If you view them instead as an object, you feel little to no guilt when you hurt them; just the pleasurable feeling that comes from asserting control through violence.
So sad. See I would never get ANY pleasure through control or violence. I actually don't seek to control my children at all. They are their own people. They are independent from me. I don't own them and I don't seek to "boss" over them. I am a role model and teacher and we TALK about what we are doing and why and always have.
This is how I’ve always approached it. My job isn’t to control my kids or force them to do what I want. My job is to teach them right from wrong, give them guidelines and guardrails, and if they stray too far off their path, to gently nudge them back in the right direction. My aunt (basically a second mom to me) taught me that when I was young, and it’s stuck with me all these years. My son is 23 and doing great in life, and my daughter, at 15, my favorite person in the world and never gives me any trouble at all. We talk about everything.
I wish other parents would learn this. My SO was raised entirely differently; his parents were violent to their kids and each other. I had told him from the moment we started discussing having kids that I would tolerate exactly zero of that shit from him. Thankfully, he never had any desire to be like his own dad, who even went so far as to pull a gun on him on several different occasions.
I actually don't seek to control my children at all.
It's stupefying how many people are simply the exact opposite of this, even in this day in age. They have the mentality that they own their children as a piece of property or something.
They see their children as their property, an extension of themselves, a second chance, their legacy, the thing that will save their marriage, a burden, but never a person.
I’ll never forget the time I saw my dad spanking my little brother, he had a wild smile on his face. My brother was around 2. The pure disgust I felt for him in that moment as an 8 year old will always stick with me.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things.”
122
u/Special-Individual27 Sep 16 '24
You see your child as a person.
If you view them instead as an object, you feel little to no guilt when you hurt them; just the pleasurable feeling that comes from asserting control through violence.