Dual experience: Why gentle parenting is superior to punitive parenting (I've been raised in both)

I myself am a survivor of law-abiding parents, meaning I was abused within the law by abusive parents and their henchmen, like a switchboard keeping children down, like a compress. Press the children down like a printing press, why don't the adults. This country could do better on this issue, just as it has on things such as slavery and Jim Crow. I was oppressed as a child, and all of me, all in one, is here to tell the story.

I myself was born to a lower middle-class family in Reading, Pennsylvania, the city I grew up in and never left. My father took after the glorified parent educator John Rosemond, meaning he was one of the new school pro-spanking parents that "spanked out of love". That meant, growing up, waiting up in my room for my father to take a deep breath, with a feeling of dread, and my stomach in knots. I was only given a few swats...yet even that much scarred me for life, meaning I have reverent trauma from an entitled and abusive act that was committed within the ambit of the law.

That was for the first portion of my childhood. My mother then divorced my father, and then I shunned him, all the while being an agnostic - I didn't fully believe in God, but the spiritual side of me came right back up. From there, my father slowly picked up the pieces of the damages he created, and became a gentle parent.

From age 16 on up, including now as a care-dependent adult, I have experienced nothing but gentle parenting, and I am grateful for it. It is a state where parents are there for you, like a vending machine, and the more the vending machine dispenses foodstuffs, the happier you are with parents, and the more grateful you are of with parents. You find yourself tagging along, and honoring parents, with honor coming in the form of admiration and fondness, meaning you run to parents as a form of surrender to them, not looking back. This is how I feel about my mother in particular. It is all about who is the confidant, not who is boss.

What is gentle, attached parenting? It is the mutual surrender of parent and child, starting with parents. It says in Colossians 3:20-21 KJV:

Children, obey your parents in all things: as is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.

The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and refers to secure, warm rest and trust in the love and grace of parents, just as adult believers rest in the love and grace of Jesus Christ our Lord. Respect for parents is closeness to parents, meaning fondness and admiration. It is total security in parents, with parents being safe people for children to confide into, with children feeling safe telling parents anything and everything under the sun, using parents as tools, like a milking-cow or vending machine, with children possessing parents in righteous enslavement. Children in ancient Judeo-Christian culture were nude all of the time, and this was largely for skin-to-skin closeness with mothers in particular. Children up to age 3 were seen as infants, with children co-sleeping with parents into adulthood in the nude, with daughters in particular being inseparable from mothers. The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to "stirring up" children, as in "stirring the pot" as to their emotional welfare, ultimately referencing offenses against children, namely the slightest of offense perceived by a child, including physical or other punishment of a child, as the Apostle Paul was rebuking Greek Christian parents for the Hellenistic tradition of spanking children, which was unlawful under the Law. 

Christ died largely to further the expansion of the Law, in letter of the Law for Jews, and in spirit for gentile believers in Christ. America is a Christian nation, founded on Judeo-Christian family values, with our understanding of such values in relation to relations with minority groups of people, including children, expanding. 

I myself have had both experiences, gentle parenting and behaviorist authoritative parenting. I responded much better to attachment parenting, meaning gentle parenting. I am best friends with my parents, one beyond the grave, sadly. I can tell parents anything, and vent any emotion to them, including petitions for a redress of grievances, and parents are there to listen.

The depraved and entitled parents who provoke children to anger will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! My father went "up" and I know it, because parental entitlement is the lowest of all entitlement, and he had virtually none on the way out, and that which He did He atoned for. Are you like him? Where do you think you are headed? Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!