Yesterday I was invited to appear on “Manhood Hour” with black conservative minister Rev. Jesse L. Peterson.  We had an interesting, to say the least, conversation about corporal punishment, forgiveness and a range of other related topics.  Listen in  . . . 

                                                              

By Tara Pringle Jefferson

When Creflo Dollar took to the pulpit on Sunday, the congregation at World Changers International was waiting to hear if he would address the allegations that he was involved in a violent altercation with his daughter only a few days prior.

He would.

Standing in the pulpit, Dollar assured his congregation, “I would never put any fault on my children. As Jesus would never put any fault on me. I love her with all of my heart. Amen. There are two things that are certain in the life of a Christian parent. Number one is that we win. And number two is that tests will come to try and shake your faith.” He added, “As a church family, I want you to hear personally from me that all is well in the Dollar household.”

But is it?

The police report says that Dollar’s 15-year-old daughter called 911 after her father assaulted her, an argument had escalated after he told her she couldn’t go to a party.

“The truth is she was not choked, she was not punched. There were not any scratches on her neck,” Dollar said to his members. “But the only thing on her neck was a prior skin abrasion from eczema. Anything else is exaggeration and sensationalism.”

So what did happen then?

“She was not choked.”

“She was not punched.”

Where is the responsibility or the denial of responsibility? What about, “I did not choke her”? “I did not punch her.” It’s almost as if he was distancing himself from the charges with his words, but of course he has a reputation to protect. As the founding pastor of a booming megachurch, he wouldn’t want any allegations to cause harm to his brand, er, calling.

News reports say his congregation wholeheartedly supported their pastor, which I suppose is their right. But what does it say about our society that we are more concerned with protecting Dollar than protecting his teenage daughter? Dollar’s supporters are quick to say, “We don’t know the whole story.” Or the ever-popular “Teenagers can really take you there,” insinuating that whatever happened was a result of what the daughter did or didn’t do, versus a grown man having full control over his emotions.

If you think I’m trying to paint Creflo Dollar in a negative light, believe me I’m not. What I am trying to do is examine why people are so quick to rush to his defense. There is a difference between the two. He may very well be innocent, but his daughter -— and her 19-year-old sister -— claimed something wicked went down in his house, so I’m going to believe them until I have a reason not to. I know teens can be difficult. My children are still young but as a 20-something mother, I was an unruly teen not too long ago. I remember how I would push boundaries and stay out later than I was allowed, and my parents were there to check me and my foolish decisions.

But never did they ever raise a hand to me.

We say physical discipline is about keeping our children on the straight and narrow, about giving them a chance to learn those hard lessons at home so they don’t leave our homes and fall into a life of crime. We say we want our children to fear us and to know that what we say is law, that there is no negotiating with children who do not pay the bills or buy the groceries. We cling to that oft-misused phrase “spare the rod, spoil the child” to justify leaving our children with bruises and welts. We say, “I was spanked/beaten/whooped and I turned out fine.”

Kudos for you. But the research suggests — no, proves — that spanking doesn’t work. A 2010 Pediatrics study showed that the children who had been spanked were “more likely than the non-spanked to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, become frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against other people or animals.” Yeah, that sounds healthy and exactly what parents are going for when they reach for the belt or the switch.

Stacey Patton, child abuse survivor and creator of the Web siteSpareTheKids.com, an online extension of her positive parenting workshops, has dedicated her life to empowering parents with other, non-physical parenting tools so they can leave forms of corporal punishment in the past.

“Black people need to understand that the problems our kids have aren’t because they aren’t being beaten enough,” Patton says. “We’re only becoming co-conspirators against them. It’s not helping them get along in society.”

Patton works with many social service agencies, spending a good chunk of time with children in the foster care system, where instances of abuse are high.

“You just see the kind of trauma they’ve gone through,” Patton says. “Our cultural conversation needs to change. We live in a society where it’s legal to assault children. We need to start talking about hitting children in the same way as we talk about hitting women.”

