Though many parents cite their own history of being spanked as a child as a reason to discipline their children in the same way, reality star Snooki has sworn never to do as her parents did.
The mother of 3-year-old Lorenzo and 20-month-old Giovanna recently chatted about the hotly debated topic for People‘s Mom Talk series, sharing, “I grew up with spanks, and it terrified me.”
Orange Is the New Black star Selenis Leyva, who has a 13-year-old daughter named Alina, chimed in with a similar story of her own.
“[It’s] not that my parents were abusive,” she explained, “they just believed, ‘You’re my kid, if I gotta spank you, I’m gonna spank you.'”
When Selenis shared a story about how her mother used warned her against misbehaving by picking up a tree branch at the park, Snooki added “It’s terrifying!”
With spanking out of the picture, Snooki employs another technique when her son and daughter are in meltdown mode — the cold ignore.
“I literally just walk into the kitchen, ignore them … and then they come over and they say, ‘I’m okay now,'” the best friend of JWoww explained. “I’m at the stage of parenthood right now where I just need to stop entertaining them…The more you pay attention to that [kind of behavior], the worse it gets.”
For the most part I’ve veered toward Snooki’s line of thinking with my own parenting style. I’ve walked away from quite a few tantrums, kept my cool and won the battle — but I’ve also gotten frustrated and caved a time or two. I’ve spanked a couple of times, and to this day have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand I don’t agree it’s a great technique, but on the other, when I’d tried everything else, I can’t deny that the surprise of the action was effective.
That being said, I also was threatened as a child far more than I was spanked. In my case it was a belt, not a tree branch, but the resulting fear was the same. Even at the time, though I was just a kid, I narrowed my eyes at my parents and judged their discipline style. I didn’t understand how a child is supposed to be emotionally close to a person threatening them with harm, and I still don’t.
These days we’re all about taking privileges away as punishment, and the occasional round of push-ups if an immediate consequence is needed. I hope our approach is better than spanking or threatening, but it’s so hard to know.
How do you handle discipline in your home? What was discipline like during your childhood?
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