It is no wonder that there are so many unruly children out in the world today.

Once again, thanks so much for taking the stand you all are taking to challenge parents to take the time to adequately discipline their children. Parents that neglect this important God-ordained task are doing a radical disservice not only to their children but society at large.
 


 
From:    j...@corninglink.com
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: to k...@wanadoo.nl
Date:    Sun, 16 Feb 2003

(This letter refers to another reader's letter from January 2003)

Dear Girl,

I feel very deeply for your family. I don't mean to offend, but please just listen. It sounds as if you are enjoying your spanking ritual with your mother. When I was younger, someone who had strong influence over my mother suggested she use your mother's same technique. My mom did. She re- gretted it immensely--and that's ok. If something doesn't feel right to her after she does it, that is her maternal instinct telling her this is not right. She discontinued all corporal punishment, I believe the same and my kids have turned out fine.

Sometimes, even though something hurts our physical body, some of our insecurities may desire it. People who "Spank with Love" or spank because they are with a certain religious group deny that there is anything the matter with corporal punishment for children.

I can almost hear your tone of voice. I realize that for now, you may derive some pleasure out of that spanking cycle. I hope that you will realize that spanking should be confined to consenting adults who engage in sadist activities. I have been helping people recover from even the most innocent form of spanking, to punishment even you could not imagine. We live in a world that likes to tell us what to do and tell us in the same breath our minds are totally free. You are blessed to be 16. Use your years wisely. And it sounds that your mother does love you and I'm sure that you and she could devise a better plan of consequences for you without engaging in any furthur S&M practices.

Sincerely,

Dr. A
 


 
From:    r...@lclark.edu
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: say no to spanking
Date:    Wed, 19 Feb

Although I hesitate to contribute to this repugnant website, I have to admit that I'm one of your biggest fans. I am a twenty-one-year-old college student (female) who is staunchly against corporal punishment. I was spanked and paddled by my step-dad until the age of twelve. Spankings never made me feel penitent or sorry; they just filled me with burning feelings of hatred and anger. You're probably thinking, "her step father must not have administered the spanking in a loving way," and you might be right. But it's not the pain, tears, or anger that really bothers me now -- it's the long-term effects of the routine sexual abuse inflicted upon me by my step-dad when he put me over his knee and made contact with my virginal erogenous zone. Yes, that's right: the buttocks are an EROGENOUS ZONE. Which leads me to my explanation of why I regularly view your site: I am ineffably aroused by your advice on spanking positions, implements, attire, etc. etc. You'd never guess it if you knew me -- I'm an excellent student and, it would seem, a physically and psychologically healthy person with lots of friends and a loving boyfriend. But I've got a dark little secret: those spankings that I apparently deserved as a malicious, naughty little girl left me with a deep-seated sexual obsession.

I experienced my first feelings of sexual arousal when I was five. Guess what I was fantasizing about? A good, hard spanking. So here's my advice to parents: your children may be misbehaving, even asking to be disciplined. But do you want to punish them with a lifetime of masochistic obsessions? And don't think that a loving, "safe" spanking will help avoid the long-term effects of sexual abuse: it's the thought of that ritualistic, rational, affectionate spanking that gets me off the most.

Needless to say, I do not believe in spanking in any circumstances.
 


 
From:    t...@wanadoo.fr
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: Think about this...
Date:    Tue, 11 Feb 2003

In advance sorry for my mistakes (english is not my first language)

Hello,

Reading your message board, I was wondering why some kids wanna get their parents to spank them. "It seems a little bit foolish" was my first thought.

For myself I don’t believe that corporal punishment can be effective. In my childhood, my parents do not used to punish me this way.

I however understand those parents upset by kids often out off the line. Nobody’s perfect, so if parents give once a spanking, I don’t considers it abnormal. When this attitude becomes the only way to educate, mine differs.

Being a parent, and helping your children to grow up, means teaching them what is good and what is not. How can we show them this difference by using violence : "Be a good boy" or "a good girl", "don’t hit the others", etc. "Do what I say and not what I do" is, I believe, hypocritical. Some kids, feeling guilty, would ask their parents to beat them. All right, that’s the old story : "sinners we are and we must pay for our faults". A good equation? I don’t think so.

Let’s talk to the "sinner":

First : you did wrong, and now you feel bad, ok, change your behaviour and you will be well. You’re not a puppet, and you’ve got a brain to make up your mind.

Second : feeling guilty, it is normal that you think you must pay. That’s our Christian’s culture. Some like you wanna receive a punishment from their parents, from their teachers, or anyone else who’s in confidence ; others choose self-punishment. Too easy, and sometimes perverse. If only corporal punishment had work, sure we will be in a wonderful world. The truth is that the choice is your : you and only you can improve yourself. Your parents are not in your mind.

Third : learning, it is making errors. Those errors you have to analyse, many times, and at the end you will not make them anymore. An adult, responsible, never forget the errors of the past.

Now to the parents :

First : your child ask you to punish him (her). You are the adult, it is not your child who must choose this.

Second : our human mind hide many phantasms, a child have too. Especially the teen-ones. Be careful not to make them become true. Third : it’s comprehensible that some children would prefer a spanking instead of a grounding (what a lost of time). As a parent you must help them to grow-up, to be gradually mature. So you must help them to think about how they can improve themselves. The way is not spanking, but talking. "Cogito ergo sum" as said Descartes : "I think then I am", "I AM BECAUSE I THINK". A human child is not a machine, you can’t program him (her), you only can help him to decide what sort of (wo)man (s)he wanna be.

To the kids who feel they need a good old spanking :

There all over the world poor kids often beaten by adults. Think about this, and be happy that your parents did not.

To the beaten others :

If your parents spank you, let’s talk to them, and prove that you can be a good boy (or a good girl) without those methods. If they often beat you : know your rights ! As Human Rights, Children Rights exist too. Talk to your friends, some people could help you (neighbours, teachers, social workers). Don’t be alone and don’t be afraid : silence is the worst way.
 


 
From:    s...@cox.net
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: want help
Date:    Sun, 9 Feb 2003

I just got 11 years old and I am in 5th grade. My Mom is helping me to write this. I got in big trouble in school on friday and my mom got called. My dad is out on a trip for work and he will get back in two weeks. My mom said I was grounded but then she had her friend tell her about this place and we read the whole thing together. I chose that to get spanked would be what I want because I feel real bad for what I did. I never got spanked before and my mom never spanked a kid before so she said it was ok for us to ask some things I want to know on the web site. We read all the instructions and we chose that I get spanked on her lap and on a big chair that was in the shed. She had me bring it in and clean it and put it in my room. The things I want to know are

Do you think it is ok for me to have my mom do it or should I wait till dad gets home because all my pants will have to be off.

How bad does a spankin hurt.

Mom wants to know if it is ok to let me pick when I am going to be spanked.

I really want to get punished for what I did but I am kind of afriad and want to hear from kids to about what I should do.I feel bad over it. We want to hear from grown ups to.

Mom will let me read email from you with her so please send it and answer my questions.

Do you think that cause I am 11 I should get more spanks and how many. Should she do it with her hand.

(in another mail:)

Hi

I got the day off from school today for teacer meeting and mom said it is ok for me to tell you about how it went. Thank you for email me back.

I already got spanked. i got it that day. I picked after my shower for the time. My mom was the coolest in the worl about it. After my shower we had our talk like it says to do at the web thing. She told me how she wants me to do good in school and all the reason why what i have ben doing is bad.She said she was sorry that I have to be spanked but it is cause her and dad love me and best for my own good. We takled a long time. I told her how i feel bad when I do bad stuff and she said it was cause of guilt and I will feel better after i get punish. I told her I will feel funny to be bare for her and she told me not to.I am her boy and it is ok but never get baare for others. She told me that when i had dipers she would take it down and i peed on her a few times. That made me laugh and feel better about it. I told you she was cool.

When se told me it was time to get spanked now i kind of almost felt sick but I took the big chair to my dads office like she said. I was only had on my unders and I had to take them off. I had to stand in front of her and she told me again what i did and why i was getting spanked. She asked me if i want to say a thing and i told her that i was real sorry and will be good i promise. I was crying then and for got about being bare. She put me over on her lap and did it I think like ten times and it hurt bad. She had to stop and tell me to stop kicking or it will take longer and then i got the rest. After she huged my a real long time till i stop crying and wanted to help me put my under pants back on but i just let her put my pj top on and left my rear bare for a wile till it felt better. I think she spanked me right. Do you?

My mom said tell you that my behaveor is lots better and thank you for all the help on the web site. She says it works.

I want to answer your questions now.

Getting a spanking made me feel real good in two ways. It made me feel good cause i paid for what I did in school and mom told me I can start all over now. The other ways is this and I told mom and dad this to. I have two frends named M(...) and M(...) in school. We have ben frens for a long time. They always talk about how they get spankings but I had to say that i dont get them. That made me feel bad and not like other kids. Now I cant talk about mine like they do and I feel like my mom and dad love me like thiers.