Patton knows that part of the problem is that people tend to parent in the same way they were parented — and they aren’t interested in new techniques.

“People who beat their kids do love them — I’m convinced of that,” Patton says. “They just don’t have the tools. I hear people say, ‘I’m not reasoning with a child’ — that actually means having good communication skills.”

Patton says the Creflo Dollar case is an example of Christian theology run amok. “It’s really irresponsible for a black pastor to stand up in front of his congregation and sanction being violent toward children,” she says. “‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ — that’s not even what that scripture means. Nowhere in the Bible does a shepherd pick up a stick and beat the sheep.”

I’m not here to get Creflo Dollar’s head on a platter. What am I here for is for violence against youth to stop. If the allegations are true, if the daughter’s version of events are what really went down that night, will all those “let’s wait and see”-ers feel shame?

There comes a point where we have to believe our children. We have to do better by them and it starts with giving them jurisdiction over their own bodies. I have a firm rule in my household that I will not discipline my child in any way that I would not like my husband to do to me. So kicking, punching, spanking, slapping — all of those are out.

I read an amazing run-down of the Creflo Dollar case over at the Crunk Feminist Collective (worth reading in its entirety) that sums up my feelings on where we need to go from here: “It is because I believe in Jesus and feminism, that I don’t tolerate violence against women in any form from the men in my life, and I for damn sure, am not gonna sit up and hear violent ish coming at me from the pulpit. Black women have to become as serious about demanding that our churches are spaces where we can tell our testimonies about the violence done to us and be believed.”

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Last week I gave a keynote speech at the Supervised Visitation Network’s Regional Conference in Seattle.  My talk focused on the stages of grief that foster children move through when they are separated from their families of origin and how visitation professionals can appropriately recognize and respond to children’s behaviors and the emotions behind the behaviors.  Offstage I had a long conversation with a fellow adoptee who leaned into my ear and asked three important related questions:

“Why do you think so many of us grow up and become enablers?”

“Why do we have this need to rescue people in our lives?”

“Why is it so hard for foster kids and kids who’ve been adopted to succeed in intimate relationships as adults?”

I reacted to her questions first with a smile.  And then, I dropped my eyes to my lap and sat silently for a few moments, sinking into an abyss of uncalm waters inside me. 

Her questions made me feel as if she were penetrating through my tough-as-nails, I-will-never-again-be-anybody’s-victim-or-dependent-on-anybody-for-anything exterior that I project when walking through the world.  Though she was genuinely seeking some understanding for herself and the children she serves, I felt as if she had been reading all of my secret vulnerabilities.

Though her questions were painful, my fellow adoptee perhaps unknowingly provided me with an excellent opportunity to confront some truths and a chance to further free myself from the binds of my past. 

So here are the answers I came up with . . .

Like everybody else, foster kids and adoptees long for acceptance, love and a sense of connection with others.  But many of us are terrified of intimacy later on in life because we have experienced some form of abandonment in early childhood and because we’ve racked up so many losses on our journey through the child welfare system.  Life in foster care is unstable and unpredictable.  So many people come and go that it’s difficult to connect or trust others.  We’re always anxiously waiting to be shuttled from one place to another, and bracing for relationships to end.

Unfortunately, many of us have learned that vulnerability and dependency on others is not a safe position for us.  We grew up believing that we were unwanted, unlovable, abnormal, defective and unworthy.  We wondered: if our biological parents don’t want us, if they can’t love us for whatever reason, then who will? 

These negative feelings of self-worth got set during a foundational developmental period in our lives and make it difficult for us as adults to reveal ourselves to others or believe that anyone else can ever truly love us.  And we are always prepped, sometimes even expecting others to leave us eventually.  When it happens, sometimes we get depressed but we generally bounce back quickly because we remember that no other rejection can ever trump the severing of that first primal loss or rejection from our mothers.

