SPEAKER_02 0:00

What is your problem? Of course, the nuns are gonna kill you if you act out. What do you think nuns are here to do? Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention, and cause us to wonder what and why. I'm Ross, your host, and today my guest is a delightful human from whom I would enjoy very much a piggyback ride. Amy!

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I'm delighted to comply. Just let me know when and where and I'm fair.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Wouldn't that be fun?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

And welcome to all of you, and thank you so much for listening. Please share the show. If you like what you're hearing, share it with someone you think might enjoy our sense of humor and the way we approach these topics. We really appreciate it. Our community is growing. We're glad you're here. We love that you listen, and we hope you will help us spread the word. Now, Amy, we know that kids, well, you know, they can get on your nerves sometimes. And sometimes we want to, you know, get them to knock it off already. That's true. Parents have been interested in since forever in how to discipline an unruly kid and to encourage them to be better behaved. Am I right? No doubt. Now, Amy, I don't think it's a secret, but you have had a slew of children.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

A quarter dozen, it in fact. Yes. I have three pretty much grown kids, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

A whole bunch of kids. And I want to know first and foremost, were you a spanking mom?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

I did not spank my kids. No. I was spanked as a child, but I did not choose to spank my own children.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Well, that was my follow-up question, which is Were you spanked as a kid? Were your parents into that? Do you have any examples of when your parents used to come after you with the uh paddling machine or whatever it was they used?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I I do. I have a couple. I I think you know, spanking in my household was kind of used as a um hopefully we'll do this and then we won't have to do it very often. I don't, I don't, my parents were very measured in the way that they did this their spanking, um and and careful, I suppose, if we want to call it that. But um I remember one time in particular, my mom, so my mom used switches, which are thin branches from trees or bushes, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Wow. Yeah, and you now this is just to just to locate this in a space in the world. This I imagine was in South Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

That's correct. Um pretty rural, all of South Carolina Carolina is pretty rural, but yes, these were small towns in South Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

So you do something, you spill a drink on the table. She goes outside, exactly, strips a branch off a tree in the front yard and comes in and starts whacking you with it. Now is that what we're talking about?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Or is it pretty close? The the thing that started to occur when I was, so I don't remember at what age I got my first spankings, but they were pretty young, and certainly by today's standards would seem very young. But I know for sure I remember getting a spanking when I was about four years old, and I don't recall what my infraction was, what had happened. I know, right? What I remembered was there were choices involved with the spankings, and the and the first choice was to get a spanking or not get a spanking was my choice. But the alternative, the alternative to getting a spanking was not watching Wonder Woman, which was my favorite show on television at the time. And so I chose the spanking because in my little mind, my thought was well, if I get my spanking, it's done. It's a one and done. I you know, but if I miss Wonder Woman, it'll be a whole nother week. Because of course there was no like Netflix or recordings or whatever. You had to watch it and and and or you just missed it altogether. So there was that choice. So once I chose to get a spanking, then the second choice was what switch did I want my mom to use? So I had to go out into the yard and choose my own switch. So I came, I looked around the yard, my little four-year-old self. I came back in and I told my mom there are no switches outside. And she was not happy because she thought what I was doing was trying to get out of all of it. Like, you're not gonna get a spanking, you're not gonna watch your show. No, we're gonna remedy this. So she goes out into the yard, she comes back pretty shortly. She made the round and also realized there just there were no switches out there. So I can't, I think I ended up just not being able to watch the show, was the resolution.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Oh, I thought you were gonna say like she moved on to electric shock or something.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Right well, sometimes it was a hairbrush, honestly, but I don't think my mom, yeah, and these are kind of heavy plastic hairbrushes, but I I don't I don't think my mom's heart was in it, to be totally honest.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

I really like the choose your own adventure uh strategy of these punishments. It's like uh you know, you can do you can do door number one or door number two, or there's door number three where you go out and actually choose the thing I'm gonna smack you with.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yes. Quick side note on the choosing, though, just a lot of people for the for the novice switch chooser. Um you think I'll I'll choose the thinnest switch, the thin, thin branch, but don't pick that one because those sting more. I'm gonna that that's an insider tip for people who are trying to get switched.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

