Growing up in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, for 25 years I have witnessed many children being "disciplined" in public view only to think to myself at a very young age that it looked more like child abuse.
A grown friend of mine from St. Thomas has a bad burn scar on her hand; when I asked her how she got that, she said her mother took a fork and stuck it in the gas burner on the stove then held it on her hand to teach her a lesson for something. Basically, the islands need to be educated on different types of non-abusive discipline available, especially with so many single parents, which can already be a stressful situation.
Don't let this parent get off easy; he needs to know that it is not okay what he did to his son. It is cowardly and cruel for a grown man to strike a 9-year-old boy like that.
Leah Johnson-Warner
Scottsdale, Ariz.
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