The Descent III

It showed up in a way I couldn’t ignore.

One day my mother was reading through the school handbook. My two oldest were already in first grade, and my youngest was about to start kindergarten. She looked up and said, almost casually, “Did you know they have corporal punishment at this school?”

I didn’t even know what that meant.

She told me they spanked the children.

I remember just staring at her. “They do what?”

She showed me. It was all written out—how many swats for which offenses, laid out like policy. I got on the phone immediately and called the school. I asked them straight out if they hit children there. They said yes, but if I didn’t want my children spanked, I could sign a form to opt out.

I drove down there that same day and signed it.

At the time, that seemed like enough.

It wasn’t.

A week into the new school year, my youngest came running off the bus, straight up the long gravel driveway and into me. He wrapped himself around me and said, in a voice I had never heard from him before, “I never want to go back to that place.”

It took me a minute to understand what he was even saying. He could barely get the words out. His teacher had brought a paddle into the classroom. Not something symbolic—an actual piece of wood, worn from use. She held it up and told the children, “If you don’t behave, this is what you have to look forward to.” Then she left it on her desk.

As a reminder.

Something in me snapped.

Up until that point, I had taken everything directed at me. The criticism, the pressure, the constant sense that I was failing—I absorbed it. I assumed it was mine to deal with. But this was different. This wasn’t directed at me, and I couldn’t make it make sense. There was no version of this that was acceptable.

I didn’t punish my children. Not ever. I didn’t believe in it. I didn’t believe that hurting someone—physically or otherwise—taught them anything worth knowing. It didn’t make them better. It made them smaller. And I wasn’t going to let anyone do that to them.

I went to the school.

I tried to reason with them. I tried to explain that this wasn’t discipline, it was fear. That whatever they thought they were teaching, it wasn’t worth the cost. It didn’t matter. They had their system. This was how it was done. Most of the people in that town agreed with it. My mother included. She told me I was making a big deal out of nothing, that I was embarrassing her, that no one was really getting hurt.

But they were.

I could see it.

And for the first time, I couldn’t turn it back on myself. I couldn’t explain it away by assuming I was the problem. There was something wrong here, and it wasn’t me.

I stood outside that school with a sign. I went to meetings. I tried to push back against something that, to everyone else, was just normal. I must have looked ridiculous out there, one person against an entire system that didn’t see anything wrong with what it was doing.

It didn’t change anything.

But something had already changed in me.

For the first time, I wasn’t trying to fix myself.

I was looking at something else.