So the big ones kind of clunk you, but they're not as uh stingy, probably.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Yeah, and the little ones are more like little whips or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, they are.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Wow, that's amazing. Okay, you're gonna tell me another story.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

As I said, they were always it would be announced that something had gone astray that I had missed. We are doing the spanking. Mm-hmm. And the spanking shall commits. And then we would go and sit down. I stayed clothed. Just uh, I know there's some folks who do uh bare bottom situation. I stayed clothed, and uh my dad just used his hand and there were some number of spankings. But here's what I discovered when I was about eight-ish years old. That my dad, as soon as I started to cry, this is so sad. I haven't thought about this in a long time. As soon as I started to cry, he would stop the spanking. And I think again, his heart probably wasn't all that into it either. Wow. Um, so once I figured that out though, I just start crying like right away. Like I would just muster up some alligator tears in before and and I and I think my dad was on to me also, and I don't remember getting a lot of spankings after after that. It was more like grounding and and taking away privileges, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

I admire your skill set at that age because you were out there like fine, no switch, and then and then and then with your dad, it's like I'm crying, so we might as well stop because you've already got to the place you wanted to get to. I think that's great. I was never that thoughtful.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Did you get spankings?

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Um, almost never. Yeah, um, I uh I can only remember two times. One when I was probably around seven, and uh my dad, we were at the store with my dad, so I had a little sister and little brother with me, and he decides he was in a moment of giddy largesse, and he bought us each a pack of gum. So we each got a you know, five cent pack of gum to have as our own, so we got that, and we were leaving the store, and I started running to the car for no reason, just across the parking lot, and my little sister starts running, and my little brother starts running, but he tripped on his pins and took a header, and he he was okay, but you know, he it was a little kid fall, and he starts crying. And I look back, and my dad's right there, so I'm thinking, well, he's the dad, he's got this. I'm I'm gonna go to the car. That made him really mad. And he collected my little brother and he came up to me and he whacked me a few times on the butt and said, All you care about is your stupid gum. Oh and he was right. Yeah, that is all I cared about. It's like, yeah, well, uh it's a good point. But he was mad that I left my own flesh and blood behind in the parking lot. I couldn't be bothered because I was so excited about my gum. But you know, we didn't rare, we almost never got gum.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

So it was very exciting. Just this is my defense. Um, and then another time, the only other time I can remember, my mother, I don't remember her ever hitting me. Because my parents are more into psychological warfare.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, same.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

So they were they were constantly like working us.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

But um, but I remember I was much older, I was probably like 12 years old, so way beyond actual spanking time. And my father, we were on a camping trip, and I had a friend with me, and for some reason my father became obsessed. We were playing catch with a baseball in the campground, and he became obsessed with the idea that the ball was going to be missed at some point, and the ball would roll into a camp, uh, a campfire. But the camp, there was no fire, it was like a dead campfire, you know, just ashes.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

I don't know why he cared about that. Like it wasn't our, it was like we were, it's just like, why are you focused on that? But he was. He was like watching us, and it finally happened. And he comes up and he starts smacking me on the butt. And I'm looking at my friend, so he's behind me smacking me, and I've got eye contact with my friend, and I'm just looking at him with my shoulder shrug like I can't explain what's happening right now. Like there's no part of this I can explain. And later my friend told me, because that was the funniest thing I ever saw, that look on your face, which was like, come on, not really, we're getting spanked now. So um, so it didn't happen. I never spanked my kids. I didn't, I just didn't want to. Like I never thought about it. Um, you know, it wasn't they were always good, they were mostly good. Yeah, and you know, in not spanking them, they turned out okay. I mean, they're model prisoners, so I mean I think I did a good job, but but I know that this is a controversial topic because a lot of people feel like this is a good thing for kids. And I wanted to ask you if you knew that there are 19 states in this country of ours that still permits banking in schools.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

I did not know that. I'm not totally surprised. Is one of those states South Carolina by any chance?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

