Minnesota Viking, and star NFL running back, Adrian Peterson has been arrested in Texas for whooping his then 4 year old son with a switch. When questioned about it, Peterson admitted what he had done and even showed the police what kind of switch he had used, but he asserted that it was a normal spanking and not abusive.
Peterson’s personal life reads like a laundry list of tragedy.
Peterson has a half-brother named Jaylon Brown who currently plays football at Klein Oak High School in Texas as its running back. Another half-brother was murdered the night before Peterson participated in the NFL Combine. Additionally, when Peterson was a teenager, his father was sentenced to ten years in prison for laundering drug money…
…Peterson’s two-year-old son died on October 11, 2013 at a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, hospital due to injuries sustained during an alleged assault by Joseph Robert Patterson, the boyfriend of the child’s mother. Peterson had only learned about his son a few weeks prior to his death, and had never met him.
Peterson is a Christian. Peterson has spoken about his faith in his life saying, “Jesus Christ means the world to me. I’ve been through so many different situations through my childhood and now my adulthood…God just helped me get through them and made me stronger at a young age. [Through] all the adversity and hard times I’ve been through, God has always been present. I’ve always prayed to Him and asked Him to give me the strength to endure and to help others and to better understand whatever situation I deal with in my personal life. And He has always showed up! It brings hope and peace of mind knowing that God gave His only begotten Son for us.” Peterson also spoke of his faith in relation to his injury of a torn ACL and MCL by saying “…‘This is a blessing in disguise. I’ll come back stronger and better than I was before.’ What flashed in my mind was, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,’…”
Peterson was indicted by a Montgomery County, Texas, grand jury on charges of reckless or negligent injury to a child on September 12, 2014.
In light of the NFL’s present image problems stemming from the Ray Rice controversy, I don’t think you can expect to see Peterson back on a football field very soon, if ever. I wish he had more common sense than to beat his four year old with a stick. He’s overcome a lot in his life and accomplished a lot. But what he did is just not acceptable.
Marks or no marks, hitting a child under any circumstance is absolutely not acceptable. Those marks are obviously worse than the usual defender of child hitting, obviously to the point of getting a conviction in Texas.
He hasn’t been convicted, only indicted.
this week has convinced me that Deadspin is the best sports site going.
here are some important stats:
http://highrankwebsites.com/nfl-crimes-interactive/
We really need to see the numbers for pros in other sports, in the US and other countries. Including the presentation of ratios of crimes/players in the leagues. Intuitively, many of us would expect the numbers to be significantly higher for NFL players, but we don’t know if that’s correct. It’s possible that it could be even much worse for football than the raw numbers indicate.
My parents would, on occasion, spank me with an open hand. Many of my contemporaries were spanked with a folded leather belt. I’ve talked with both southern whites and southern blacks who spoke of being spanked with a a flexible tree branch called a switch. One friend of mine, born in the inner city, told me he was regularly whipped on the bare buttocks with an electrical cord. I was aghast, but he thought nothing of it. It was routine in his neighborhood. Many (Most) of the black people I work with think a good “whupping” is the mark of parental care. As in, “that child needs a good whupping”. I’m not sure if they are referring to the electrical cord or the switch or plain spanking.
There wouldn’t have been enough jails in the 1950’s if the same legal standards applied then.
As for me, I think the application of pain, without bruising or physical damage, arouses the primitive brain to modify behavior as a survival mechanism.
Your observations are correct. Most adults did experience spankings or whuppings as children and most of them in turn did the same thing to their children.
Your conclusion is incorrect. At a deep cognitive level, children absorb the lesson that it’s okay for “big” people to hit “little” people. What could be more wrong than that?
The “I got spanked and turned out ok” crap is so rampant it’s nauseating.
There’s actually so much wrong this position it’s insane. I am addressing this hypothetical person.
Self-assessments are not usually the most controlled methods of determining whether you turned out “okay.” Second, if we actually presumed you turned out okay, your case is an anecdote, ergo it is not necessarily the trend.
Corporal punishment’s long-term effects have been studied extensively, and if consequences are reported relative to kids who weren’t corporally punished, they’re not good, and usually they’re pretty bad.
Once while teaching English to a class of lower and low income young adults, I posed the “is it okay to spank children” question to them. There might have been one student that wasn’t sure, the others agreed that it was okay. Recall one young man that said he’d been whupped a lot and he was better for all those whuppings. I let them talk for a few minutes and then launched into no more than a three minute monologue about why it was a terrible thing to do to children. Little light bulbs went on over their heads — none of them had ever heard anyone say that spanking children was not only unnecessary but very harmful. I changed 100% of those minds that day and their behavior in the future would be altered in a positive direction. Maybe by a lot or maybe by just a little bit, but positive little bits add up to big ones.
