Whenever my brother and I got in trouble, I mean REALLY got in trouble, my dad would yell out, “Grab your ankles!” We would have to bend over at the waist and literally grab our own ankles so he could give us a good wallop on our bottoms.

Now, my dad was (and still is) a strong man, so when his hand met your hiny it hurt. A LOT. The tears jerked right out of your eyes the instant his hand came down and your rear end stung far too long afterward.

It was a pain you did not forget.

If you happened to be the SECOND one getting that spank it was much worse because you KNEW it was coming.

More often than not, though, the spank didn’t actually come. All he had to do was say “Grab your ankles!” and we usually stopped doing whatever it was that we were not supposed to be doing. Only once in awhile did we need that swift reminder of a swat on the butt.

“Grab your ankles!” was my dad’s ultimate punishment.

The Pinch is mine.

Every parent, I believe, has to have an ultimate punishment; the punishment of last resort when all other discipline strategies have failed because if the child won’t listen to you when you tell him for the umpteenth time to clean his room, he won’t listen to you when it’s something more serious like telling him not to run into a busy street.

I tried using the spank, just like my dad, as the ultimate punishment on our kids a few times, but I could never bring myself to make them grab their ankles.

It just felt weird using my dad’s signature phrase.

After spanking our kids those few times, however, I realized WHY he had us grab our ankles; it’s a whole lot easier to make firm contact with a stationary target when there aren’t any hands in the way.

Wish I had known that as a kid.

Perhaps, I didn’t want to give out the same level of pain my dad gave me. Perhaps, I just wanted to be different. I don’t really know. All I know is that I wanted to try something else as my ultimate punishment.

So I settled on The Pinch.

I learned about The Pinch from my wife, who told me about the pinches her father gave as his ultimate punishment to keep her and her nine siblings in line during Mass. The more you misbehaved, the closer you were moved toward her dad at the end of the pew. If you were sitting next to him and STILL decided to act up, he gave you a hard pinch. If you cried from that pinch, you got another one.

It was very effective.

While I’m sure my pinch is not as hard as my strong-handed farmer father-in-law’s, and I doubt it’s as tear-jerkingly painful as my dad’s spanks, it still seems to get the message across to our kids.

Of course, I always first try to redirect their behavior, sternly warn them to behave, give time-outs and threaten the pinch.

But when all those fail, I give them a pinch they will remember.

It’s my last resort, ultimate punishment.

Al Watts is the vice-president of Daddyshome, Inc. – The National At-Home Dad Network and an at-home dad of four children living in west Omaha.

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