You bet. Yeah, both the Carolinas.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Um, a lot of the but not all the states are below the Mason-Dixon line, but several are. But you know, there's an Idaho in there, there's an Arizona, you know, there's an Indiana in there. In some communities, the parents are like, yeah, we want you to spank our kids if they get out of line. Like, keep doing it. Despite opposition from people in the medical and social services community, the spanking of children is legal in all 50 states. You can't let them roam free in the community. You can't let them go to 7-Eleven by themselves, but you can spank the crap out of them if they do.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Uh, it's about 50-50 when it comes to people's opinions in the latest polls about spanking kids, and famous people like Pink think it's okay. A lot of fairy tales are kind of directed at keeping kids in line and scaring them and showing what happens to bad kids. You ever notice that?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Well, here's an old one I bet you haven't heard. I'm gonna read. It's an old German fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a child who was willful and would not do what her mother wished. For this reason, God had no pleasure in her and let her become ill. God will do that, you know. No doctor could do her any good, and in a short time the child lay on her deathbed. When she had been lowered into her grave and the earth was spread over her, all at once her little arm came out again and reached upward, very much like Carrie, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

We think we think Stephen King invented that. No, this goes, this is hundreds of years old, this idea of the arm coming out of the grave. So her little arm comes out again and reached upward. And when they had pushed it back in the ground and spread fresh earth over it, it was all to no purpose, for the arm always came out again. Boing. Then the mother herself was obliged to go to the grave and strike the arm with a rod. When she had done that, the arm was drawn in, and at last the child had to rest beneath the ground. And everything and everything went back to normal.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

That's a real thing. Oh my god, this is a terrible story. They killed this child who was trying to get out of her grave.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Yeah, by smacking her arm until it wouldn't come out anymore.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

It's like mom killed her.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Maybe she just had a question.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

I know, right? Why are you putting dirt on my face? That was her question.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah, I still breathing. Do you know in the old days? I know you know this because you've been around old graveyards, they used to put a breathing tube in the graves.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

I have heard of such things.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Because they were afraid they would bury someone alive.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

My mom's family, when she was a kid, lived in a neighborhood that had family that near lived nearby, and their morning ritual was such that it was several days long. So this person would lay and rest in someone's house, and there'd be food, and people would come by. And one this their neighbor had passed away, or a relative of theirs, and so they were hanging out there having this morning. I don't know, you don't call it a festival, but this week-long morning. And in the midst of it, the person sat up and said, Why is everybody crying? And of course, everyone ran out screaming because they thought this person had become undead, but they were they had something that they called sleeping sickness.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

This kid just had sleeping sickness. I realize this is not the topic, but no, it's great though, because that's a great.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

If you're a kid out there and you really want to get a punishment, that is a way to get one to scare the hell out of everybody like that. But yeah, that's so back before you know we had sophisticated instruments to tell somebody was actually still, you know, alive when it seemed like they were dead. Apparently, you know, and all it took is one time where you thought maybe you made a mistake. So people started putting these tubes. And if you go to old graveyards, sometimes you will see these things, but it never made sense to me because so let's say you wake up and you've got a breathing tube, so you can breathe, but you know, there's no sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

No, you're just stuck down there.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

And how do you get out? You die, you're not getting like you can't, you're buried under the earth, there's no sandwich, and there's no way to communicate. Like you can't like light a cigar and blow smoke through the breathing tube. So I you're just alive to die differently.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, to die later.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

I appreciate the thought. So I went to Catholic school and they did back then hit kids with rulers, um, which wasn't too bad. I mean, you know, you didn't want to get hit, but they didn't really hit us too hard. They weren't really into spanking, but they tried lots and lots of different kinds of punishments to try to regulate our behavior. And very few of them worked on me because they never took the time to think about why I was doing the behavior in the first place. So I think that's, and I'm gonna come back to that idea. It's a theme of mine in this episode, is that if you want to um correct a kid's behavior or provide them guidance, whether it's a rod or whatever, it's important to understand what they're getting out of the behavior. Because once you understand that, you can often rechannel that energy and they can get what they want by doing something that's less uh destructive and less uh less of a problem. One day, uh I was probably in first grade. I was not a big I was not big into spitballs, but I was just trying them out.

