I think what you’re seeing is the normal method of punishment...get mad, get a switch, and start swinging. The kid starts jumping around and the blows land randomly here and there.
I’m talking reality. This is what happens. This is how it falls out in so many cases.
It sounds to me like you’re looking at a side of life that you are unfamiliar with. I can see with so many how that would be the case, and especially with those 40 and younger.
But, Peterson is a product of a couple of different cultures with different methods and mores. And ‘gettin’ a switchin’ was part of what he grew up with (and part of what I grew up with.)
So, I’m cutting him some slack until I see something that is different than an angry parent whalin’ away at the kids.
If I recall correctly, it wasn’t the mother, but the doctor, that turned this in. If correct, how do you think that factors in? Was she protecting a meal ticket, was she trying to get someone else to do the reporting, or was she also accepting of it, if only marginally. (Or some other answer.)
So far as firm discipline not necessarily meaning corporal punishment, sure. But that’s a 2 way street. Firm discipline doesn’t necessarily mean no corporal punishment.
“It sounds to me like you’re looking at a side of life that you are unfamiliar with.”
Actually, my friend, I'm looking at a side of life with which I'm all too familiar. My parents were too thoroughly modern to use a tree branch. My parents also differed in how they administered corporal punishment.
My father, even if angry, was usually quite controlled, and hit us in ways that naturally limited the physical impact. A belt to the clothed buttocks. A simple slap across the face. That pretty much sums it up.
My mother was often an out-of-control nutjob who would beat her children with any weapon at hand. Sticks, hair brushes, wooden hangars, her hands, her feet (yes, she would sometimes kick), even a baseball bat, once, though I intervened and would not allow her to hit my sister with it.
I received the least of these things from either of my parents, but even I became a secretive, closed-in person unwilling to share my faults or failings with my parents for fear of a good beating. And I saw the permanent psychological damage that this sort of physical abuse did to my oldest brother and my sister. I wouldn't treat a rabid dog the way my mother treated them. It was wrong, immoral, and should have sent her to jail for a bit of heel-cooling. But in that day, it wasn't considered child abuse. If the kid didn't wind up in the emergency room, it wasn't abuse. As they say in the NBA, no autopsy, no foul.
Like I said, if you can't avoid general injuries across a child's body when you punish him, you're probably doing it wrong. And in this case, there is a prima facie case to be made for criminal child abuse. I'm more than willing to see what evidence is actually brought to light before I make a final decision as to guilt or innocence, and if guilty, and appropriate sentence.
But at the very least, I'd suggest at least temporary termination of parental rights.
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