Part 1: Spankings and a Fruit Pie
There are moments in childhood that don’t feel like much at the time- a decision made in a split second or a lesson absorbed without knowing you’re absorbing it. We don’t write them down and we seldom talk about them. But somewhere in our nervous system, a rule gets made and a pattern of behavior/thinking is established .
And we’ll carry that with us until it is examined, understood and expunged.
I know this because I’m constantly doing the work to find mine. And one of the clearest examples I can point to started with a Hostess fruit pie.
The Set Up
We were not allowed to have after-school snacks as kids. When we were hungry or thirsty and made the mistake of saying so, we were told to “swallow spit” or, on a generous day, “drink some water.”
My parents packed Hostess fruit pies in their lunches. Those were not for us.
One day, they came home and somebody had eaten one. My dad found a wrapper buried in the trash.
So they lined us up- all three daughters- and asked: Who ate the Hostess fruit pie?
All three of us said we didn’t do it.
Each of us got a spanking. With a belt.
There were tears, pleading and more tears.
They lined us up again. Same question, same denials, and another round of spankings.
Also, let’s be clear- I didn’t eat that fruit pie. I didn’t even LIKE those fruit pies. (Still don’t.) At one point, in an effort to prove my innocence and end the spankings, I loudly told them so.
It didn’t matter. I think they fully intended to spank us until somebody confessed.
Eventually, my younger sister confessed. Not because she did it- but because she wanted the spankings to stop. I refusedto confess. I didn’t do it, and I wasn’t about to take the fall for somebody else.
My mother took my younger sister into the bathroom, had a quiet conversation, and when they came out- the spankings were over.
I’m fairly confident it was my older sister who ate the fruit pie. I know it wasn’t me, and I spent most of that afternoon playing with my younger sister- I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if she’d been eating a contraband fruit pie.
That was about forty years ago.
My parents have never apologized for spanking us. My sister never apologized for us getting in trouble for what she did.
Context Matters
My dad was a military man- a drill sergeant, specifically. In Basic Training, when one person did something wrong, everybody got punished. The idea was to teach soldiers to police themselves, to hold each other accountable.
It’s a common strategy in the military. It’s common in sports.
It is a terrible strategy with three kids under thirteen.
Because soldiers in Basic Training are adults who volunteered to be there. They have a shared mission, a shared identity, and a structured system designed to build cohesion under pressure.
Children at home are none of those things.
What children are is little people with developing nervous systems, trying to figure out how the world works- and what they need to do to stay safe in it. And when something happens that is painful, confusing, or unjust, their brains don’t file it under “unusual circumstance.”
They file it under Beliefs.
How Patterns Get Made
We don’t develop our patterns of behavior by sitting down and thoughtfully deciding how we’re going to respond to the world. We develop them in moments of pain, confusion, fear, and helplessness- moments when we’re small and overwhelmed (or feel small and overwhelmed), and our only goal is to survive what’s happening right now.
In that living room, facing a belt, three little girls each made a decision. They didn’t know they were making it, but their nervous systems were taking notes- and whatever they decided to do in that moment to protect themselves, to cope, or to survive, got stored.
And strategies that work under pressure tend to stick.
The problem is that the strategy developed by a frightened eight-year-old in 1985 doesn’t always work so well for the forty-eight-year-old navigating a difficult conversation at work, a conflict in a marriage, or a moment when someone accuses them of something they didn’t do.
But it fires anyway. Because it’s been on autopilot for forty years, and nobody ever went back to question whether it still made sense.
Why This Story Matters to Me- and Why I’m Telling It
I’ve spent a significant amount of time doing the work to understand my own patterns- where they came from, why they formed, and how they’ve been quietly running my life without me realizing it. Part of that work has been through Splankna, which is designed specifically to get underneath the surface-level behavior and reach the stored emotional experience underneath it.
The fruit pie incident- as absurd as it sounds- was a formative moment. Not because it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but because the decisions made in that living room shaped real, lasting patterns in three very different children.
In this series, we’re going to look at what each of those children likely decided, how those decisions grew up with us, and what it actually looks like to go back and do something about it. I’ll be talking about my own experience- including the role Splankna played in helping me unearth patterns I didn’t even know I had.
The Question
Three kids. One incident. Three very different responses.
But let me ask you this: What lesson do you think each child took away from that experience?
How did it affect the youngest, who confessed to something she didn’t do just to make the pain stop?
The middle child, who refused to confess for something she didn’t do?
The oldest, who stayed silent throughout?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
— Sheli
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