[Håns, Haley, and Heidi (middle) at Biltmore Estate, NC, 2002.]
After some wonderful time off for Thanksgiving with my family, I decided to post this reminder to you parents out there:
[Håns, Haley, and Heidi in St. Louis, MO, 2010.]
[Dawn, Haley, and Heidi in Paris, France, 2013.]
Dawn and I believe in the disciplinary effectiveness of non-angry spanking. Our experience was that by disciplining our three children consistently and immediately–spanking when necessary–in their early years, they hardly ever needed spanking after age three.
So we were shocked the first time we heard that some parents punished their kids by forcing hot sauce into their mouths, or by forcing them into a cold shower.
I believe these methods make poor discipline for a child. Here’s why…
For months, Dawn and I have talked about writing a series of advice posts about parenting. We’ve been through one strong-willed toddler, one semi-rebellious teen, and one very depressed middle-schooler, three kids in all. Our parenting journey includes some short-term government assistance, an unexpected and difficult career transition, several years of parenting while medicated, and miraculously, lots of joy-filled memories for all five of us.
[The Hetricks at the Mountain Farm, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, 2002.]
But, as I’ve struggled to summarize what we learned from experience in a simple, how-to-parent intro post, I finally decided that our 23 years of parenting experience can be boiled down to just these two words:
Average Us 