LESSONS OUT OF SCHOOL

Still the war in Viet Nam continued and continued to “mess with my head.” A year and a half later, we moved to Houston where I continued going to anti-war protests often with a child in a stroller. Ironically, I began to note that my marches for peace were too often followed by my own small sons fighting at home. “What is going on?” I wondered. I read books on child raising and asked more experienced parents. “Don’t worry about it.”, they said; “It’s just like puppies fighting.” But I did worry, we had a few trips to the emergency room, and I had a hard time dealing with the constant noise and arguing. Long before becoming a parent, I had sworn that I would never spank my children as I had been spanked as a child. Nowhere though had I learned any alternatives for getting the attention of small children to maintain some order and safety. I was reduced to instinctive yelling which was not much of an improvement. One day, I yelled so much that I even gave myself a headache!
Years later I learned of alternative methods of discipline from my grown sons and their wives. The first alternative was the concept of “time out” with the length of time based on the age of the child. What a good idea! The times that I saw it being used for my grandchildren seemed to be effective and at least were quiet. I remembered that, in fact, my own mother had used a version of this method for me, but it was for hours at a time locked in my room. I’m not sure how much good it did because I simply spent the time thinking about how unfair it was and how I was being so mistreated.

The second alternative was a set of concepts that I learned in a class in the martial art of Tai Kwan Do. Although fighting was the object of the class, it did not rule the class. The physical skills of fighting were taught along with respect for an opponent! Combatants bowed to each other before and after each match. Hits to the head and below the belt were off limits. Absent were the arguments, injuries and chaos of our home grown fighting. Unexpectedly, I also learned the appeal of physically fighting. When we first began to practice physically hitting each other, we were well padded, but our instructors were not. “Hit me,” said the instructor. “I can't,”, I said. “Why not?”, he said. "I haven't hit anyone since the 2nd grade, and I might hurt you." He laughed and said, “You're not going to hurt me!” I hesitatingly accepted the reality that my delicate hands would be unlikely to do much against his steel like chest.

I then overcame my decades of feminine training and hit him and then hit the other instructor and then hit various padded students. In a flash, I realized that hitting and kicking were fun and that it felt good to be using my newly developed strength and coordination in the art of fighting. “Oh, my God,” I thought. “This is why children – especially boys like to fight.” Their developing muscles need something to test their strength against and puberty with its increasing levels of testosterone for boys must drive that need in irresistible ways. How much better to recognize and respect this drive to fight while channeling it into the various art forms of martial arts and other sports. War, however, has evolved far beyond the physical arts of fighting. War is now engineering and hardware and explosives and deaths of non-combatants along with starvation and pollution of whole populations including babies, animals and plants. War is now out of control with few, if any, redeeming qualities.