FAMILY VALUES: HOME HISTORY IN MEMORIES

The term Family Values gets tossed around often, so often the definition changes.

After the events of January 6, I questioned family values in general, American family values in particular.

Since we all have different values, different family values seems likely.

There were no lock step in my family values growing up and I didn’t nail a family values doctrine on the door raising my kids.

Maybe that was a mistake. I was criticized for my fatherly skills early, but it didn’t change anything.

The family values I imparted to the children was consistent, but not regimented. The goal was to let them know who their daddy was just in case I don’t live forever.

Which is part of my master plan.

My wife and I raised kids with timeouts instead of beatings. They didn’t get the shoe, the coat hanger, or the extension cord whipping.

They got timeouts.

As millennials, their generation gets ragged about juice boxes and trophies to build self-esteem. The timeout was part of the package.

I’ve had adults straighten me out when the the kids misbehaved in their presence. I put them in time out even though the other adults felt their behavior warranted corporeal punishment.

One of the problems of parenting in front of parents is the feeling that you should do what they say, even if you’re the parent on duty.

Call it tradition, not a good one.

If a grandma or grandpa suggests a good belt whipping for a good corrective measure, some guys might do it to show they know how to handle their kids.

“If you did that at their age you’d get a whipping, then another whipping when your father got home.”

The wife and I agreed on a different punishment.

Timeouts.

If the behavior was dangerous to the kid we agreed to dust their butts with a spank to get their attention instead of a relentless beatdown.

Then a timeout.

I responded to other adults questioning the strategy with, “You better watch yourself, or I’ll put you in time out too.”

It was always good for a laugh. At least I laughed.

Family Time In Action

As they got older and started testing the way kids test everything possible, one of the kids broke out some choice words to their mom.

I told him to go to his room. He said, “What, am I in time out. So what.”

While I didn’t appreciate the attitude, I took things further than usual. I followed him to his room, asked him why he thought he was sent to his room, and got some more smart mouth back.

He was on a roll.

It was time for a confrontation. I took off my belt and told him to be quiet. He didn’t listen. I said it again and he didn’t listen. We had another challenging exchange.

That’s when inspiration hit.

I held him by the arm and gave him a medium belt stoke and pushed him on the bed and proceeded to give the bedspread beside him a hard thrashing.

“Is this it? Is this what we’re going to do from now on,” I yelled, “because this is what it looks like. Are you feeling left out. If I tell you to stop talking shit to your mother, then stop.”

I whipped that bedspread and fixed him with a steely glare. Not a proud day.

Something similar happened a couple of years later when younger son did his testing.

Arnold’s Family Values

I questioned myself for not being more severe and came away glad for not losing my original intent and getting carried away in the moment.

The moment returned to me while I watched the attack on the Capitol. How do those men deal with family conflict? How do they handle their kids? Their wives?

Did you see their faces with a consistent expression? It was an attack on the election results in our democracy, not a wife beating or kid whipping convention, but to me they looked like a good fit in either one.

I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger’s video response the the Capitol attack.

In it, he spoke about growing up in Austria. Born in 1947, two years after WWII, he talked about the broken men in his town, his father included, drinking away the shame and guilt they lived with for their participation on the German side.

He said his father would drink, then come home and hit the kids and wife, that all the neighborhood dads drank and beat their families.

The faces I saw in videos of the Capitol attack had a look I couldn’t identify. Arnold helped.

I’ve listened for good advice all my life, and one dad said something I’ll never forget:

“You need to answer kids’ questions as well as you can. If you don’t, they’ll make up their own answers and move on from there.”

Have we got a segment of people who didn’t get answers growing up? Did they get beat for even asking questions, so they found their own answers in the culture they were raised in?

Whatever happened in their past, they found Mr. Trump and he’s given them something they’ve been missing.

And he told them what they needed to know.

What would you do in the name of family values?