You Can't Get There From Here

[green_genes]

Greetings from Maine, USA!

My name is Kyle Green (hence the screen name), I'm 31, a single father of two daughters, a final semester mechanical engineering student, and I began following FDR at the start of "warm season" 2014.

I want to say that my first exposure to Stef was via a YouTube video by AmandaBillyRock (who I think is off doing something completely different these days). But it was over a year later I believe when I came across Stef's YouTube channel by way of (anti) feminism videos.

What really hooked me was the Peaceful Parenting thing. I was spanked as a child, told 'I'll give you something to cry about!', had a bedroom above the kitchen which was where my parents preferred to have their shouting matches, and at about third grade age my mother sat my sister and I down and asked permission to leave our father. We of course said 'No.' And she stayed with him until I was a few months away from graduating high school.

I am ashamed to say that I have spanked (abused) my daughters each about a handful of times in their relatively short lifetimes (ages 10 and 6). Not often but obviously once is once too many times. A year or so ago I recognized a growing trend of aggression coming from my oldest child and I knew I had to do something. It wasn't simply enough to have stopped the spankings years ago, the damage had already been done. I have since talked to both girls about the abuse, apologized, and explained and integrated the non-aggression principle into the family (leading by example, of course). It's a work in progress.


I tend to type a lot. Is it too late for a "fair warning"?

I'm very glad that this community exists and I cannot express how impressed I am by Stef's talents and drive to improve the human race (the right way).

Thanks for reading,
Kyle

[Delightful Might]

Hi, I'm new, too.  It's encouraging to see someone quickly acting on a new found principle. Hopefully an encouraging thought:  just hearing the phrase for the first time "non-agression principle" a few days ago, and hearing SM state his position has been SO freeing.  I think what messes us up isn't so much the pain of abuse but that we think we deserve it, and are somehow bad.  I dance, and believe me, dance practice can hurt much more than anything mom did! but the mental violence is what did me in.  It's amazing how much better I feel when my reality is corrected. Hopefully that will happen for your girls, especially the oldest.

 

I'm sorry your mother was a coward and didn't stand up for you and for her own happiness.  The thought of looking to third graders for leadership, counsel, and grown-up advice is repelling.

 

Isn't the work of SM fantastic, I didn't know about him at all!

 

- D

[green_genes]

It is fantastic, D. When I first started listening to Stef, I remember thinking, 'This is what I needed in my life right now!' That's still true today of course. Welcome aboard!