Getting spanked is helping me to be good. I liked how i felt good after but it hurt bad to. I dont want to get it again soon and when I am in school i think about it and behave. My dad will do it to if he is home and I think he will do it harder than my mom.

I think that a spanking is best punishment for me. When i got grounded it never worked and i stii did not behave so I think they should spank me like other kids.

I want to say one other thing about how mom did it. It says on the web site that over her lap on chairs is the best way and i think it is. I could not move or put my hands on the floor or do any thing. It made it fast cause mom could do what she wanted and all i could do was get my spanking. I i could have moved i would have cause it was hurting me.

I got to go now and please e mail me back and let me and my mom and dad know what you think.I think it was a good thing for me.

Mom says she hopes what i says will help other parent and kids to deside about it so let them know what i said please.

love
 


 
From:    e...@iolfree.ie
To:      spankwithlove@hotmail.com
Subject: To all parents who are considering spanking
Date:    Sun, 9 Feb 2003

I had good, loving, Catholic parents, who believed in spanking as a form of discipline. I loved my parents, and did not consider them to be abusive. Spankings were given about once a year, between the ages of three and ten. They were always given with the hand, sometimes, but not always, on the bare bottom; they usually consisted of ten to twenty hard smacks. I was told that they were doing this because they loved me, and they wanted me to grow up to be a decent person. (I began to question that when I was a teenager and met other nice, polite people who had never been spanked.)

I'm in my thirties now. I did grow up to be a decent person. I'm a daughter that any parent would be proud of. I'm a virgin. I always got A's for conduct in school. I never smoked, drank, or took drugs. I'm very well educated. I was extremely successful at university, and have an excellent job now. I am well liked, and am considered to be reliable, kind, sensitive, and caring. I give to charities. I'm active in the Church. Obviously I turned out well. I must be a proof that spanking doesn't do any harm.

The problem is - nobody can know the harm it did to me, because I shall never speak of it in public. It is my shameful, dark secret. My well-meaning, loving, Christian parents, sexually abused me, without ANY idea of what they were doing. They were good, innocent people, who wanted the best for their children. They would have known vaguely that there was such a thing as homosexuality, but would certainly not have heard of any deviation that was more unusual.

Are you all fools? Don't you realize that the buttocks are a sexual area, not just because of their closeness to the genitals, but also because of the nerve endings which lead directly to sexual nerve centres? What do you think it does to a child's psychological or sexual health to have his or her pants pulled down, to be placed across the parent's lap (which is a sexually-suggestive posture, even if the parent doesn't perceive it as such), and to have her or her private sexual area violated, and then to be told that this happened because the child is "loved"?

At a young age, as a result of these "non-abusive" spankings, I began to have an unhealthy fascination with the subject. I felt vaguely troubled and embarrassed when the subject of spanking was brought up in public, but in private, I loved fantasizing about it. I would read autobiographies and novels that had chapters about children getting spanked. I did not know that this interest was sexual. I was not well informed about the facts of life, and had no idea that the parts of my body where I felt stirring sensations were connected with anything other than going to the toilet and being spanked. I deliberately sought this exciting feeling for years. I would go into bookshops and look for books on Christian parenting (especially Dr Dobson's books), and I would read extracts and reach a state of arousal. I never spoke about it to anyone: although I did not know that it was sexual, I did know that it was weird.

I was nineteen when I read in some book that some people are sexually stimulated by the thought of corporal punishment. I was horrified, ashamed, and embarrassed. I had always thought I was chaste, because I didn't fornicate. Now I was addicted to this sexual arousal, which I had innocently become accustomed to. It took eight years before I found the courage to tell a priest in confession. He was terribly kind and sensitive, and treated me with the utmost delicacy. Since then, I have managed, with occasional lapses, to stay pure in mind. It was difficult at first, but it IS possible.

If you think that spanking isn't sexual, just type the word into some internet search engine, and see the proportion of pornographic sites to parenting sites. Please don't think that just because YOU'RE not aroused, that it doesn't matter. You don't know what you might be doing to your child. How could my parents have known that their intelligent, well-disciplined, much-loved daughter would end up a sexual pervert? I can forgive them, especially because they didn't know, but your children may not be able to forgive you. I won't have children, because with my sexual deviation I cannot marry. But if I did have children, I would much, much rather have them grow up to be sexually normal and pure, than have them instantly obedient to my parental authority. I did not choose to have this kink. It's weird and perverted; it's embarrassing and humiliating. And it does NOT require abusive parents to bring about this condition. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was spanked twice by his governess, and was tormented by erotic feelings about the subject for the rest of his life. I have learned of many, many other cases of seemingly normal, nice, successful people, who received an occasional spanking from loving parents, and who developed this deviation. Some of them, like me, try to stay pure in mind; some spend their time indulging in spanking fantasies, with the aid of pornographic videos and websites. None say that they are glad they have this tendency. Even if they enjoy and deliberately seek these strange "pleasures" - excitement would be a better word - they will never enjoy the TRUE pleasure of a loving, chaste, fulfilling, normal sexual relationship

Please, please don't spank your child.

