I didn’t believe my Mom when she said these words to me right before the last spanking I received as a child. Spanks didn’t come often, probably because I was a remarkably agreeable kid, but my memory of the events and my deserving behavior is sufficiently strong that there weren’t repeated episodes for the same thing. Still, as a kid these words were a hollow cliché that I was sure she’d gotten from an episode of Dallas, not something she could have meant, as she folded in half and secured her grip on my Dad’s wide, leather belt. As with most things, it took me years to truly understand how much she meant these words. When you love someone so much, it does hurt to teach the discipline he either missed or ignored.
Surely I learned this the few times I punished my own kids when they were young, but I felt it again recently with my students when I recently served as an elementary principal. In the classroom, I occasionally grew exasperated with a trying student or disappointed with a relentless behavior. In the office, however, those feelings came out more as pain from a place deep within my soul that the students sitting across the desk couldn’t have understood.
When a child frequently experiences being on the outside, breaking the rules, or viewing herself as “bad”, it often becomes her. As a hope mongerer, I may not have been surprised to see the same child walk into the office again with another referral sheet, but I genuinely believed that each round would be the catalyst for changing the behavior and the child’s outlook on himself. This didn’t keep me from being consistent and thoughtful in my counseling and consequences, knowing that hope without action would catalyst nothing. In reflection, I don’t regret writing the suspensions I had to write, nor holding back tears as I wrote them.
This hurts me more than it hurts you, Amen.