Wow! I did do that, didn’t I? Well it wasn’t what I set out to do. But I do think the pendulum has swung too far the other way. One of my teenage grandson’s was going to run off and I physically restrained him. I didn’t hit him but I grabbed his arms so he couldn’t go out the door. He called the police and they told me if I ever did it again they would arrest me and that I couldn’t stop him from coming and going. They further said that if he stayed out after curfew, I was to call them and they would deal with it. After they left, I told him that I wasn’t going to put up with any crap like that, so he could either obey me or go back to DCFS, his choice. I never had a problem again. Then was ten years ago and we are on fine terms.
OTOH, I’ve seen kids that were only lectured. They pretty much were arrogant assholes. One found himself charged with felonious assault when he turned 18. He never learned that if you hit someone, there are physical consequences.
I didn’t mean to imply that spanking was a preferred method of punishment, although many people did believe that. It’s more the ultimate punishment.
Children learn “if I hit someone, I get hit back” and “step over the line too far and you get smacked”. And I failed to add that punishment should always be delivered unemotionally. If you are angry, you tech that it’s OK to hit when you are angry. If you enjoy it…well, let’s just say that you are not a very nice human being.
Lecture or spanking is about 1/100th of the variables needed for effective parenting. And both are at the low end of effectiveness unless used very sparingly and are extremely well focused and short in duration. Also age appropriate. Little kids don’t really get the “if I hit someone, I get hit back” message. Adults are also unlikely to have seen what preceded the hitting and from the child’s POV. For example, maybe the other kid hit first and grabbed an object that they both wanted. The adult only saw the retaliatory hit and delivers a hit back to that kid. Each of those two kids internalized something from the altercation and not the same thing. The budding sociopath could be the first kid.
Lectures about the theory of spanking are similarly useless. You need to be there, which you were not. Plus discussing why someone did not use your preferred theory 10 years in the past is unlikely to be helpful.
I’m not going to say that all spanking or “whupping” is an indictable offense. But his mother had to take him to the doctor and he’s four years old.
Kids need to learn discipline, but that ain’t they way to teach it.
I had read that the child was scheduled to see the doctor anyway, also Adrian Peterson notified his son’s mother prior to sending him back that he had to discipline. This was just a normal, accepted part of Peterson’s parenting methods. It was the same method that his parents used, and now he’s a multi-millionaire, professional athlete. You could argue that their methods worked.
I’m not a parent and do not know anything about child rearing, and I know that it was very hard for my parents to use discipline on me/my brothers…and often it was the threat of a spanking by a wooden spoon or a paddle that was equally effective.
But, I also understand that there are cultural differences and that particularly in African American culture using a belt or switch is common. Not to say that it is right/wrong, but we need to get off the moral high horse where we judge others from 1,000′.
My problem with Ray Rice was not just that he punched his fiance, but that she and the NFL may have worked to cover it up.
Adrian Peterson honestly believes he did nothing wrong, and has been cooperating with the police and the Vikings.
There’s no evidence the methods “worked”. In fact we have excellent evidence the methods resulted in him beating the crap out of his 4 year old son.
Adrian Peterson is one of the best players in the NFL: a feat that has taken decades of hard work, discipline, and commitment. His parents, whom he admits used similar punishments on him, clearly did something right in raising him to become a highly successful athlete who, frankly, has had a very clean imagine throughout college and NFL.
Perhaps it was the fact that his parents “whooped” him growing up, perhaps it was religion or someone else in his family that helped him be strong, or something else that drove him – however what cannot be denied is that his parents clearly did some things right.
I’m not saying that Peterson’s methods were right or wrong, but I will say that whatever Peterson’s family did to raise him was clearly successful, so I cannot begrudge him for trying to do the same.
Parenting is very hard and one of the many reasons why my wife and I do not have children. It’s also why I tend to bite my tongue when I hear people try to tell others how to raise their children. You just try to do what you think is right and hope for the best.
What is right is to call him out for brutalizing his son. Understanding that his behavior was likely learned from his childhood doesn’t make his behavior any less horrific. It only permits a certain degree of societal leniency in determining how to proceed with sanctions that have a high probability of preventing him from doing anything similar in the future to anyone.
If he’s willing and able to work as hard on himself to learn parenting skills (he apparently has several children scattered around) and anger management as he works at playing football, then that would be a better course of action than prison and/or losing his job. But if he wants as good a reputation off the field as on, he’ll have to do more.
