Spare The Paddle, Educate The Child

I saw this meme on Facebook this morning and it made me cringe.  I had something similar to a PTSD-like flashback of standing in the hallway, bending over to touch my toes as Miss Fort, another teacher standing by as witness, raised her paddle to whack my behind.  I remembered the feeling of wind from the wooden plank blowing my skirt above my rear as the paddle approached. Then I remembered the sound, the sting, the intense determination it took for me to not cry.  It makes my heart race just to remember.  That was third grade, and that was the year that math became my mortal enemy.


The memory of third grade is one of my worst nightmares.  My two daughters seemed to make their way through it unscathed, but I did not. This year my son is in third grade and I find that old familiar anxiety creeping up on me. I experienced such humiliation and educational neglect during that one year of my life that I was profoundly changed by it.

Let me explain.

When I was a child, ADHD wasn't a thing.  We were referred to as "lazy" kids.  Our teachers tended to be exasperated with us to the point of not even wanting to bother with helping us over the hurdles that third grade posed, and were even less inclined to learn how to deal with the problems we ourselves created for them as "different" learners.

My parents both had 5th grade educations.  They could read and write and do simple math.  Education was not high on their list of priorities for us.  My sisters and I were well aware of their expectation that we would grow up, marry and have babies.  Why would we need an education to do that?

I struggled with multiplication.  I fell short with homework because no one at home ever said to  me, "It's time to do your homework." Or "Do you have homework today?"  When I would, on my own, get out my math work book and try to do the problems I would get easily frustrated, then distracted, and before I knew it I would have sat for an hour staring at the page with nothing done.  I was overwhelmed and there was no one to help me.

My teacher called my mother frequently.  They discussed my laziness as I listened in.  I became convinced that I was stupid and lazy and that I'd never be able to learn, so I stopped trying.

Then one evening during one of those calls from my third grade teacher, I heard my mother give Miss Fort the go-ahead to "spank my butt" the next time I showed up without my homework.  The next day, I got called out in the hallway after lunch and received my paddling.  It stung, but I forced back the tears and walked back into my classroom. I could feel the judgmental eyes of my classmates burning through me as I walked through the room to my desk. The room was so quiet my own footsteps sounded like the beating of a drum and my desk seemed to get farther away the more I walked.  I was humiliated.  I sat at my desk with my head held high and bit the inside of my lip to keep from crying.  My face burned with embarrassment.  I began to hate school and hate my teacher.

I missed recess every afternoon in third grade.  Every day at lunch time I would start feeling sick. Literally sick, because I knew that math came after lunch and there would be that awful timed multiplication test that I would fail and then all of my friends would make fun of me.  Or there would be some workbook page that I didn't understand and if I raised my hand for help, my teacher would roll her eyes at me and refuse to get up from her seat to explain the problem to me again.

I was seen as a difficult child.  No one ever told me I was smart.  No one ever told me I could learn and no one ever offered to help me learn.

Day after day I got called into the hallway and paddled.  Day after day I took the humiliating walk back to my desk and spent recess staring at math problems I still couldn't figure out.  I missed out on class parties at the end of the day because my math wasn't done.  No one, not one person offered to help me.  They just kept punishing me for something I didn't understand and could not grasp.  It was bigger than my third-grade self, and the people who were bigger than me, well they just made me feel smaller and smaller.

I'm positive my third grade teacher passed me on to fourth grade just to get rid of me.  I still didn't grasp the basics of multiplication and I struggled with it for years thereafter, never, in any grade being offered help.  My sixth grade math teacher loved the paddle as well, and so in fifth grade I lived through a repeat of my third grade nightmare.  I became an underachiever by the time seventh grade rolled around because I figured I was just too stupid to learn.

I have struggled my whole life with ADHD, but it wasn't until recently that I began to understand all the ways it has colored my world, my relationships, my failures and yes, even some of my successes. It is when life gets stressful that I find myself staring off into space like that overwhelmed third grade girl who couldn't cope with math.

Now my son's third grade teacher is saying those letters to me, "A-D-H-D" and I have to admit I see it in him too.  He is oh so smart and well behaved most of the time.  However, frustration boils beneath his surface and bubbles to the top in an angry explosion now and then.  Because he is so intelligent, he is easily frustrated if he doesn't understand something on the first try.  I plan to take him for an evaluation, even though the thought of medicating my child is unsettling to me.

I wen through this same process with my daughter, starting in first grade.  Her teacher insisted she needed medication, so reluctantly, we took her to her pediatrician and got some Ritalin.  It made her quiet and sad.  She lost weight, couldn't sleep at night and went around with big dark circles under her eyes.  She was more focused in school, but she still never got the attention she needed from her teachers to pull her grades up.  We did homework together every night--a struggle by the time her medication had worn off, and I tried my best to fill in the gaps.  By fourth grade she had changed schools, changed medications three different times, and still was struggling in one of the best schools in our county.  Her teachers seemed to abhor having her in their classes because she brought down their testing scores in math.  Once, I was even asked to keep her home on test day.  I'm fairly sure that was illegal.  Her fifth grade teacher told her that she was "going to end up being a bum on the street." rather than trying to help her understand the subject matter and show some patience with her.
She is a beautiful and smart young woman, but she lacks confidence and suffers from social anxiety due to the treatment of her teachers, and the bullying of her fellow students who probably felt she was fair game for bullying, since they had even witnessed her teachers use words to rip at her spirit.

A paddle never touched her rump, but the words that were hurled at her, the attitudes projected onto her still affected her deeply, and still do to this day.

I am not anti-teacher.  In fact, my children have had some amazing teachers over the years.  In high school my ADHD daughter finally had a Resource teacher that was a God-send.  She fed my daughter's spirit and encouraged her, took time with her and helped her understand more about each subject.  She called me monthly and we talked about my daughter's progress, which was astounding.  All it took was a teacher who wanted to make a difference for each student, and that's what she did for my daughter.

Now we have a label for kids like I was.  No longer are we referred to as "Lazy" we are now "ADHD" kids.  My boy is certainly intelligent.  I know that he struggles with impulse control, with frustration that leads to anger. I know that certain subjects bore him, and that he has a hard time staying focused if there's the slightest noise or movement in his peripheral. I know how crippling it can be to have so much going on in your mind at one time that you can't decide which thing deserves your focus.

 I want my son to succeed. I want him to learn self-control, to be more patient with himself, to grow up knowing he's smart and able to do or be whatever he decides.  I am willing to try medication with him to see if it makes a difference, but I have learned valuable lessons from my paddlings and the verbally/mentally abusive treatment of my daughter.  I will not let my kid become "that" kid who gets humiliated and singled out.  I will not let him grow up being shamed in front of his peers or being the thorn in his teacher's side.

Maybe if there had been medication, appropriate intervention by my teacher, and one parent who cared enough to see that I was struggling in third grade, my whole life could have been less of an uphill battle.  Who knows?  The truth remains that my life was changed because of that paddle.  It made me believe the worst of myself. It made me think I wasn't good enough for anyone's approval.   It destroyed my self-esteem. It made me believe I was dumb, worthless, brainless and incapable for a huge part of my life.  Now I know that paddle was a liar.

And I also know that if your childhood memories of school have anything to do with a paddle and being humiliated in front of your peers, you didn't turn out to be a better person because of it.  You likely wrangled with yourself, just as I have, to find your self worth. I have discovered that mine was there all along, even though it seems they tried to beat it out of me. If you were made better at the wrong end of a paddle, you became better in spite of it, not because of it.