Never Violence
I happened across this wonderful story a couple of weeks ago...

Never Violence
a story told by Astrid Lindgren
[Author of Pippi Longstocking]

"Above all, I believe that there should never be any violence." In
1978, Astrid Lindgren received the German Book Trade Peace Prize for
her literary contributions. In acceptance, she told the following
story.
"When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's wife who told
me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn't
believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch
pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day
when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt
warranted a spanking--the first of his life. And she told him that
he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him
with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was
crying. He said to her, "Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's
a rock that you can throw at me."

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from
the child's point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then
it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do
it with a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they
both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to
remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I
think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the
nursery--one can raise children into violence."

I think that too often we fail to feel situations "from the child's
point of view," and that failure leads us to teach our children
other than what we think we're teaching them.

Published by permission of Saltkrakan AB, Lidingoe, Sweden, owner of
all copyrights to Astrid Lindgren's works.

In reflecting on this story, I too thought I would find such a rock as this and as I was looking I also finished setting the rocks around our front pond. The rocks came from the farm I grew up on, where I learned life's lessons and occasionally felt a belt across my backside. As I reflected on my parenting skills, my youngest son joined me and we patiently moved the rocks and adjusted them just right.

As we neared completion, Brendan stood up and said he had found a heart rock. Sure enough, there was a beautful reddish rock in his hand in the vague shape of a heart. I could not have found a more perfect rock, and how beautiful that it should come from my most challenging of children. I have told my mother on more than one occasion that I was blessed with Brendan to teach me patience as he has indeed stretched me to my limits on numerous occasions. It is in that stretching that I grew, but it is also in that stretching that I have spanked when I knew I shouldn't. Brendan's heart rock sits proudly in my kitchen window, to remind me each day to allow myself to stretch without lashing back at my little ones.