Padecky: How is a parent showing love by striking a child?

It was mid-December, 1983. My father was a shrunken mass. Lung cancer had ravaged him. He would die in three weeks. He was weak as a kitten. Yet I was still scared he would somehow rise from his deathbed and punch me, if I had dared to ask why he hit me when I was a child. So I kept silent, as I always did.

I wonder if Adrian Peterson’s boy, just 4 years old, will live his life the same way.

As anyone who has ever been beaten by a parent will tell you, this is not a conversation starter on the playground: “When your dad hit you, how did you handle it? Did you cry? Did you scream? Did you curse him? Egg him on? Mock him? Did you strike back?”

Myself, I just closed my eyes.

And waited for his fist.

Sometimes the belt. Most times the fist. I felt relief when it was a wooden spoon. Odd, now that I look back on it. The wooden spoon felt impersonal. Like anyone could hold a wooden spoon. But a fist, well, that’s personal. That’s a hand that helped steady you on your first bike. The hand that held you as a baby. The hand that passed the gravy at the dinner table.

The hand that now was a club.

“When you whip those you love,” said Bonita Jackson, Peterson’s mother, “it’s not about abuse, but love.”

Funny, though, every time my dad hit me, I never said to him, “Thanks, Pop, for loving me. Thanks for showing me you care.”

No, instead I remained silent and thought two things. One, I didn’t want to get him angry; I was afraid of him. Two, I was a constant disappointment to him. I was a screw-up because his fist told me so. I couldn’t do anything right.

So I hid. Having no self-confidence, afraid to even open my mouth to reveal the knucklehead I was, I sat in the back row of class. In my perfect world, the biggest kid in class would be sitting in the next-to-last back row. I’d find him and sit behind him. If that weren’t possible I’d locate the talkers, the pranksters, the ones who wanted all the attention. I’d sit behind them.

No one knew. That would have been embarrassing. I assumed every other kid lived in a warm, cuddly nest with hot chocolate and bear hugs, heads cradled, insecurities non-existent in that nurturing cocoon.

That’s why I hid. I didn’t want them to feel my shame.

If I had the opportunity I would tell Bonita Jackson that the real pain I felt wasn’t the punch to my stomach - his favorite landing spot. It was the pain of feeling worthless. It was the pain inside where no one could see.

Adrian, of course, would look at me straight in the eye and say phooey to that.

“I have always believed that the way my parents raised me,” he said in a statement, “has a great deal to do with the success I have enjoyed as a man.”

So his parents took the switch to him. Kept me on the straight and narrow, Peterson has said numerous times. Kept me out of jail. Kept me from running with the wrong crowd.

It’s a line of thinking which always has confused me.

Hitting someone to keep them out of prison.

Hitting someone so they don’t go out and hit someone else.

Hitting someone so they can be productive members of society.

So, yes, I’m confused. Charles Barkley didn’t help.

“I’m from the South,” Barkley said. “Whipping is … we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is gonna be in jail under those circumstances.”

This is acceptable behavior because every parent who is black hits their kid? Really. I thought Charles was smarter than that. Sounds a bit racist to me. And it puts me on the outside again. Why?

Because white kids in the South get hit, too. And yet, if Charles is right, that’s OK. It’s acceptable because - I’ve always loved this logic - everyone is doing it.

Well, I have never done it. I have two kids. I will never hit them. OK, sure, kids will drive parents nuts. It’s their job, after all. Try hanging in there with a 3-year old, sitting on the floor, alternately pounding the floor and throwing Legos at anything that moves.

Yes, and I’ll take the liberty here and speak for all parents, you aren’t really a parent until you’ll want to put your head in a blender and hit Frappe.

That’s when you need a time-out. Not your kid. You. That’s when you take that hand which could be a club and fill a glass with lemonade or something stronger if it’s late in the day. That’s when you have to lose your mind to find it. It’s part of the deal.

I didn’t and don’t want to lose my kids by hitting them. They would never be the same if I did. I would never want them to doubt if I was proud of them. I would never want them to hear what I heard three days after my father died.

My dad’s good friend, George, said he was proud of me. I was covering the Miami Dolphins at the time for a newspaper in South Florida. George said my dad would take the articles, pass them around at work. Hey, guys, look, this is my kid! There would be a big smile on his face, George said.

I wanted in the worst way to believe him.

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.