unknown 17:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Trying them out.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

It was a phase, it was a spitball phase.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

I just wanted to try it out. You know, I was never like into spitballs or any of that stuff, but I figured, you know, what's the what's the attraction here? Let's take a look. I I did did a few spitballs, I got caught, and the nun, as the punishment, this is a punishment I don't think could happen today, even in all 50 in any of the states, even in South Carolina. She made me so imagine I'm a little kid, like whatever age in first grade, seven years old, whatever age you are, six, and I had to take three note pieces of notebook paper, crumple them up, and stick them in my mouth.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

So that feels full when you're a little kid. Then she took tape and she taped my mouth closed all the way all the way up, kind of almost over the nostrils, but not quite. So I couldn't open my mouth and I could barely breathe. And then as I sat there, the paper starts to dissolve and sort of run down your throat. So it's sort of a uh an adventure in in gagology.

unknown 18:15

Jeez.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

And it was kind of a little panicky sitting there thinking, like, can I am I gonna choke to death? You know, it's the kind of stuff today that if you did it to a kid, I'm sure there would be a lawsuit of some kind. Don't you think?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yes, definitely. And that has to it's giving me just nightmares thinking about that. It's awful, truly.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

So, um, and there were so many things as I got older and I started acting out more, they never really focused that. What I really wanted is the attention from the other kids.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

And you know, they could have, if they had just like I know sometimes this doesn't work, depending on the kid, but because I was totally acting out for the to entertain the other kids, if she had done some class punishments, like, well, if Ross is going to be doing this, then you know, you're not gonna have X. We're we're gonna skip recess today or something. Those kids would turn on me so fast, they'd be like beating me up in the parking lot, right? And I would have stopped, I would have found something else. But they never it's like they never put it together and they never understood why I was doing it. They thought there was something wrong with me mentally. Oh no, sister Ronan, she was extremely old. Okay, she was probably 300 years old if she was a day. Wow, okay, called her sister Bonin because she was just a bone, she was bony. Her face was like a bone.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Okay, I'm I'm getting a mental picture of this elderly nun.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah, really bony, very just hardly any skin left, kind of all wrinkly. Yeah, she was a skeleton. Um, and she seemed like the least hip nun you could ever meet, but she figured out what was going on with me and she encouraged me to go out for drama, and she got me into acting. And uh once I was doing that, I was that took up a lot of my time and attention, and it was exactly what I needed because I was working on something that would allow me to walk in front of people and get their attention, so that's exactly what I was doing in class. But she was channeling it all toward uh being in a school play or school plays, and then the first play that I was in, uh, we worked, everybody worked really hard on it, and it was opening night. I was in eighth grade at that time. Um, and I got somehow I got the idea. There was we had like an ice cream day once a week where you could bring in some money and buy ice cream. Yes, we had ice cream day too. I somehow decided to steal all the ice cream. All the ice cream, all the ice cream I could get. And my plan was I wasn't gonna eat it or throw it away, I was gonna give it away for free. So it was sort of a Robin Hood thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Sure, and I get that.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

But I got caught in the middle of this heist, and she she grabbed me and said, I'm thinking that your punishment is gonna be you we're gonna cancel tonight's performance. Oh no. And it was opening night. And so even though I was only 13, you know, I was still pretty fast on the on the thinking, you know, when I got in trouble because I'd I had so much experience being in trouble. I was always like, Okay, let's not panic, let's breathe through it, we can figure this out. So I say to her, in my most earnest, I tried to put on my most earnest face and tone as a 13 year old can, which whatever that means. And I said, Sister, wouldn't that be horrible for? All the other kids and their parents.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

That would be such a disappointment.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

There's probably something else we can do. And she was she you'd see her wheels turning her head because she didn't want to cancel the play.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

She'd put a lot of her uh free time into supervising us and directing us. So the play went on, it was a big success. And happy outcome. When I graduated, the Monsignor gave me a medal for drama.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

