It's no secret that I don't believe in spanking.

There are times when my children piss me off so severely that it sure would be satisfying to give them a smack on the behind, but I don't discipline to make myself feel better.  I discipline to raise secure, happy, competent, considerate children.

Therefore, what would make *me* feel better when my child spills Cocoa Puffs all over the kitchen floor (and leaves them there as if there are some magic cereal fairies who clean these things up) does not enter into the equation.

I am a mother.  Being a mother is something unique and wonderful.  I've never been a father so I don't know what that feels like.

I do know what it feels like to go from just me, to literally sharing my body with another human being.  I know what fetal hiccups feel like and I know what it feels like to be awakened in the middle of the night by a baby rolling around inside me.  I know what it's like to give birth and see a baby's head poking through and feel that unstoppable pressure and that uncontrollable urge to push.  I know what it's like to feel those little shoulders and that long little slippery body slide out of my own.  From nursing and umbilical cord stump care to sticky high chairs and plastic dinosaurs hidden under couch cushions to school Christmas programs and markers scattered all over the floor to CD players and Mad Magazine for Kids, I know how special it is to be a mother.

It is a joy and a struggle like no other.

And I am charged with not only making sure these little people survive and are nurtured and not harmed, but also with making sure they learn the things they need to know to thrive when they reach adulthood and I can no longer protect and care for them.  They are not like a lump of clay for me to mold into what I desire.  Children enter the world with personalities and unique desires and their own specific potentials and deficiencies. 

I get to discover my children like an explorer stepping foot on a foreign and exotic land.

As I learn about them and as I make a connection with them and nurture them and know them in the very intimate and special way only an involved and loving mother can, I begin to understand them.  And they begin to trust me and understand that I am there to care for them and help them make choices that benefit them; we have established discipline.

I didn't invest so much of myself into motherhood and raising children just to lazily and angrily beat them for childhood infractions.  Parenthood is not a contest or a power struggle of parent versus child.  Parenthood is a process meant to bring fulfillment and growth to parent and child.

My children are not my adversaries.  I don't want them to grow up to be happy, productive, well-adjusted adults in spite of me.  I want to nurture what is good and right in them and discourage and help them weed out the things in their lives that are negative and destructive.

I love my children.  I want what's best for them, and I am not willing to physically harm them just so some slob in Wal-Mart doesn't think I'm a "bad parent". 

Parenting is worth taking the time and going to the effort to do it right.  Spanking may be the "easy out".  It may provide *instant* results, but knowing my child and treating him or her like an actual human being provides lasting results that I will enjoy for years to come as I take pride in the men and women my children become in adulthood and the fact that they don't grow up to hate me and think of me as the abusive, asshole mom who solved every problem by hitting them.

I want to give my children tools for making good choices, not bruises for making wrong ones. 

A parent who can't provide discipline without resorting to violence is a parent who is not invested in his or her children. 

So far, at ages (almost) 10, 6, and 4 months, my children raised with my "PC horse shit" parenting philosophies are cool (imperfect, like me!) human beings and I would hate to beat the curiosity, precociousness, brilliance, and childlike mischievousness out of them, even if it would make me look like a great mom around the Denny's patrons and grocery store clerks.

I didn't have kids so I could beat them.