Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Only clean obedient children qualify for love

At the local playground, I have recently heard a mom talking to her 2-year-old son after he came out of the sandbox:
"Come here and let me beat the sand out of your clothes. See how dirty you have made yourself. Come here quickly, or I won't love you anymore!"

2 comments:

Marla said...

Is this for real? Wow. I can't imagine saying such words.

I remember a story book my daughter has that is in Spanish. There is a poem where a mom yells at her daughter for having dirtied her dress and then says she will beat her. I was shocked to read the book but I assume it was a cultural poem of importance? I guess I will never know.

Maya M said...

Perhaps the poem dated back to the era when ordinary people had no running water in their homes - at that time, dirtying clothes is likely to have been regarded a serious offense. However, spanking a child is one thing, the threat "I won't love you" is another, much more scary to my opinion.