Good friends have said that before they got to know me I came off as cold, detached, so together, always in control, and impenetrable.  In many respects they were right, but little did they know that this behavior was a defense mechanism.  Keeping distance from others was imperative for me to hide my sense of unworthiness and unaccepted truths about my abandonment and victimization.  My unhealthy beliefs about myself, instilled in childhood, ruled my emotions, outlook on the world, and relationships with others.  In my work with my foster brothers and sisters, fellow adoptees, and those who lost their parents during childhood, I have found that they too share similar challenges.

One of the most striking traits that many of us share in adulthood is our seemingly unconscious addiction to being enablers and rescuers.  Why is that?

Now, I’m no shrink and I won’t attempt to give you some armchair psychobabble.  I’m just speaking here from personal experience and my observations from my peers who navigate the world with these issues.

We may know it, or not, but most foster kids and adoptees often react to life as victims and we have a habit of putting people on pedestals, setting ourselves up in relationships where we unconsciously re-enact painful themes from our childhood and are ultimately left abandoned, betrayed or taken advantage of.  We were not adequately nurtured during childhood.  Some of us were abused or abandoned.  And so we find ourselves rescuing other people because we wanted somebody to come rescue the little boy or the little girl that we were.  And though we are physically grown, many of us have not exorcised the troubled inner child.  We let the little boy’s or little girl’s insecurities, memories, trauma, and fears rule the adult.

Being a caretaker or helper makes us feel like we matter, that we are important and worthy to others.  Our behaviors and actions towards others allow us to not accept that we were once child victims because we now have the power to fix things.  By rescuing others we think it will make ourselves feel good and protect others from feeling bad.  Ultimately we derive a false sense of being in control, which provides us sense of empowerment.  But that feeling doesn’t last long because we find ourselves involved in relationships with friends, family members and lovers who are lifetime victims or dependents who have no idea how to be there for us.

I’ve often found myself sacrificing my needs and feelings, saying that they are irrelevant and that I don’t deserve to tell others what I want or need.  As a rescuer, the only way that I think I can legitimately connect with others, feel valued, and meet their needs is through the back door of caretaking, serving and “fixing it.”  

For too long I’ve believed that if I take care of others well enough and long enough, then I will be fulfilled.  I will prove that I am worthy and lovable.  If I take care of them long enough, then they will eventually take care of me too.  It’s hard to admit that rescuing others is an unconscious addiction that sprang from my need to feel valued and to prevent others from walking out of my life.  It’s even more difficult to accept that after all the time and energy spent trying to fix things for others that we can’t expect anything back from them and that they will most likely wind up leaving us because they are needy and don’t have the ability to care for themselves. 

Rescuers are attracted to victims and dependents.  The end result is that we wind up becoming serial victims who are always trying to make ourselves indispensable because we are afraid of being abandoned or alone. 

Adoptees and foster kids sometimes falsely believe that our total value comes from how well we are able to please or do for others.  We spent our childhoods trying to convince others that we were keepable.  As adults, it may be difficult for us to see our worth beyond our services and what we can do for others.  And so in our relationships we may unconsciously encourage dependency.  We think: “They won’t leave us because they need us.”

Foster kids especially come from families where their needs go unacknowledged.  And adoptees sometimes dwell on their unmet needs that the biological parents who relinquished them failed to provide.  So it’s no surprise that they grow up to become adults who treat themselves with the same degree of negligence that they experienced as children and don’t give themselves permission to take care of themselves.  We unconsciously foster dependency in others that becomes harmful to our rescuees’ development.  The more we rescue others in our lives, the less self-responsibility our rescuees take for their own lives.  For us, having a victim in our lives is essential for maintaining the illusion that we are needless, that we were never victims.

The woman who asked me the questions that sparked this reflection told me that she and other rescuers she knew always have at least one person in their lives that was troubled, sick, fragile, inept and dependent on them.  Once those people eventually took responsibility for themselves, then the rescuers were abandoned and had to seek out new people and relationships to fulfill their emotional voids.  And the cycle continued.

So what can people like us rescuers do to keep from becoming victims of our own good deeds?  Here’s some things I’ve learned through some of my self-help readings:

1. Continue to be loving, generous and kind.  We can continue being helpful and supportive to others without being a rescuer.  We must recognize that there is a difference being between helpful and rescuing.
2. Act without expectations for reciprocation.  Empower rather than disable.  Encourage self-responsibility, rather than promote dependency.
3. Remind yourself that others – friends, family members, lovers – can handle their own business.
4. Remember that everyone has the right to make mistakes and learn through consequences.
5. Trust that others have what it takes to see themselves through times of difficulty without you needing to “save” them.
6. Do NOT help others in order to get validation or feel important.  It only fosters dependency and ultimately leads to setting yourself up for victimization.
7. Learn to set appropriate boundaries, nurture and set priorities for yourself.  Stop obsessing, intervening and interfering in the lives of others in unhealthy ways.  Stop taking responsibility for others instead of yourself.

Certainly, there are valuable lessons and useful tips here not just for adoptees, foster children and people who’ve experienced some form of abandonment.  As we all journey through life we must become conscious of our emotions and behaviors as well as their origins so we can make changes, heal from pain, and re-claim our emotional and spiritual health.

By Dr. Stacey Patton

In late September the disturbing YouTube video shown above began circulating on blogs and other social media platforms with scores of people defending Devery Broox, 25, for whipping his 7-year-old mentee with a belt because he was acting up in school.  Broox justified whipping the boy by intimating that he was trying to save him from the penal system.

But the irony here is that Broox found himself behind bars for child abuse after someone who saw the video online called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The video, almost eight minutes long, begins with scrolling statistics from the Sentencing Project and the latest U.S. Census report – 1 out of 8 black men are in prison; 1 out of 3 black men born today are expected to go to prison; there are 2,500,000 black people in college, only 910,000 are black men while 827, 680 are prison or jail.

In the next scene Broox appears with a belt slung over his shoulder, flexing his muscles and interrogating the young boy as he sits on a toilet seat with a look of terror on his face.

Text appears on the screen that says “Step 1: Investigation.” Broox begins his interrogation of the child. 

Then, “Step 2: The removal of SWAG.” Broox proceeds to shave the boy’s head while saying, “You want to act like a clown, I’ll send you back to school looking like a clown.  After I finish whooping your ass, we gonna work out like we just came out of boot camp.”

And then, “Step 3: Beat Dat ASS!!!”  Broox tells the boy to “drop your pants,” as they walk into another room.  At this point the viewer can hear the boy crying, pleading and screaming as he’s being hit with the belt. 

As I watched this scene play out in horror I could not contain my tears.  It brought back a flood of memories from my own childhood when I was interrogated, yelled at and put down as part of the prelude to my adoptive mother’s many beating rituals.  I saw myself in that little boy and I felt his fear.

My tears turned to disgust and anger.  I began to hate the so-called “mentor” who can be heard yelling, “Move your motherfucking hand” as the boy screamed, “It hurts!”

Thankfully, the video was sent to the Orlando Police Department and the Department of Children and Families later discovered the identities of Broox and the boy.

Both the boy and his mother initially told investigators that scars on the boy’s body were from a bicycle accident, but a doctor reported that the scars were consistent with physical abuse with a flexible object like a belt.

The boy later told a DCF investigator that Broox had whipped him with a belt and that Broox had told him to lie to investigators so he wouldn’t be arrested.  Clearly there was recognition here that there was wrongdoing on his part.  Broox’s actions reminded me of my adoptive mother who coach me on what to say to the police, doctors, social workers, teachers, people at church on anybody else who asked about welts, black eyes and old scars on my body.  I had to play my role in making sure my adoptive mother didn’t fall into the hands of the “racist” white social workers or police officers for beating me.  Besides, all they wanted to do was break up black families and keep black people down, my adoptive mother told me.

