I know also that my position against spanking is loaded with self-righteousness. It's culturally and intellectually biased. I eventually reported him to the police. It's as though the spankers have to keep hitting me where it hurts, to punish me for my self-righteous position. No matter how loving I think I may be I have a sense of what it must be like to be a mother in the supermarket on the receiving end of my stink-eye, masked as compassion, as she verbally and physically abuses her child.
Nothing seems to ultimately work.
If anything, it looks as though my efforts as a communication consultant these past 25 years has had the opposite effect. Ironically, yellers and spankers are unconsciously programmed to not seek out a communication skills consultant. A communication coach works with the family in creating a new communication model based upon truth and integrity. Family members intuitively know that their child has been merely drawing attention to some out-integrity, some unacknowledged perpetration, within the family. Usually this out-integrity is an addiction.