And I expected no medals. I was the most surprised kid because he like gives me this medal. I'm like, what's this for? Like, what the heck? What the hell is this gonna be? Is this like a like a curse? Is it an omen? Am I gonna turn into stone?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

It's a sobriety nickel.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

I'm a big believer in um, as I said, figuring out the function of the dysfunction. So there every dysfunction has a function. There's a reason why we we do weird things, the things that outwardly look weird or disruptive, there's almost always a reason. So I'm a big fan of like diagnosing the behavior that way. Why, what is the kid getting out of the behavior? And I'm a big fan of logical consequences. So if you're acting like in uh, you know, if you're in eighth grade, but you're acting like you're in second grade and you can't make good decisions, then you can't handle the privileges that go along with being an older kid. And so you need to be restricted in terms of what you do. It's just a logical reaction to how you're behaving.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Yes, I think I was certainly much more of the school with my own kids of logical quant consequences. Um, and and sometimes that was I'm thinking about your nun putting the uh paper into your mouth and taping shut, which is terrible. But I guess it's sort of vaguely related to paper and spit. And maybe that's where, you know, and maybe in her mind that that felt really logical.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

But uh, she was connecting she was connecting spitballs with choking a kid to death.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

That's fair.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Suffocation.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

I wouldn't call that a logical if you do a spitball, you shall you shall choke in your desk. Um I listen and watch to a lot of TikTok right now, but there's a woman on there and she's a psychiatrist or a therapist of some sort, and she is talks about getting really curious about your kids. So when they do things rather than you know, hey, you did that thing and that was bad, is like, hey, I noticed you did that thing. Why did you do that? Or or what what and and yes, exactly getting curious about what maybe caused them to do that. And I really like that. I'm you know, my youngest kid is now 16. Um, so there's some of that that I can approach because you know, six the 16-year-old brain is not working in its most uh well thought out way. So, yeah, there's sometimes where just asking questions about, hey, you know, I noticed you lied about where you were last night, you know, what was kind of going on, or trying to avoid consequences, or were you somewhere you weren't supposed to be? Or yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Yeah. Early on, when you're really seeing some, you know, some kids act out more than others, some kids and you know, engage in behavior that you don't want. I think it's that's the best time to start looking at, well, what's happening? Like, what are they getting when they act out in that way? And what can we do about that? Is there another way they can get that that we can, you know, you know, orient them in that direction so that they are getting what they think they need. In my case, it was attention from the other kids. Like I needed to get that. But I but I think it get as the kid gets older, I think it gets trickier and trickier. But hopefully by the time they're older, you've already developed, you know, a relationship with them around the idea of behavior and consequences so that you're not starting from scratch, because that that can be difficult later. According to the research, punishment, just old-fashioned punishment, is notoriously ineffective as a tool for teaching new behaviors. And even when it works or seems to work, and I'll talk about that in a minute, it doesn't work as well as reinforcing the behavior that you actually want. Research suggests that spank kids are more likely to see physicality as a legit way to resolve conflicts. So they're like, Well, it's worked, this is what my parents did. I would imagine if you're a spanker out there and you're listening to this, you'd be thinking, well, if spanking doesn't work, how come it's so popular? How come everybody's doing or a lot of people? The main problem is that when you spank a kid, the behavior usually stops in the moment.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

So it seems to work because they stop doing the thing. But what happens is that a lot of what the kid gets trained to do is to be better at hiding the behavior from the parents.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

You learn you learn to cry sooner, so the spankings are shorter, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

And that worked.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

But it but it was but that you weren't really learning the lesson they thought you were learning. So kids learn to elude the spanker or hide or lie about things or to be more secretive. The other thing is that usually kids get spanked when there's something happens that's out of the ordinary, like their behavior kind of spikes in a negative way, and then that behavior seems to stop. But it's because it was out of the ordinary, it doesn't happen very often anyway. So it again, there's this connection made between spanking and the behavior getting better, but it really is just because it was an unusual behavior in the first place and isn't going to happen that often.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Your brother probably never fell down in a parking lot again. You never left him behind, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Yeah, let's say that's true. Let's let's imagine that I never I used to play a game with my siblings called Ditch. Do tell.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

How does one play?

