I am not sure that Dakota Meyer understands parenting.

I was really only able to make it to the minute mark in the video.

If I had actually seen them strike that child I would have lost my shit.

They are hitting that young boy with a paddle. Do you have any idea the psychological damage an incident like this can cause?

Well I do, because that was done to me.

In fact I was not only spanked by a school principal, I was spanked by my mother, my grandmother, babysitters, and the men who were dating my mother before she remarried.

One time I had cuts on my legs where a guy had used an electrical cord to "punish" me for not falling asleep fast enough. That school principal used half of a baseball bat sanded down with the words "Louisville Slugger" on the handle.

Five strikes, I remember every one of them.

Do you want to know how that approach corrected my behaviors?

It didn't.

But it made me an angry and violent young man, who often engaged in physical confrontations with my peers to the point where I sent more than one of them to the hospital.

I trained up to four or five hours each day, so that I would be a more effective fighter, and then I looked for trouble virtually every day so that I could punish the world that at the time I felt had horribly abused me.

Don't get me wrong I was not a bully, at least not in the classical sense. I wanted to fight tough guys who bullied or intimidated others.  But I was a raging asshole, of that there is no doubt.

This lasted into my late teens.

After that I was able to gain some perspective. which came as the result of some very caring teachers and school administrators who did not want to kick me out of school and destroy my life because, thankfully, they felt I was worth saving.

I owe them everything.

Today I care for the children who have been brutalized, neglected, and psychologically damaged by parents and others without the education or intelligence to deal with challenging behaviors.

Apparently this child was paddled for spitting and aggressive behaviors.

I have dealt with spitters before. Do you know what you do?

You get a bucket and you ask them to fill it up with all of their extra spit.

After a little bit their mouth goes dry and they ask to stop, at which time you simply say "Are you all out of spit?"

They answer in the affirmative, and you tell them "Well I am going to keep this bucket handy and the next time you need to spit we will come right back here and you can try to fill it again."

I have never had a child spit again after that.

Somebody needs to let Dakota Meyer know that there are many, many, many effective methods for teaching a child that do not involve scarring them for life.