Lee Geiger

Everyone must choose one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

John Rohn

I learned what a “switch” was long before NFL running back Adrian Peterson. Back in December 1969, on my first visit to deep-fried Mississippi to meet the Southern branch of the Geiger family tree, my dad took ten-year old me on a tour of the backyard he grew up in. After passing by the Chevy station wagon rusting gracefully in the sun on a stack of cement blocks, and the muddy toilet deposited in the weeds courtesy of Hurricane Camille, Dad picked up a branch that had fallen from a nearby willow tree. “Son, you should thank your lucky stars I’ve never hit you with one of these,” he said, holding the long thin stick an inch from my eyes. His face reddened and his voice bubbled over with anger. “’Cuz there’s nothing worse than gettin’ your ass whipped with a switch.”

So I had that going for me.

Dad grew up in a family of six boys during the Great Depression, and his parents believed smacking their children around was the best way to control them. Whether it was right, wrong, or deserved didn’t seem to matter. Southern conventional wisdom held that the stick, or whatever weapon of of mass instruction happened to be handy, was a much more effective disciplining tool than the carrot.

Thanks to the concept of negative reinforcement, I don’t remember Dad ever laying a hand on me or any of my four older brothers. Rather, he left the disciplining of his five boys to our 4’11”, 99-pound mother raised on an Iowa cornfield, whose skinny right arm could swing a leather belt harder than Joe Lewis. One of Mom’s favorite stories was about a time she took my four older brothers with her to the grocery store. When four-year old Nelson Geiger began whining about not getting some ice cream, she pulled his pants down in the middle of the frozen food section and spanked his backside with a hairbrush. “If you’re going to embarrass me,” she yelled somewhere in mid-whack, “then I’m going to embarrass you.”

Memo to Mom: I love you, but that’s not my style.

Long before we had kids, The Pretty Blonde and I decided on four hard and fast rules when it came to physically disciplining our children. One, they would get spanked only on matters relating to life and death. Two, they would be warned before committing the act; i.e. if they did X, then Y would happen. Three, use only an open hand, and four, no more than three age-appropriate pats to their bottoms. I’m thankful to say that, according to my memory bank, I can count on only one hand the number of times I’ve felt compelled to spank my two boys. Combined. Notice I said “thankful” instead of “proud.” I can’t begin to describe the hours of sickening guilt that overwhelmed me every time I took the “stick” to my kids. If Mom every felt this awful after administering a whipping because I looked at her the wrong way, she never showed it. Then again, she liked a cocktail before lunch.

When Ross was two-years old, I gently took a hold of his little hand and walked him to the edge of the sidewalk in front of our recently purchased home. “Son, if you EVER step off of this curb and walk into the street,” I said in a stern voice, “then you WILL receive a spanking.” One week later, while helping me to retrieve the morning newspaper, Ross stepped off the curb to pick up a rock. Within seconds I pulled down his PJ’s and administered the promised punishment. He never stepped off the curb again. Yet in today’s societal climate, if a neighbor had seen me do that, and/or recorded it, I might have been arrested and thrown in jail for child abuse.

Really?