The Peace Rock
"Above all, I believe that there should never be any
violence. In 1978 I received a peace prize in West
Germany for my books (Pippi Longstocking), and I
gave an accepting speech that I called just that: "Never
Violence." And in that speech I told a story from my own
experience."
When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor's
wife who told me that when she was young and had her
first child, she didn't believe in striking children,
although spanking kids with a switch
pulled
from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one
day when her son was four or five, he did something that
she felt warranted a spanking - the first of his life.
And she told him that he would have to go outside and
find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone
a long time. Eventually he came back crying and said:
"Mama, I couldn't find a switch, but here's a rock that
you can throw at me."
All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation
felt from the child's point of view: that if my mother
wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she
does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And
the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both
cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen
to remind herself forever: never violence.
And that is something I think everyone should keep in
mind. Because violence begins in the nursery - one can
raise children into violence.
-Astrid Lindgren