There is no right/wrong. What you consider “brutalizing” others may considering “toughening up”. It’s a cultural difference, its a difference in child rearing and parenting. It wasn’t an anger issue, Peterson seemed to be in a clear state of mind (although he didn’t realize that the switch was wrapping around to the front). Instead, Adrian Peterson honestly thought that he was doing the right thing as a father, and until his children are all fully grown, neither you nor I have any idea if he’s right/wrong. He’s just doing what he knows best. Plus, he’s fully cooperating with law enforcement…what more do you want?
Also, how cares if he has “several children scattered around”? There are no laws regarding who can/cannot become parents, and there should be no shame in people being able to have multiple children. Or, is it because he’s black that having children with multiple women is wrong and therefore he cannot be a good Dad?
Frankly, we’ve had thousands of years of evolutionary success by using this type of discipline on our children as a means of teaching them. It’s only within the past 20+ years that our puritanical society has decided that its more important to develop our children’s self-esteem and to not hurt their feelings than to raise a hand against them.
As a result, we have a whole generation of kids who are lazy, have no direction, no boundaries, are content living off of their parents, especially after obtaining a worthless degree, have no structure, and are completely coddled.
For someone who says “there is no right/wrong,” you’re awfully quick to claim “spare the rod, spoil the child.”
Children need structure, safety/security, and discipline. (And good nutrition.) Age appropriate and non-violent discipline, positive and negative reinforcement. A generation of what you consider to be worthless adults is not the result of them having grown up without being beaten on a regular basis. The next generation as worthless complaint has existed since the time of Aristotle; a few millennia before enlightenment and child development knowledge came along and informed us that beating children is harmful. (Not all peoples and cultures accepted violence against children as an acceptable child rearing practice.)
Violence breeds violence. And is accepted as normal and good. It’s not coincidental that where support for school corporal punishment, support for the death penalty and war are highest.
As you’ve acknowledged, parenting is very difficult. On a part-time basis with several children that don’t normally live with each other, it’s even more difficult. One does tend to become better at a full-time job that one can’t quit, then a part-time job with the option to quit wouldn’t you say? Interesting that you read racism into my comment when there wasn’t any there.
Would you say that there’s no right/wrong wrt to female genital mutilation? It is, after all, considered not only acceptable but an appropriate practice in raising girls in some cultures.
Millenials More Well Read Than Elders
Teen pregnancy at all time low
Alcohol use is also at an all time low too among this generation.
But you know, keep telling us we are spoiled brats who mooch off our parents.
As reading is a habit, JK Rowling deserves some credit for the change. In my day, if one didn’t graduate from children’s books to adult books by age thirteen, one wasn’t likely to form the habit.
You continue to grossly mis-characterize what happened with Peterson and Son…it’s as if you just looked at the pictures and said, “brutality, child abuse” and completely overlook everything else associated with what the father believed was an appropriate way of disciplining a child.
Again, that’s what worked for Adrian Peterson growing up, so why wouldn’t he do the same?
This was not out of anger, or drunkedness, or violence for the sake of violence. According to the many articles I’ve actually read on this subject, Peterson explained to his son before & after the punishment about what the son did, why it was wrong, and why this punishment was needed.
Regarding female genital mutilation, I honestly see it as no different as circumcision of boys, it’s an unnecessary procedure that has no purpose but can be sacred. I’m sure that other cultures look at American cultures and think some of the stuff we do is wrong and unnatural. It’s ethnocentric to say “this culture is right or this culture is wrong”, you can disagree with their practices but I have a real difficulty passing judgment on others because of certain ethnocentricities.
No, I haven’t. You’re the one that is dismissing the injuries to Peterson’s son as nothing but that of a father doing to his son what had been done to him as a child. As for having “worked well” in Peterson’s education/development, that’s nothing but uninformed/idle speculation on your part because you think Peterson “turned out very well.” No allowance for the possibility that beatings retarded other innate abilities that he had.
I have to end this discussion at this point because anyone that can say, Regarding female genital mutilation, I honestly see it as no different as circumcision of boys, is ignorant of what female genital mutilation is. FYI, it’s more like cutting off a boy’s dick.
Again with the mis-characterization and pushing your cultural bias. In some countries FGM is an honored tradition, and even in the more extreme practices, is not comparable to removing a boy’s dick. Even still, castration among boys has long been practiced among various cultures, if that is what they believe the so be it.
Why are you so closed minded and unaccepting other people live’s and their belief systems?
All I’ve been saying is that the practice of “whooping” a child may not be nearly as terrible as you insist it is, and frankly to each their own. I wont pass judgment on Peterson because he is trying to raise his children the way he sees fit, and modeled after the way he himself was raised.
