Musings about canes...

Read a friend's blog post about canes today and I was inspired to write my thoughts about it too.

Does caning really break a person's spirit? I don't really think so. I grew up with the cane being an all too familiar 'tool' in the house. And no, it wasn't hung up in the house for show. 

My mother is quite the perfectionist and she always wanted us to get perfect scores when we were young. I remember coming back home from school one day feeling very happy that I got 98/100 for English but all she saw was that it wasn't 100/100. Why did I make that silly mistake? Why did I mix up 'blink' and 'wink'? Till today, the difference between blink/wink is etched deeply in my heart. I wasn't caned for that test though. I think I hardly got caned for results. It was always the behavioural problems that rendered Mr Cane's presence. 

I used to dislike how my mother disciplined me - she's very old-school. But then I think about how it has shaped me as a person. I'm very stubborn by nature and I think it wasn't easy to get me to obey her. Would reasoning have helped? I'm not very sure since I don't recall her trying to reason with me. What I do know however is that I think she instilled enough discipline in me so I sailed through my studies, got my scholarship and degree (for semesters I scored a string of As, she would ask why not A+ - some things never change), got my diploma in piano... basically I think I fulfilled my duties as a daughter academically. Of course, all that doesn't really matter at the end of the day since I chose to be a stay home mom. :) 

What matters to me now, is how I'm going to instil the same sort of discipline in my children, not only for academic success, but more importantly, how to be a good person. 

I don't have a cane in my house, not even for show. I don't really want to buy one though I always joke about which colour cane my daughter wants when we walk past a shop selling canes. Not using the cane doesn't mean that I'm not old-school. My daughter gets her fair share of beatings discipline when she's naughty. I reason most times with her, but sometimes I think it's not all that harmful to discipline the kid once in a while. After all, I do believe in 'spare the rod and spoil the child', though I am currently not using a 'rod' per se.

I hope I never have to buy a cane.

I really hope so.

Do you own a cane? :)

Linking up with: