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Wednesday 11 June 2008

Spare the Rod (Not)

I personally believe that if you spare the rod, you spoil the child. No, I am not a child abuser. I do know the difference between disciplinary caning and child abuse. I don't cane my girls for no reason. I don't enjoy caning them. It actually hurts me more than them.

I use caning as one of the disciplinary consequences. And yes, the girls do know what are the consequences if they failed to do what they were told or if they have done what they were told specifically not to do. The girls would be warned twice first with wait time in between for them to get their acts together. With the third warning, I would just count to three before reaching for the cane. Often, they would get their acts together before I could reach the count of "3". But of course, sometimes, they would test me to see if I was just giving an empty threat. So no choice, I would have to carry out the caning of usually not more than 3 strokes. Usually after the caning, I would explain to the girls why I had to cane them. By the way, the canes I used are the small thin ones that you can still buy from the market. The cane marks are usually gone within 30 minutes.

I usually have at least 2 canes at home. But Juliane snapped them about a month ago. She was pretty happy that she did that as I couldn't cane them anymore. However, I managed to buy four canes (two as spares, lol) yesterday. When I stepped through the door with the canes in my hands, Juliane gave a high pitch scream which lasted for some time. LOL. It was really funny to see her expression. She must be thinking, "Ahhh, I am not rid of the canes". Hahaha. Please, before you start having the wrong ideas, Juliane's scream was actually more in jest than in fear. For we all burst out laughing, including Juliane, after her scream.

PS. For those who are unsure about caning, please have a look at this article: Spare the Rod? (Please click on the link http://faculty.biola.edu/paulp/spare_the_rod.htm). It has made some good points about the difference between disciplinary caning/ spanking and "the abusive, harmful forms of corporal punishment".

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