Pardon the pun. I don’t mean Lion’s end but it does deal with it indirectly. Comments to Lion’s post “300 Blows” wonder what punishment will look like now that we’ve embarked on a new experiment. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about punishment since we started. If our goal is to do swats every night, punishment seems redundant. Or overkill. What possible good could come of additional swats? Sure, they’d hurt more but at some point they’d be a waste.
I mentioned to Lion last night at dinner that the next step is bursts of twenty swats. He doesn’t think he can handle twenty at a time yet. Fair enough. We can stick with fifteen. I’d planned to increase the number each time but there’s no sin in holding at a certain number until he can go on. He’ll still get 300 swats. And, by the way, there’s no magic in 300 swats. When I started off, it seemed like I’d hit him ten times when I gave him a break. I continued with sets of ten. 200 seemed like too few. 300 got his butt red. I hadn’t thought about increasing to fifteen or twenty swats. I was just trying to keep track. There really was no method to the madness. There’s absolutely no reason I couldn’t continue with bursts of ten swats and increase to 350 total. Or 400 total.
Lion suggested increasing the amount of swats in each burst. I was just looking to maintain some constants so I could track his progress. It seemed rational enough to keep 300. I also wanted to use the same paddle. It wasn’t until the second burst of fifteen that I realized I changed that too. Oops. I’ll go back to the other paddle next time.
Every time I spank him I should be able to see if he’s taking it well. That’s why I don’t think it’s a big deal for him to ask to stay at fifteen. If I think he’s cruising along at fifteen with no problem, I’ll increase to twenty the next time. If he’s having difficulty at fifteen, we’ll stay there longer. My goal is not to make it so he can’t handle it and I have to start over. I want Lion to succeed. I want to be able to give him 300 swats in a row and have him stay still. That may be a pipe dream, but that’s the ultimate goal.
[Lion — This still doesn’t answer the question about how to handle punishment while Mrs. Lion’s experiment continues. Maybe something other than spanking is appropriate in the meantime. Or, a second, punishment spanking on days when I earn one could also work. I have no idea what to suggest. This experiment won’t go on forever.]