When Broox voluntarily went to the Orlando Police headquarters, he told the cops that his references to “beating” and “whipping” the boy in the video meant physical exercise, not actually harming him. Police said Broox told them the off-camera portion of the video was “staged” and that he never hurt the boy.  Broox was booked at the Orange County Jail and charged with one count of felony child abuse but has since posted bond.

Some people have cried fowl over Broox’s arrest.  Some of those commenting on various sites say that he did not cross the line by whipping this child.  Too many agree that it is necessary to whip black children to keep them from ending up behind bars. 

But they are wrong.

It amazes me how people can’t seem to connect how this kind of violence and soul murder of black children actually helps feed our children into the child welfare system and the prisons in this country.  Whipping children does not prevent them from becoming subject to the state!  I’ll bet you any amount of money that if you walk into a juvenile detention center or any prison across American and take a survey of the inmates more than 90% will most likely tell you that they were whipped as children.  And yet, they still ended up in prison.

My adoptive mother used to rationalize beating me by saying things like – “I beat you because I love.  I beat you so you won’t be killed by the police or the white man.  I beat you to keep you from ending up in prison or an early grave.” 

What kind of flawed logic is this? 

Every time I heard those messages and each time my adoptive mother struck me, she damaged my sense of self-worth, and she sowed the seeds of anger, resentment and anger towards her.  I did not respect her, I feared her.  I did not think I needed saving from the police or the white man, I needed saving from my black mama who I thought was going to kill me with a belt, switch, wire hanger, or whatever other object she decided to use.

I am so sick of black folks who perversely embrace and promote violence against our children because they are unwilling to learn healthier non-violent ways to grow their children.  What happened to this little boy in the video is abuse and it won’t help save him from a racist criminal justice system.  It only creates a double terrorism for him and legions of other black children who are popped, whipped, or beaten on a daily basis.

As Renee Martin of Womanist Musings put it so eloquently: “Black people are in prison because we live in a white supremacist state that is determined to impoverish and criminalize blacks, not because we need to beat our children more.  Don’t black kids have enough to deal with growing and learning in a society that fundamentally hates them, without piling even more abuse on their plates from the ones that are supposed to love and protect them?”

Video Shows Dramatic Septa Bus Shooting: MyFoxPHILLY.com

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Some of you may have heard about that idiotic Philly mom who got upset and called her goon relatives to shoot a fellow Septa bus passenger after he threatened to call child services on her for hitting her child.  In that incident, which took place in early August, an angry 20 year-old Penny Chapman made a phone call to her brothers Karon and Raheen Paterson and directed them to “shoot that ni–a” when the bus arrived at her stop. 

Video taken inside the bus shows one man sliding a large assault rifle out of his jeans and passengers, including a mother and her 4 year-old son running for cover as bullets fly through the windows.  It also shows an 80 year-old Asian woman dropping to the floor just seconds before a bullet flies overhead.

Watching this horrific scene play out on my computer screen made me pause and think back to all those times I ever dared to open my mouth and say something when I witnessed a child being mistreated.  And for the next few days and weeks I found myself contemplating what I should tell others who’ve said that this video graphically illustrates the dangers of speaking up on behalf of a defenseless child.

“What do I do if I see an adult hitting, roughly handling, or cussing out a child in public?  Do I intervene?  Or do I keep quiet and mind my own business?”

Even before FOX aired this video, I often received these questions from email writers and audience members who participate in my child abuse prevention and positive discipline workshops.  The questions typically come from white women who encounter young or middle-aged black mothers slapping or verbally cutting down a child.  For years now I’ve been loudly beating my drum, telling my black and white participants to “Speak up!  If these people will hit a child in public, imagine what happens behind closed doors.” 