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Run away from them and leave them places. But a lot of parents uh who grew up with spanking, you think that spanking is effective. Like they believe it worked for them. And when they're put under stress and that you know they're having a moment and the kid is hitting their last nerve, they they feel like, well, that's that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna spank because I was spanked, you're bugging me, I'm gonna spank you. But all the research suggests it doesn't really work, it actually creates uh other problems. The evidence is that it's not the best way to deal with kids. I was thinking about this and reading about it, and I came across this idea that you know you can't hit anyone else in this country. I mean, you can hit them, but it's it's an assault.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yeah, there are consequences.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

You there can be consequences, it's against the law. You can you can't even hit a prisoner legally for no reason. I know it happens, but you can't you're not, you know, it's even prisoners have rights.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Okay. You can't hit a fat cat, a Wall Street fat cat, even though they deserve it. Like if anyone needed a switch.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

That Wall Street fat cat. Wouldn't you like to see that go down? Just a couple of smacks with your mom just cutting loose on some rich guy. Nobody would nobody would mind that. See Harvey Weinstein, your mother going after Harvey Weinstein with a big giant tree limb that she stripped off a South Carolina tree. Yeah, I want that. So you can't hit any of these people, uh, even though you want to, they're all protected, but you can hit kids. Yeah, but not your kids. You can hit the kids anytime you want, and it's totally protected. And this so the person writing this one article I was reading was like, and I'm just paraphrasing, but would you sm would you hit an elderly relative who is physically and emotionally vulnerable because they were bugging you? Like, would you do that? Most people would say, What?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

I'm thinking no, that's not true. You wouldn't want to do that.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Like they're old, they didn't mean it, or they they're just a jerk, but they don't know any better. They're fragile, they're brittle boned. If I hit them, their butt's gonna fall off. If I smack them on the butt, it'll just break in half.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah, I don't I don't want that.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Nobody wants it, you just wouldn't do it. But adult spank kids who are physically and emotionally vulnerable, right? Little tiny kids get smacked every day, and their little butts might fall off every day. I was looking at what else you could do to a kid if you really want to do something to them, and you don't want to go in for all this diagnosing the behavior, just like an old-fashioned punishment. I was like, what are things that kids hate? And there's just lists of these on the internet, but one thing that kept coming up was blue cheese. Wait, what? Kids hate blue cheese. So feed them blue cheese, stick them in a room with blue cheese. Like a load of blue cheese. Just go, you have to go to the blue cheese room or just you know, make them sit in a hefty bag with blue cheese. Don't tie it at the top, you know. They need to breathe, put a breathing stick in there.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Is there just an excess amount of blue cheese that I'm unaware of? Like, I don't have that kind of cheddar around, that kind of blue cheese around.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Blue cheese, man. Kids don't like blue cheese. No, I'm just saying, if you just instead of smacking a kid, you could just like put a block of blue cheese in their pillowcase, tell them to go to bed.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Oh, it's cruel too, though. I mean, it's the you know, we're sort of back to the nun taping your mouth shut. Like, how is that? That was bad. I don't want to.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