(in another mail:)

Thank you for your reply. You say that you are skeptical about Freud's theories. I'm not writing about theories or studies: I'm writing about what happened to me and to countless others. I don't know what studies exist, but it seems that it would be difficult to make an official, reliable study of something like spanking fetishes when so many people carry their secret burden of shame in silence. Such a study would have to rely exclusively on people who are open and unembarrassed about their deviation; it would exclude people like me who struggle with it secretly and try NOT to search for pornographic material to feed an addiction. My parents don't know I suffer from this fetish, so they could proudly point to me as someone who "turned out well".

There is a lot of information about the connection between childhood spankings and the development of spanking fetishes on the Project NoSpank website. Have a look at: http://www.nospank.net/101.htm

If you study that section of the Project NoSpank website carefully, you'll find convincing evidence that spanking is sexually abusive. It is a violation of the child's private parts. Your website seems to suggest that because it's the PARENT who is doing it, and because it's in private, it's not sexually abusive. Let me ask you this: If a parent - without feeling any sexual arousal - pulled down a child's pants and FONDLED the child's private parts to punish some misdemeanour, would you find that acceptable? Would you say that it was okay because (a)it was a parent who did it, (b) it was done in private, (c) the parent didn't find it arousing, (d) the child HAD been naughty, and (e) when it was over, the parent assured the child that s/he was loved. I don't think you would, because you would SEE that as sexual abuse. It would stand out, because it would be unusual. It's harder to see that with spanking, because we're used to the thought of it. Most people have done it, have seen it, or have had it done to them - often by beloved figures like parent who were well meaning (like mine).

If we have good, loving parents, it's hard to see them as sexually abusive, so we deny that these acts WERE sexually abusive. But if we start off with a mind free from pre-conceived ideas, we should be able to see at least that they accidentally and ignorantly did things which were sexually abusive.

You point out that there are some who are spanked and don't become spanking fetishes, and other who are not and who do. Well, what does that prove? There are people who smoke a lot and don't get lung cancer; there are people who smoke much less, and die of lung cancer. (Also, as Chris Dugan points out in an article on the website that I recommended, it's possible that some of the people who say they were never spanked, may have forgotten it, or they may indeed remember being slapped on the buttocks, but may sincerely deny that they were spanked because they associate spanking with a fully-fledged ritual which their parents largely skipped.) All I can say is - if you had ANY idea of the heartache, the loneliness, the despair, the shame, the self-loathing - you would say that the risk that spanking MAY cause this problem is too great to take.

Father Benedict Groeschel, in his wonderful book "The Courage to be Chaste", points out that people may suffer from some deviation which leads them to be sexually aroused by something with NO sexual significance to normal people - such as touching a comb or eating fresh fruit. You might say that the EXTREMELY small chance of this happening is no reason not to give your child oranges or strawberries. I would agree with you. However, such deviations are very rare. If you type the word "apple" or "pear" into an internet search engine, you won't get 90 percent pornographic sites. You will get 90 percent pornographic sites if you search for "spanking", so spanking deviations must be much more common than you're willing to admit, or else spanking must be instrinsically connected to sex in some way. Well, I pointed out in my last e-mail that the buttocks are a sexual area. I suppose they would be touched as part of foreplay. They are also sexual for the one who is being touched, as they are full of nerve endings that lead directly to the sexual nerve centres.

I am not in a position to convince you with official studies. I think, though, that you do know in your heart that there is SOME risk. I might add that I e-mailed my testimony to the Project NoSpank website as well as to yours, and that some readers sent e-mails which were forwarded to me (since my testimony was anonymous). There were people whose experiences were almost identical to mine. In one very tragic case a reader wrote: "I do something that she cannot do. I go to prostitutes."

I will say it again - the risk is too great. It's also unnecessary, as many of my friends who were not spanked, turned into polite, caring, well-disciplined adults.

A.
 


 



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Last update: Mar-25-2003