Almost Everything About the Adrian Peterson Story

First, I’m upset that this entire story is turning into a question of what parents are “allowed” to do to discipline their child.

Look, it doesn’t matter.  Peterson hit a four year old with a switch until the kid bled.  That is beyond discipline.

Also, the kid is four.  Cognitively he doesn’t have the ability to fully connect the beating with the behavior that caused it. He may understand that he is being punished for something but he doesn’t know what caused the punishment.  So he wasn’t “disciplined,” he was just “punished.”  And in his mind the punishment was basically for the simple act of existing.

Then you have people like this guy writing articles about how spanking their kid is A-OK and, in fact, common sense (it isn’t).  This is not a case of simple spanking.  I don’t agree with him in any case (and my friend Levi Weinhagen makes good arguments as to why) but it isn’t the same thing so why even write the article?

Peterson’s mom says that the discipline used on Peterson must have been OK because look how he turned out.

Look! He’s smiling! If being beaten by a switch as a child had any harmful effect, he wouldn’t be able to smile! Ever!

Yeah, he turned out to be a great running back.  Who has fathered several children by several different mothers and allegedly beat the crap out of (at least) one of those kids.  If you think your discipline choices didn’t have a negative impact on your son, lady, you might need a better idea of what “negative impact” means.

And of course you have the NFL and the Vikings, who only suspended Peterson when he became more of a PR liability than he had previously been a benefit.

They shouldn’t be waiting to see how the public will react.  They should be anticipating that reaction.  In the wake of the Ray Rice video, it shouldn’t have been too difficult to figure out what was going to happen.

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