That, of course, was WAY over the line.
In light of the NFL’s present image problems stemming from the Ray Rice controversy, I don’t think you can expect to see Peterson back on a football field very soon, if ever.
He’s hired Rusty Hardin, the same lawyer that Clemens had. Also, the DA didn’t get an indictment the first go-around with a grand jury. The point being, what if he’s found not guilty? There are probably plenty of parents out there who think nothing of smacking a bad behaving kid on the bare behind with a belt or paddle. As noted above, this type of punishment used to be a lot more common. I don’t approve of it, because we know better now. Just saying that not everyone is going to agree and to look at what might happen if this goes to trial. My guess is he’ll play until this goes to trial and then see what happens. If he’s found guilty, a HOF career might get flushed down the toilet.
A lot of this is cultural. “Spare the rod and spoil the child”
I was both spanked and hit with hangars as a child until I was about 13 or so. This was always done as discipline when I misbehaved in some way and rarely more than once.
I didn’t consider that abuse but I do think there are more effective ways of behavior correction.
Although my parenting of my own child has included a few of the mistakes my parents made when parenting me, I have managed to escape most of the worst of their mistakes. (And they did some terrible things to their kids.) One can move beyond one’s past with a conscious effort, even one with abuse and tragedy.
A large percentage of Americans don’t think AP did anything wrong. A large percentage of parents believe in corporal punishment. I can’t even call it generational. Many young parents believe in corporal punishment. Going after someone as high profile as Adrian Peterson probably isn’t the wisest course of action. I predict a backlash if they try to kick him out of the league.
I have 3 kids, 27, 23, 23. I occasionally wacked them once on the butt for an occasion. Perhaps I did this 10 times total for each child. We used time-out. In parking lots, we would hold the hand of the child and not allow them to run around, and the children would try to get away. Here, I did not allow them to, holding the hand extremely tightly. We did not switch with a mechanical object or belt.
Children learn from their parents. My dad occasionally hit my mom, mostly when I was about 6-7. I was terrified by this, and learned that hitting women was bad. I have not ever not once hit a partner. Yes, we did paddle the children, very occasionally, mostly to get the attention. But not with the switch, and not when they were 4.
I have to admit that I find this a little more troubling than Ray Rice and his reflexive hit on Janay.
Are you serious? I can think of several ways that a man (or a woman) can use their arms/bodies to defend themselves from an attacker – and none of them involved punching someone in the face. Twice.
Rice is a trained athlete, and it is illegal to punch anyone in the NFL. If it was a “reflexive” hit as you claim then it would have been more like a stiff-arm, which is probably a much more natural, reflexive move that he does dozens of times a week.
If he had used more of a stiff-arm, or pushed her away from him, or accidentally hit her while raising his arms in self-defense…then that could be more acceptable.
But to wind up, hit someone twice, and then stand over them preening like a heavyweight boxer, is in no way “reflexive”. If that were on the playing field he would have been ejected from the game.
Then to not even attend to her while she’s on the ground? To drag her out of the elevator and tell everyone that she’s drunk? That’s not reflexive either…
I think I can safely say that you are misreading what data meant, and over emphasizing the word ‘reflexive’. I understood perfectly what data meant, and it was not a defense of Rice, or an intention of making light of what happened.
The English language is more nuanced than you give it credit for.
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I have read, and re-read, that sentence countless times. Given the context of the sentence, and the definitions of “reflexive” I can only conclude that either you and dataguy use a different form of the English language, or you have some unique gift for being able to go beyond reading comprehension and are able to read people’s minds as to what they meant to say.
What happened, in the video, was a nanosecond conditioned reflex, and had nothing to do with conscious thought. That’s what I saw.
And I don’t condone it.
If it was a reflex, as you claim, then why did he just stand there and hover over Janay and not try to help her up? Moments later, why did he try to drag her out of the elevator and tell everyone that she was intoxicated? Are these the actions of a guy who reflexively punches when someone, anyone, comas at them?
Also, remember that Ray Rice is a highly trained NFL running back and is used to people coming at him. His natural instinct and reflex on the field is not to throw a punch, it’s to use a stiff-arm and try to block or keep someone at bay.
There is no doubt in my mind that Ray Rice intentionally punched his fiance and had no remorse.
Also, keep in mind that Ray Rice punched his fiance TWICE.
Not once…but two separate times.
How the hell is that a reflex?
When I lived in the Houston area in the ’80s an acquaintance pretty much devoted his life to trying to get corporal punishment abolished in the public schools. Most school officials considered him a fringe crank. I doubt it’s much better today.
