{"id":1050,"date":"2014-10-14T13:51:38","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T19:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/permissiontolive\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2014-10-14T13:51:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T19:51:38","slug":"re-post-a-mamas-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/permissiontolive\/2014\/10\/re-post-a-mamas-journey.html","title":{"rendered":"Re-post: A Mama’s Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This was originally published June of 2011<\/a>. I\u2019ve also included an excerpt from a post I wrote the year before that.<\/a>\u00a0Words can\u2019t fully explain how life-changing it was for me to begin to see my children as people, not sinful rebellious little beings I must force into compliance. Recognizing that how I was parenting was wrong, forced me to acknowledge that how I was parented had harmed me. My desire to parent my children gently, was the fuel that pushed me to get into counseling and get help for the first time. It\u2019s hard to believe it\u2019s been 5 years since I began the journey of Gentle Parenting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I recently found\u00a0an old list of \u201cimportant goals\u201d that I wanted to achieve in parenting. The list was titled\u00a0Baby Boot Camp<\/strong>\u00a0and it included weaning my kids off their\"www.public-domain-image.com<\/a> pacifier and bottle, teaching them to come immediately when called, potty training my oldest, teaching them to stop whatever they were doing when I told them to, and training them to sit still through a church service.<\/p>\n

At the time I wrote this list, my children were aged two and one. About six months after I made that list, when I was 8 months pregnant with our third, tired and overwhelmed and\u00a0struggling with depression<\/a>\u00a0again,\u00a0I realized that I was an abusive parent.<\/em><\/p>\n

******************************<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0It was the evening of a long day,\u00a0my husband\u00a0was gone at\u00a0a council meeting. I was tired and my 2 year old daughter had disappeared into the basement where she wasn\u2019t supposed to go\u00a0again<\/strong>. I yelled from the top of the stairs for her to come up, and there was no response. I yelled again, threatening a spanking if she didn\u2019t come right NOW. She came, but very slowly, taking her own sweet time, even though I yelled at her to hurry up. By the time she got to the top of the stairs I was fed up. She had disobeyed in going down the stairs in the first place, and she had failed to come the first time I called her. I grabbed her by the arm and smacked her bottom two or three times with the wooden spoon like I always did when she was being \u201crebellious\u201d. But this time I moved her clothing over to the side.\u00a0I wanted it to hurt her more<\/em>, so that she would get the message and come right away next time.<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The minute I hit her bare skin, the red welt appeared. I dropped the spoon. I felt as if I was going to throw up. It wasn\u2019t the first time I had hit her with the spoon, I had begun to use it several months before when smacking with my hand was no longer effective. I had left the imprint of my hand on her thigh before, but the marks always faded quickly, and I had never left bruises, so I told myself I had never gone \u201cto far\u201d. But this time it was different. How could I be turning into this person, someone who\u00a0wanted<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to hurt my baby?<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I pushed my sobbing little girl away from me\u00a0(afraid of hurting her more than I already had)<\/em>\u00a0and curled up on the couch and cried. My worst fears were being realized. I was treating my kids in the ways that I had sworn I would never repeat. That night when my husband got home, I told him that I needed to take a break from spanking for awhile, to try and figure out where I was going wrong. To my surprise, he was completely supportive and even suggested that\u00a0we could stop spanking entirely<\/a>. And so began a journey. A journey of discovering my children for the first time. A journey of discovering myself for the first time.<\/div>\n
***********************<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0asked Ms. Action. I turned away from the pot I was stirring on the stove and answered\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s a potato masher, to mush up the potato\u2019s<\/em>\u201c, \u201cOoohhhh<\/em>\u201d she replied looking at it, then placing it aside she continued her rummaging in the utensil drawer. \u201cWhat\u2019s this Mama<\/em>?\u201d holding up the rolling pin, after I explained its function she returned to her drawer.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"spoon\"<\/a>After she was silent for a moment I turned to see what had captured her interest and saw her standing by the drawer holding a wooden spoon. She looked at me and said in a quiet serious voice \u201cthis is gonna hurt me<\/em>!\u201d and then screwing her eyebrows together she said in a growly voice\u00a0\u201cthis is for spanks<\/em>\u201c.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My heart jumped and tears started to my eyes. We had stopped spanking 6 months ago, how could she still remember what that spoon had been used for? I replied, \u201cYeah, that was for spanking, but we don\u2019t spank anymore<\/em>.\u201d She looked up at me \u201cNo spank en-a-more<\/em>?\u201d<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I gave her a hug, \u201cNo spanks anymore, you can throw that spoon in the garbage<\/em>.\u201d I watched as a huge smile spread over her face and she enthusiastically marched over to the garbage can and threw it in.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
***************<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Looking back with what I know now, I never would have had children so soon after I got married.\u00a0I was burnt out from parenting siblings for most of my life<\/a>. I was ignorant of all of the anger I had bottled up deep inside, and I was depressed. As I\u2019ve started to be honest with myself these last\u00a0two years, letting myself remember for the first time, I was so afraid. Afraid that it was too late. Afraid that my kids were doomed to the same abuse that I had lived with. Afraid, that my kids would hate me someday.<\/p>\n

