I feel dirty

[MarmotMommy]

I am a new blogger and I've been trying to "network," both to learn who's out there and to improve my visibility. In the process, I've come across some REALLY NEAT mommy blogs. One in particular made me laugh so hard I almost peed myself. The blogger's sense of humor is fantastic, and many of her posts are hilarious tales of misadventure. However, she also vents about difficulties with her children (very understandable). In response to her venting, commenters offer her advice on discipline. I should have known better than to read it. Or at least I should have stopped as soon as I saw where it was going. But it was like a train wreck. Long story short, the comments included (of course) suggestions to spank, with information on how the parents giving the advice did it. Also, though, moms suggested putting hot sauce and/or vinegar in LO's mouth as a punishment. These suggestions were greeted with humor and congratulations on ingenuity by the other commenters (who chimed in with their own twist on how to create pain and misery). I feel dirty. I feel like I need to wash my brain after reading that. I know we all struggle sometimes with misbehavior, but it's unthinkable to me to WANT to cause suffering, even if it's transient. I am writing this as sort of a mental cleansing, and then I figured I'd surf around the mothering.com forum for a while to surround myself with gentle moms, so that I'll feel clean again.

I want to cry over how some people raise their children. But...it caught me by such surprise. The blogger seemed SO NICE!

[wehrli]

oh, that's sad... sorry you stumbled across such a blog. I hope you feel a bit better after being here for a while!

[schoonersam]

Wow.  I hope the cleansing helps. I should try to find a way to cope every time I see a mom smoking a cigarette while holding/strolling her baby.  I just want to run up to them and ask them why they bothered. Hot sauce in the mouth is horrifying, kinda makes a light spanking seem like not a big deal. I wonder if it does anything to developing taste buds?

Anyway, good luck with your blog!

[Blanca78]

Yeah, that's awful. Kinda why I avoid reading comments. I guess I wouldn't blame the blogger for the comments she receives, although she could of course delete them if they made her feel as bad as they made you feel.

You could check out AskMoxie.org for a palate cleanser--her commenters, even if some of them espouse things I don't agree with--tend to be very down to earth, sensitive, and kind in their tone. Plus, Moxie is awesome.

[twinpossible]

Wow, it is hard to believe that parents still do those things. I guess I thought we had evolved! It's too bad that it ruined the blog for you. One of my pet peeves is when women use their blog to rant about their children and / or partner. Do they even realize it is public? It just seems sad, I LOVE my family!

[IzzyTheTerrible]

Even before I had a LO, or even thought I WANTED a LO, I couldn't wrap my brain around this type of behavior. 

There are more TV shows about dog training (all about positive reinforcement) than there are about parenting, and punishment seems to still be the popular method of dealing with 'unruly' children.

I can count on one hand the times I've even used the word, "NO."    I don't know crap about parenting yet, cause I've only been doing this a few months but I know that I know positive reinforcement from what I learned from learning to "train" my dogs, and never once is a hand raised, a voice raised, is pain inflicted in any way. 

I didn't have to "spank" my dogs, or make them eat something painful.   If a person wouldn't do that to a dog, why would they do that to a baby?  Then again, maybe she'd be meaner to a dog... who knows.

Makes me ill.