That was a bad one because I was choking. Like, there was bad for you. She obviously was thinking in her nun brain, oh, you like spit, you like wet paper in your mouth? How about too much paper where you can't breathe? How do you like that? And I think that would have been okay, but she taped my mouth with many pieces of tape, so I couldn't open it. And that made me sit there for a long time, and that was the dangerous part. But you know, I never told my parents about it.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Hell, heck, heck no.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Because back then, their first reaction would have been, why the hell? Can you why do can you just sit in your desk and not do anything except learn? That would be their reaction, always like, what is your problem? Of course, the nuns are gonna kill you if you act out. What do you think nuns are here to do? So you were not gonna get any sympathy from your parents, it sounds like it just wasn't an it never occurred to me to tell my parents that a nun tried to kill me because I would have to confess that I was doing spitballs and that was not gonna fly. But most of the punishments did not work. Um, the what the only other one that came close, but they got the idea to send me to like the fourth grade. So I was an eighth grader, I was the king of the hill in elementary school. I thought this was brilliant. No one had ever thought of this because now I'm taken away from my classmates, the ones that I'm trying to impress. Now I'm in with a bunch of punks. They think it's funny that a big kid is in their classroom getting punished, so it's a little humiliating, and the punishment was brilliant. The nun draws a circle on the chalkboard, and she says, stick your nose in the circle and stand there. And I thought that was so brilliant because I had a big nose and I was a little, I'd been teased about it. Oh, and it felt kind of like she was making fun of that, and then the kids were laughing, but not in a way that I usually liked. They were laughing at me at you, yeah, because I was like a joker. And I even in that moment as a kid, as a 13-year-old kid, I was thinking, well played, sister. If they had done more junk like that, I think it would have I think it would have chilled me out. So right now, everyone's cool with parents disciplining their kids however they do it. You know, within the limits, you know, you can't you can't abuse your child, obviously. Yes, but you can spank them, and that's totally cool. Are is that okay with you? Like, because it's very controversial you start talking about what parents can and can't do, right? With their own kids. It's very messy for sure.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Yeah, I I'm I I feel like whenever we get down to the crux of of what we're gonna really talk about, that I'm always walking the middle line.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

So you're walking along today outside, and you see a a parent that you don't know, just some neighbor you don't know, and they're giving their kid a whacking. Do you what do you feel in that moment? Are you like, oh, that kid's in trouble, or do you have a different feeling?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

I have a different feeling. I feel really sad for the kid, to be totally honest. And uh maybe I'm all soft and squishy on the inside, but it doesn't feel good. I don't, I don't think it's right. I don't think it's helpful. I guess right and wrong is probably not exactly what we're getting into, but um, I don't think it's helpful. And I think to your point, it it doesn't get the results you think that you are getting as a parent. And I see parents and God bless and goddess bless all of the parents because parenting is a exhausting, exhausting job, and for some people more than others. And there's no training. There's no training, and all you've got is whatever you were raised with. So I think it would be perfectly logical if you were spanked that that's what you know how to do. And certainly there's a lot of support for it in terms of socially support for it being effective and this like all these kids that are uh you know getting participation trophies and whatnot are all soft and don't know how to take responsibility for themselves, but kids are getting spanked too. So I understand the reasoning behind it, but I don't it it I get a little heartbreak when I I think of uh I see little kids, and I just don't think, particularly little little, they don't understand what's going on, and I don't think they're getting the message. And the message really is fear your parents.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

There's a lot of parents out there that I think spank that are well-meaning and are trying to provide the guidance. And uh the other thing that I know that you are know it's implied in when you were saying God bless parents, is uh not only is there a lack of training and you know, all we know is what we know, which is not often very much about what to do with children, especially when they cause trouble for us, uh, is the stress that we're under in any particular moment. You know, you had a horrible day at work, the car broke down, and now Johnny's picking this moment to paint the wall, you know, with with whatever. And it's like you kind of had it. And in those moments, you're not exactly, you know, ready to do a diagnosis of Johnny's behavior. Why is Johnny painting on the wall? Yes, you're just like pissed off and you lose it. And so, you know, those moments, you know, are just perfect for you know spanking a kid because you're just so frustrated. But there's no evidence out there that that kind of physical punishment actually works. And the other, my other thing is so using my own example, if I see a kid getting hit by their parent, even if it's just an old-fashioned spanking, it looks wrong to me.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

It to me, it looks the same as if I saw them spanking an old person in a wheelchair. It'd be like, I don't care what they did, don't smack them. Right. If the if I saw somebody hitting an older person in a wheelchair, I would actually try to intervene. That's how badly I feel about it. So it's none of my damn business, you know. And the person in the wheelchair maybe just deserving a spanking. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

It's hard to it's hard to know sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

A lot of them do. I mean, let's face it.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