If I am honest, I am still afraid sometimes. I\u2019m afraid that I will not heal everything in time, that my kids will grow up and still have suffered from my ignorance. In a way I am grateful that\u00a0the choice to be\u00a0a mom was kind of made for me, because if I was waiting to feel fearless, I would put it off forever, and never be able to experience the beauty my children bring to the world.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Four weeks ago, as I pulled our brand new baby into my arms, my husband announced that we had a baby boy. And I was suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. I held my baby knowing that he would never be hit by his parents, that he would be treated gently and with respect. He will be free to be whoever he is, and not shamed into being whatever his parents want him to be.<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I held him knowing that as a boy, he would not experience less affection than our girls, he would get just as many hugs and kisses and snuggles. I held him knowing that he will never have to live up to some false expectation of what it means to be \u201ca man\u201d. He won\u2019t be bullied and mocked into being \u201ctough\u201d, he won\u2019t be automatically blamed and punished in the name of \u201crespecting women\u201d every time he gets into a fight with a sister.<\/div>\n

It was in that moment that hope was born,\u00a0and I realized that I am doing it.\u00a0I am a good mom.<\/em>\u00a0I am a gentle mom who loves, and never stops seeking to grow. So why am I still haunted by memories of spanking my small children? Why does my heart sink when I watch home videos from several years ago and see how unaware I was of my disrespect towards my children?<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve continued the hard work of healing,\u00a0I\u2019ve realized that I will never parent the way I was parented.<\/a>\u00a0And I know\u00a0that I will not ever lose my drive to apologize for and seek to change whatever mistakes I make. Those things\u00a0give me hope that my children will experience a better childhood than I did.<\/p>\n

But I regret those wasted months and years where I didn\u2019t know my children. I know I am different now, but that can\u2019t change my actions then.\u00a0How could I have missed what I see now? How could I have hurt my babies when I loved them so much even then?\u00a0How can I be sure that I am taking advantage of every moment, as time slips by all too quickly and my babies grow up right in front of me?<\/em><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was originally published June of 2011. I\u2019ve also included an excerpt from a post I wrote the year before that.\u00a0Words can\u2019t fully explain how life-changing it was for me to begin to see my children as people, not sinful rebellious little beings I must force into compliance. Recognizing that how I was parenting was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1145,"featured_media":1052,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,30,11,7],"tags":[62,46,63,18],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuse","category-healing","category-parenting","category-reflections","tag-growth-and-change","tag-parenting-questions","tag-realizations","tag-spanking"],"yoast_head":"\nRe-post: A Mama's Journey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This was originally published June of 2011. 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