Peterson is a wealthy black man in an almost entirely white suburban county (Montgomery, the wealthiest of Houston’s suburban counties). Under any circumstance, it’s got to take a lot to inspire a Texas grand jury to deliver an indictment for this. Even then, if Peterson was white I doubt we’d be talking about this.
Some improvement since the 1980s. Houston USD banned CP in 2001.
Was shocked to learn that California didn’t ban it until 1987. But I’m almost positive that many school districts banned it long before then — at least that’s what I was told when I was a kid.
For the schools to hit a child is entirely different. They have the option of expulsion (except in Virginia).
It seems the state has declared a monopoly on violence and even discipline. See my anecdote above.
Another anecdote, if I may indulge. My youngest grandchild learned the DCFS number at school. When punished for I forget what infraction by being sent to bed without supper, he called the hotline and reported being abused. He was in Elementary school at the time. The investigator who came out was a Latino man. After carefully investigating and interrogating all the children outside, he scolded my grandson for falsely reporting. “I deal with real abuse every day, you are clean, obviously well-fed (he was a bit pudgy), and well cared for. You have wasted my time that could have been spent helping children who are really abused. You should be grateful that you have loving grandparents who care for you in a nice suburban house. Now you obey your Grandmother and Grandfather.” Rather surprised me.
What a handful — and extremely difficult task — you’ve had to manage.
Your story reminds me of why I think “Where the Wild Things Are” is such a brilliant book. “No supper” is punishment but not abuse, and caring and love still await a short time later.
The commentary here reflects a bit of that disconnect that was talked about on the Cuomo thread.
The issue is not about the parents that used a light hand, with only occasional judicious, paddling.
When the law allows something like child hitting (that is what ‘corporal punishment’ is, people, hitting children) it gives cover to sociopaths and drunks to do their will, with no punishment. The laws were not passed to prevent a paddling, but to stop beatings.
Just like child hitting in school. Allowing it enabled the beatings of the different, the disabled, the ugly. It allowed bad teachers to pick and choose who got ‘justice from a paddle’, and it was never their favorites. For that matter, it was never the ones with certain types of fathers. It was the weak.
The parent that can hit a four year old, all the while said child is screaming (be sure…he WAS screaming for his mother), again and again is more likely than not a sociopath. If he/she is not that, then they are at least a sick person who like to prey on the weak.
While I grew up in that time frame, I was rarely touched by my father, and never ‘beaten’. He saved that joy for my brothers, while I got to listen. I was never touched by a teacher, I just got to watch.
I was very lucky, because I was able to know what I was seeing in each incident. I was seeing a weak, pathetic, twisted adult pick on a smaller, helpless child, not for discipline, but as an assertion of power. I was also lucky to be able to ‘connect the dots’ and see how this attitude was exposed throughout the day, in the tiny authority actions that sociopaths use to control others.
It’s a sick twisted dynamic. And THAT is why laws were passed. Not for the ‘the threat caused more pain that the hit’ types. But to protect the weak from getting the crap beat of out them because a teacher or parent had a bad day.
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Let’s be clear about what he did. He hit a four year old with a tree branch dozens of times all over his body, hard enough to both bruise and draw blood. He literally whipped a four year old all over his body. A FOUR YEAR OLD!
If that’s not child abuse, child abuse doesn’t exist. And before you say, he’s not convicted, well, there are pictures and he’s already admitted he did it, his lawyers admitted he did it, plus there are texts explicitly discussing it. He did it. He’s garbage.
It’s funny how people say their parents did this to them and they turned out fine. Yeah, except now you beat your children too.
I’m increasingly feeling our country suffers from a nationwide personality disorder. Our country is bonkers. The reflexive worship of violence is a great sickness that we apparently can’t recover from.
I’ll be interested to see if the response here compares to the response to Michael Vick. After all, Vick only abused dogs, not children.
I think some folks are willfully ignoring what was in those pictures. What we can see there borders on torture.
Yes,
some seem to equat it with ‘well, my father spanked me, no big deal.’
They use all sorts of words to hide it…..corporal punishment, spanking, whipping, etc. None of those words can hide the bruises.
What happened here is a grown man beat the shit out of a four year old boy. Kid probably weighed 30-40 pounds.
It’s not the same as a spanking.
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Exactly. My dad spanked us with a belt and all it did was make me decide I would never, ever do that to my child. I’ve raised 4 kids, they are all well adjusted young adults now (despite usual issues of adolescence, etc.) and neither I nor my husband ever once hit one of them. There are lots of ways to model good behavior for kids and apply logical consequences for bad behavior without taking your belt off or cutting a switch. I hope this guy gets tossed out of the league for life.