Many participants want to say something but are often afraid to intervene for fear of being told: “Mind your damn business, white lady!  Don’t tell me how to raise my child!”  

Others, black and white, are afraid of being physically threatened by the angry parent.  Some say they don’t want to make matters worse for the child who might get physically or verbally beat down even more when they get home.  And every now and then I hear a black audience member say they are hesitant to report abuse because they don’t want to see yet another black child end up a statistic in the child welfare industry.

When I was in my 20s and still working through my own anger issues and traumatic memories stemming from the physical abuse I endured as a child, I had no problem walking up to a parent and saying, “Don’t hit that child like that!  What’s wrong with you?  Why don’t you try to hit ME like that?  Pick on somebody your own size!”

In time I moved away from those kinds of heated confrontations by shooting child hitters a dark and indignant glare, turning my nose up at them, or simply shaking my head.   But over the years I’ve learned that kind and delicate intervention is the better approach.  If you come at a parent angry, judgmental or in a way that embarrasses them in front of others then it defeats the purpose.

I have found that sometimes a parent is so stressed out that they may not see that how they are treating their child is abusive.  If the parent is out of control, call the police right away.  Use a camera phone to record the incident if available.  Don’t give the parent a disapproving stare or confront them directly.  Negative reactions are likely to increase the parent’s stress or anger, and could make matters worse for the child.

Offer support, even just a smile.  If you see a parent struggling, hold the door open or offer to help with bags.  You can say something like, “Oh, my kid used to do that all the time.  That’s really normal.”

Here are some other simple tips that might help:

Start a conversation with the adult to direct attention away from the child.

“He’s really trying your patience today, huh.”

“My child sometimes acts out like that, too.”

“These little ones can really wear you out sometimes.  Is there anything I can do to help?”

Divert the child’s attention (if misbehaving) by talking to the child.

“I like your baseball cap.  Are you a Mets fan (whatever team logo) fan?”

“I like your T-shirt.  Did your Mommy pick that out for you?”

Look for an opportunity to praise the parent or child.

“Your child has the most beautiful eyes.”

“That’s a very pretty shirt on your little girl/boy.  Where did you get it?”

If the child is in danger, offer assistance.

If the child is left unattended in a grocery cart or a car, stand near the child until the parent returns.  If the child is in immediate danger, call the police!

To report suspected child abuse or neglect, please call Child Protective Services at 1-800-4-A-Child, 24 hours a day.  As long as your report is made in good faith, and without malice, your identity is kept confidential and free from any liability.

Yes, the Philly incident was pretty scary.  But we cannot use it as an excuse to keep quiet and mind our own business.  Thankfully the state prosecutor will make an example out Chapman and her goon brothers who are awaiting trial.   Hopefully what happened on that Septa bus last month will remain an isolated incident.

As members of the human family, we all have a duty to speak up when a child is being mistreated.  My hope is that eventually states will help our cause by making it illegal for parents to use physical force against their children, in public or private, just as they did in the fight against domestic abuse of women.

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Creator of Spare The Kids

For far too long Christian fundamentalists have preached the gospel of “spare the rod, spoil the child.”  And now, a California couple is behind bars after pleading guilty to beating their seven-year-old adopted daughter to death with a 15-inch plumping supply tube that they called “a biblical rod.”

And we’re worried about gay people adopting children?

This week CNN reported that Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, a white couple from Paradise, California beat their seven-year-old black daughter Lydia because they believed God wanted them to.  The couple tortured the child for seven consecutive hours, taking breaks for prayer.  When police arrived at the Schatz residence, Lydia was still alive.  An officer administered CPR, but it was too late.

“We have heard the phrase ‘death by a thousand lashes,’” Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey told CNN.  “That’s basically what this was.”

The Schatzes, who had eight other children, didn’t only beat Lydia.  All of their children were regularly tortured in the name of God.  Lydia’s sister, eleven-year-old Zariah was beaten so severely that she almost died.

