Do You Remember Pippi Longstocking?

Then hopefully you'll read this short story by the author (and it has nothing to do with Pippi). Though Ryan and I are not prone to using physical punishment on our kids as a form of discipline, I still found this story to be a profound reason to never spank, hit, smack, swat, pinch, shove, etc. a child. One of the Special Education teachers shared it at a class I attended today, but to give proper credit to the site I found it on, you can click here to read more: http://www.amelius-books.com/discus_eng/messages/1/20.html?1015670475 Please take a minute to read it. I can't think of anything more important.

”Above all, I believe that there should never be any violence. In 1978 I received a peace prize in West Germany for my books [Pippi Longstocking], and I gave an accepting speech that I called just that: 'Never Violence.' And in that speech I told a story from my own experience. When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking – the first of his life. And she told him that he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, 'Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that you can throw at me.' All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery – one can raise children into violence.”

(The Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren – one of the Youngest)