A lot of the people in the wheelchair they're looking for it. I think to your point about vulnerability, though. I mean, from the a parent-child situation, like uh there's it particularly we're mostly talking about little kids. Like, you're so much bigger than your kid. And then the old person, uh older person, particularly in a wheelchair, like these are very vulnerable bodies, like physically, they're vulnerable, emotionally, they're vulnerable. And I I think they deserve um, I don't know, just take a breath and walk away, I suppose, if you if you can't.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

But that's a great point you make. And and the point is that okay, so let's say you're uh you believe in spanking and it's good for a kid, and you know, selective spanking when necessary, and you do it with good measure, you know, with a measured, with measured force, like your parents did, and you're sensitive to the kid and all of that stuff. So you're doing it in the most positive, well-intentioned way. When the kid gets old enough, like 16, 17, and they're big, yeah, usually you stop smacking them.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

Uh now again, some families that doesn't stop, but in most cases, the the well-intentioned spankers they don't spank anymore. And what's the reason for that? And one of the reasons for that is the kid is big. Yeah, can't hit a kid smack you back. And so it's like the only reason so it's like you're hitting these little kids because you can, as you said, that you're much bigger, you're stronger, more powerful emotionally and physically. But as the kid gets older, you're like, mmm, not gonna do that. And so my feeling is so my my I have a comment, I my here's my middle ground. Like, I don't believe in it, I don't think you should hit little kids.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Agreed.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

Uh however, I don't want the state telling me how to parent.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

That's fair.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

If I'm abusive, yes, take me away. But if I believe in spanking, like I think parents should be allowed to spank and not get in trouble. I just don't think they should do it. But I don't think it should be against the law. I don't know if I want people to hit my kid in school, though. Like, I'll if I'm hitting if somebody's hitting my kid, it's gonna be me.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Nobody is but me, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

You don't know how to hit them. I do, I know what switch to pick, I know what kind of blue cheese to buy. Yeah, yeah. Come on, I'll be in charge. Yeah, but some parents like they're all about it. It's like, please, my kid need if my kid needs as much physical consequences as possible. You know, you had your kind of choose your adventure spanking and you learned that crying worked. I was wondering if you tense your buttocks, does that reduce the pain?

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Actually, relaxing is better.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Relax the buttocks.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Yeah, because I think if it's tense, it's you know, you got, I don't know, different surface area. I don't know what the physics of it are, but my feeling, but it's really hard to not tense up if somebody's about to smack you. Like, I think you automatically tense up, your body tenses to receive.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

I'm just wondering, like, if you imagine um, what would be a good thing to imagine?

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Ocean. Uh sitting on an ocean.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

So, how about a bag of sand? If the sand is like soaked with water and is hard, is that hurt more than a loose bag of sand?

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Because I think the loose bag, it's gonna kind of sink in, it's gonna kind of absorb the blow a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

But the top one's gonna kind of you know pop it back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

I just want to know what to do with my butt in case I encounter your arm.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Here's what I yeah, that's an excellent, uh, excellent question, and probably it could be happening anytime. So I think that just the next person you see on the street, you just say, Hey, I'm trying to work something out. I need for you to slap me on the butt twice. I'm gonna tense up the first time, and then the second time, I'm just gonna be all loose and relaxed.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

I want to do that. I can do it it, I can do it myself, but I don't trust myself to apply equal force or enough force. We should stop right there. I want to thank you for uh joining me for this episode and and and providing your motherly wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

I appreciate you calling it motherly wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

And and your and your physics knowledge about the bear behind or how the how the butt works. No doubt. And bags of sand. And thank you everyone for joining us for this episode, as I suggest, if you like the episode, or one of the many others we have recorded. I think we're up to around 80 or so individual episodes. So they're all different topics. You're bound to find one that gets to some subject that you're interested in, and maybe somebody else. And if you can think of that somebody else, if you could share the link, that would be great. You can follow us on Instagram, we like that. You can interact with us on Instagram, sending us messages. We love interacting with you that way. You can send us an email. All of that is fun and welcome. We also are on Patreon and you can support us there. We can use your financial help very, very much. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are choking on some notebook paper or just someone choosing your own spanking adventure like Amy, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.