“The red stick had started out as a handle to a child-size broom and then when the broom broke 25 years ago, it became a toy (a walking stick, a bat, a pretend sword) left in the yard until my Dad picked it up off the patio one day, tapped it against his palm a few times and said, ‘This would make a real good spankin’ stick.'”
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“A home dictator doesn’t have to be a homeschool parent, or a religious zealot. A home dictator needs a cause – which can be simply to bury their pain or to feel powerful. My home dictator was mentally ill, and surrounded by enablers: my dad, her siblings, her parents, and once I was old enough, me.”
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“Thank God I escaped from thinking like you, Carri Williams. Thank God some of my babies were mothered without pain, once I got away from their father and all the right-wing fundamentalist teachings that had ruined my life, Pearl’s teachings included.”
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“My only regret is that I didn’t stick up for her, for them, every time it happened with I don’t know how many of them, probably all, at one time or another. The last time it happened when I was there, I was so close to exploding that had he spanked her one more time, I would have done something. I just wish I had…that I had stood up long before.”
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“My parents swore by To Train Up a Child. Any new parents that they met and invited over to the house were shown the book, read passages and encouraged to purchase a copy of their own. First-time-obedience and spankings were commonplace in our home.”
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“I remember the welts, the screaming, the bruising, the pain. The battle over my refusal to cry, and finally forcing tears to stop the spanking. I still get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about my siblings screaming when they got spanked. My two year old sister getting spanked for not eating her food. My 10 year old brother getting spanked for not getting the table set in under 5 minutes.”
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“Recently my Mom told me something that shook me to my core. She said, ‘Your father said if you disciplined a child according to the bible, they would not die.’ Then she told me she recognized the Pearls’ book ‘To Train Up A Child.'”
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“What did I, at ten, twelve, or fourteen, know? What did I understand? I had never seen anything different from what my parents taught and modeled at home. My parents handed me the rod and told me to spank. And I regret it with all my heart. And now, all I can say is I am so so sorry.”
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“I was an abusive mother. My kids are my whole life. I adore them and would do anything for them. I can’t tell you how hard it is to admit, in writing, that I hurt them. I hurt the people I would do anything to protect and I have to live with that.”
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“I needed to learn to control myself better. To stop crying when Mom said so, to only apologize fearfully when she was already irritated, lest I irritate her. I must learn to be obedient, to be holy, to be self-controlled. Until I did, Mom would never be happy with me. Jesus would never be happy with me.”
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Homeschoolers Anonymous 