Spanking Child With Wooden Spoon Not Child Abuse, Says State Court

[moriah]

8. My mom spanked me with a peachtree switch.

It was traditional in my family, though until that point (I was 10) my grandmother was the one who administered the switchings. I'd never been harmed by it, it was more psychological punishment than anything else. I hated it, but it was the humiliation and the fact I was in trouble, not the physical punishment. Mom, however, didn't know what Granny had learned from very lightly touching that switch to me when I was a very small child -- I am a redhead, with a condition called dermatographia. When my skin is scratched, I welt up in an allergic reaction. (It's much better now, especially when I take my Zyrtec.) Switches are very scratchy.

We'd moved out of my grandparents house, and I was being a real mouthy brat. I was being bullied at school, and the teachers weren't doing anything about it, so I refused to go to school that day. Just flat refused. Mom got the switch and proceeded to spank me, bareskinned. Not hard. It didn't hurt at all at first. But she was mad, so she wasn't paying attention to my skin. Then she stopped for breath, looked down, and saw her handiwork.

I'd welted up from the switch strikes, and because the welts were far more sensitive than regular skin, the skin was broken over several of the welts and there was a little blood.

Needless to say, I didn't go to school that day.

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Should she have been accused of child abuse for using a very flexible object on me, and accidentally harming me more than she meant to? I can say, as bad as it looked, she really didn't hit me that hard. The welts were allergic wheals, not raised bruised and torn flesh because it was hit too hard.

And she realized spanking me backfired, because I got my way that day. Hah!