So ignorance is an excuse for beating your child? Come on, nick. Surely, as a fellow parent, you know what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. If it's plainly obvious to you and I, then surely it would've been plainly obvious to AP
Its not an excuse. Look here's the thing man, we can not apply what we know to others. My wife works in child protection, i hear some horrendous stories that would make you sick. Sexual abuse and physical abuse, neglect etc
None of its good, none of it is acceptable, and no child should have to go through it. However it's not as simple as just saying they should know better. When all you've known in your life is to use violence to settle your problems (including playing a violent game for a living), then that's exactly how you are going to deal with it with your children
and as Paullyboy has shown, this no physical thing is still very much up for debate, i dont believe in hitting children, my child will never have a hand laid on them that isnt a loving one. If i need to discpline them, ill do so via other means. But not everyone is me, plenty of people i know will indeed us physical disciplinary methods, and they dont see anything wrong with it.
Now that's not saying that doing what AP did was right, but parenting is hard, it's frustrating and if you have made the decision that physical discipline is something you want to do, i can see how an otherwise, loving, caring father might go over the top as AP did in the moment. Especially if that's how he was raised, that's how his father disciplined him, that's how his brothers, his cousins, his friends, his school friends were all disciplined.
It's as much a cultural issue as anything else. He's from Texas, a notriously hard and old school state, it's a different environment that you or I have grown up in. I know physical discipline is a largely ineffective and sends the wrong message about how to deal with problems, but then i know that because im a reasonable intelligent person who has some reasonable level of education. I read articles in the paper, stuff on line about this sort of thing.
Adrian Peterson has been a sportsman since he was a kid himself, i very much doubt if before this he had or knew a single thing of why physical discipline is no really an acceptable thing anymore. He's probably been handed grades his entire schooling life without ever actually having to pay attention. Put bluntly he grew up being taught this was the right way to discipline his children and he's never been told or had reason to believe it's not.
And there is a real element to the points Paully raises. Kids are growing up with less and less respect these days, all that "get off my lawn" stuff has legitmate roots. Lots of good, productive people grew up being hit and see no reason why they shouldnt hit their kids. That's just a fact of life, that mentality still very much exists even in people who should know better. Let alone going down the track of the entire "dont tell me how to raise my kids" factor. Which again, is real and legitimate.
The point is this is a very complicated matter. This isnt a casoe of him just getting angry and belting his kid, that's child abuse. This is a case of a man who has been brought up with the mentality that respect and discipline is beaten into you, and it's works for him, so he in turn is using what he was taught from his own cultural upbringing on his own children.
It's not an excuse, it doesnt make it ok. And even though EVERYONE agrees what he did was wrong, at the very least he is guilty of going over the top, but there is a lot of grey in this entire debate.
The answer isnt lambasting Peterson from pillar to post. He isnt a bad dude for this, just one who didnt really know any better.
IMO the NFL should reinstate him, he's already missed 9 games, fine him the 6 game cheques, which is consistant with their new policy (i.e suspended for 6 games without pay for first time offenders) and then if he's willing, make him the face of a NFL campaign to help educate the masses on why this is frowned apon
Banning him isnt going to help address the matter, education and using someone with his profile as a vehicle for that education would 100% be a better outcome than banning him.
Let him back on the feild, do his thing, entertain the fans and then after the game, let him tell them how he's learnt that we now know better than to do this to our children. Let be an advocate for a change in culture. Ask any child protection specialist, they'll tell you it's just not as simple as "they should know better and not do it"... it's not that black and white.