CNN reported that the couple was heavily influenced by a Christian child-rearing book titled To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl of Tennessee-based No Greater Joy Ministries.

“If you spare the rod, you hate your child,” author Michael Pearl told CNN.  “But if you love him, you chasten him timely.  God would not have commanded parents to use the rod if it were not good for the child,” the book states.

Umph.  A lot of good the rod did for little Lydia.  Her skin was so badly battered that the medical examiner said her injuries looked like those seen on earthquake or bombing victims.

The Schatz’s pleaded guilty to torture and murder.  The husband will spend 22 years behind bars and his wife will be locked away for at least 12 years.  At Kevin’s trial Lydia’s sister Zariah faced her tormentor and asked: “Why did you adopt her (Lydia)?  To kill her?”  Lydia and her seven other surviving siblings are now in foster care.

There’s more to be said here about this horrific crime.

I’ve been reading reactions on various blogs, Facebook and other social networking sites and the consensus seems to be that what happened in the Schatz’s home is an isolated incident of brutality.  People have been quick to call the couple a pair of monsters or nut jobs who twisted the Bible to justify their sick indulgence in torturing children. 

But I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve gotten myself into with Christians who fervently defend the proverbial saying “spare the rod, spoil the child” and loudly proclaim that the Bible advocates violence against children.  But what was the use of the rod, and is it a directive or a metaphor?

Here’s a little lesson I learned about Biblical philosophy and child rearing . . . . 

The verse “spare the rod, spoil the child,” as it is often quoted, does NOT appear in the Bible.  The closest verse like it is Proverbs 13:24 which reads, “Those who spare the rod, hate their children, but the one who loves their child disciplines them diligently.”

The use of the word rod appears in the 23^rd Psalm: “Your rod and your staff comfort me.”  Here we can assume that the rod of a shepherd is at least similar in type and use to that in the proverb verse.  The use of the rod by shepherds did NOT include beating them.

The fact is, the rod and staff were the two implements utilized by professional shepherds of the day. The staff, which we are most familiar with, has a “crook” or “hook” on the end which was used to stop running sheep, help pull sheep up from rocky places when they’d fallen over, and so on. The rod was used when corralling the sheep to insure they went in the direction they were supposed to go. It wasn’t used to prod or poke, but to direct along the length of the shaft.

Now, sheep were a valuable asset for the shepherd; indeed, without the sheep there would be no shepherd, so the flocks were well taken care of. In fact, a damaged or maimed sheep was a liability, since it was considered tamé, Hebrew for polluted or impure. This being the case, the shepherd who owned their sheep took good care of them and used the tools of their trade as they were meant to be used–to guide, to direct, and to teach (the literal meaning of discipline). However, there were scoundrels who were simply hired to look after the sheep. They had little concern over the welfare of the animals, so they would use their tools in whatever way suited them. These were the ones who might lose their tempers and beat a lamb with a rod just to demonstrate they were more powerful and could force their will upon it.

Children are no less valuable than sheep, and they learn better too! If a sheep is consistency directed, that is limited and taught, they will learn what is expected and generally conform. However, if they are beaten and broken they not only stop responding, but they look for every opportunity to escape–even when escape may mean grave danger.

To “spare the rod” is indicative of a parent who does not discipline their child, that is, to teach, guide, and direct. This is the parent who “hates their child.” To spare the rod doesn’t mean a parent should beat down their children into submission, rather they are to be like shepherds who value and care for their charges and keep them from danger by using the tools of good parenting to teach responsible behavior and appropriate morality.

All Christians need to be careful about how they read and interpret the Bible and use scriptures to justify certain behaviors and practices.  Certainly the Bible ought not to be used to promote violence of any degree against children.  While it may be true that what happened in the Schatz’s home is a rare incident of murder, but far too many children are hit on a daily basis with hands and other objects because their parents believe that the Bible says it is right.