Realizations Of A Rough Childhood

By no means is this a pity party for myself and I don't expect any response from this blog. This is something that I've been thinking about and I just had to put it down on something.

Growing up for me was a real strange experience...especially looking back on it in retrospect. I always felt that MOST people grew up like me and that it was normal the way we were raised. This is all stemming from an event a few weeks ago with my brother and I. I had grounded him for a week because he had done something real stupid. When he first moved in with me I told him from day one that I would not tolerate him getting tough with me or trying to tell me off like he did his parents.

Long story made short, Jules tries getting tough with me and I told myself that If I let him get away with that behavior even once that I would lose control of him so I squashed his bad attitude quick fast and in a hurry. He tried to back talk and I smacked him (not hard at all) across the face and I completely lost my temper and started yelling at him like (what probably seemed to him) a monster. Afterwords I felt this powerful sense of guilt and it bothered me for days afterwords.

I kept telling myself that I didn't go overboard because that type of discipline is normal and acceptable. This is where I get my reasoning from. Growing up, I finally realized that my brothers and I were disciplined in a very extreme way. My dad had this big brown leather belt and he wouldn't spank us....he would beat us. One day my brothers and I thought we would be smart and hide his belt. Dumb move on our parts...he beat us with the vaccum cleaner cord. Even if we fell on the ground screaming he didn't stop hitting us. The whipping that most sticks out in mind was the time that my dad took a garden hose and cut about 5-6 feet off and whooped us with that. Damn were those some good times.

So now that I'm raising a young man myself and have to do the disciplining. I ask what the hell did we do as kids that rated that type of discipline. I don't really ever remember being that bad and out of control. I don't think I'm going to hit my children as they grow up like I used to think I would.

Listen to me. Am I getting soft????