It does say that. I was being brutally frank and honest in that post.

Now, it also says "can work", but there are COSTS and SCARS, as well as saying, "not physical ones." Cutting off a limb to avoid some disease progressing works too, but the costs and scars point very clearly to better ways, for those who need an analogy.

Let me make that part even more clear:

It works by damaging people. Some people, me, were not too damaged. Having a parent do it was enough. The school? I found out there was absolutely no way I was going to permit that. Primal.

I think our nature impacts this. I have a sort of core, "I am in charge of me and what that means" that runs super deep. Others don't, or work really differently.

Hitting a child can work, given that context, should not be offensive, just real, frank.

The latter part of the post highlights the real work, and that is understanding a child well enough to reach them.

Here's an example:

One troubled kid would just not open up much. I asked their parents if we could go on a road trip. I let them know my intent well in advance of what I was about to do.

What I did was get in the car, score some road food, set the scene up nicely enough, not threatening at all.

Then I started driving, and we talked. I was getting BS. After about 100 miles (no joke), it dawned on the troubled kid we were a long way from home.

I looked at them, and said the drive home begins when the real conversation does.

It took a while, and we talked about a lot of stuff. Girls, school, jokes, TV. At some point, the scenery really changed, and a while after that, out it came.

They had told no one.

At last, I could understand, said that, and we really talked on the way home.

Reached 'em. And where that happens, we can fix people, get them back to a place where they can grow, do, play, develop, and be as they were largely intended. I myself was reached by a perceptive person. I love her for it. All the physical stuff did was generate rage and resolve in me. Both ugly. Through that, I understood the power of seeking understanding and have employed it in my (much better than it was going to be) life. I do not feel these statements carry the weight they do, sans the reality of beating on kids. Like I said, frank, brutally honest. Moving on...

Prior to that, this kid was in all sorts of trouble and had every punishment you can name. Nothing worked.

Nobody bothered to ask why nothing worked. Nobody knew to ask. That kid had to offer up something new, and that's the understanding, the first understanding and why we went on a road trip in the first place.

On the way back, lots of other understanding happened. Parents, school, other kids. Lots of ugly stuff going on.

End example.

I worried about the content of that post and kept it brief in places. Maybe I should not have.

The other reason I wrote it was to highlight the danger in just hitting younger people. Who really knows what that does? I shared a little of what I felt that day, and it was pure, clear, scary.

We see school shootings all the time now too.

There are days when I think, "is there any wonder, given the pressure cooker type systems we've got running all over the place now?"

I think every one of those has a root cause, and a significant contributor to that root cause is lack of understanding that kid.

And we need to do the work to understand the kids, or we end up with people we just don't understand at all!