That’s Yes Ma’am

I found How to Spank Your Man and Spanking the Male Mind, both by Monica Wilder, to be really helpful. The last time I looked for a link, I wasn’t able to find one, but hopefully you’ll be able to find a version online. She published under Wilder Street Publishing.

My goal is for it to stay between us. She’s elementary aged, and she knows that some spankings happen, but not the seriousness of how it impacted our lives. She’s seen me smack him on the behind with an oven mitt for repeatedly being in my way in the kitchen or heard me light heartedly threaten to smack him with a spoon, but I think, in her mind, it’s framed as loving teasing.

This is specifically why I wrote down the rules very clearly toward the beginning. It’s part a natural inclination to be more passive but also the state of our lives right now - we’re in those peak middle years. Our daughter is active. We’ve both got activities outside of the house, growing careers, and the demands of roles as caregivers to aging and elderly family members. If it’s not written down, with an auto scheduled reminder or two, I will forget. A dentist appointment, a bill, a rule that I made in passing but is actually really important to me. The written rules keep us both accountable to the foundations and principles we’ve established. In those passive moments, it’s not that the issues is any less important than something else, in fact it’s almost always more important than it seems, but it’s more of a capacity issue. If I have established a concrete rule around it, it’s easier to enforce; but if I’m mentally at capacity because of other things and I have to make a judgement call around behavior, I may not call it out in the moment. I will circle back around pretty frequently, but it’s not always instantaneous. Keeping the rules as more of a “living document” that I can update on the fly keeps us both in check.

If he’s 10 minutes late and didn’t call, my goal isn’t tears. Will he still get spanked? Yes, absolutely, but it’s not going to be the worst spanking he’s ever had. The goal is to remind/reestablish the rules, as necessary, and provide a deterrent for continued misbehavior. If my goal is always tears, or always to “break” him, then we lose the sense of nuance that some correction is going to be more harsh than others.

No - and I don’t think I ever would.

I don’t believe our daughter hears - we always wait for her to be asleep before discipline begins.