16 Jul 2000 03:12:37 EDTHello,
First let me say that I find your site very informative. I was a believer in paddling because when I grew up I was paddled. My father was a school principal and paddled many students. I felt it did no serious damage until the birth of my son. My wife was potty training him when he was three years old and he got off the potty and she spanked him very hard on his bare bottom. He immediately began to cry and it made my stomach turn. I became enraged!! She spanks the children regularly and says she was paddled several times in school when she was a child. It seems like that there is something more that happened to her when she was paddled in school but she refuses to talk about it.
Is there any way you know of to find out what exactly happened back then circa 1965-1975 when she was paddled? Would there be any public record of this and if so how can we get this information? Would the school district or the school itself have any record of this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. She was paddle on three separate occasions in Warren, Ohio, in the Warren City School District while attending Harry B. Turner Middle school. I don't know if you can help but anything at all would be great.
Thank you very much, keep up the good work,
C. S.
Dear C. S.My advice is for you not to spend precious time attempting to discover something in the records of your wife's old school. If, by some miracle, a record of what you are looking for had been preserved, the district would never let you lay your hands on it. And even if you learned what happened to her as a schoolgirl, what use could you make of that information? Your wife apparently is intent on avoiding those memories, and is busy restaging her childhood traumas on her own children. I can understand your interest in digging into family history for the purpose of uncovering clues that might explain current behavior, but wouldn't it be wiser to do that later, after you've protected your children? This is not the kind of business one can postpone. You wouldn't want your children to wonder years hence what the rational parent was busy with when they urgently needed an ally. The very next letter [transcribed below] in my inbox after yours supports my sense of urgency in this matter, and seems to hold a message for you. Is that perfect timing, or what? Please read it. That said, I will post this correspondence on Project NoSpank (without your name, of course) and if anyone responds with information about paddling practices at your wife's old school during the period you mentioned, I'll forward it to you.
Jordan
Sat, 15 Jul 2000 22:28:16 -0700As a child, I was so severely spanked that I would lose all control over my bowels and bladder, and defecated all over myself, still the beating would go on, spreading the mess to cover large parts of my body. I don't know if my my mother was in another room, or outside of the home, just know that she was not defending me, verbally or physically. The humiliation of having to clean myself up, change clothes, while crying was so deeply buried, until I read this "Plain talk about Spanking."
Thank you. Please do not use my name.