Olive Branch

Right now, it feels like my petition to Amazon is just a very small cog in a very big wheel of change. Particularly in America, the issue of 'spanking' or 'smacking' is being hotly debated, and many people are speaking out for the rights of children. Watching and reading the various articles and discussions has had me wondering, if you are a parent right now who does 'spank', and you feel persuaded that perhaps you have made a wrong choice, and would like to do things differently - where do you turn?

Following conversations with Dara Stoltzfus, who wrote this guest post back in October about her own experiences with moving beyond 'spanking', we felt that we wished to do something to help such parents who no longer wish to smack their children. We decided to create an online community, via a facebook page, and together we have set up Olive Branch.

Olive Branch is an online community primarily for parents who have formerly used corporal punishment but who have now stopped, or are wishing to stop. We hope to create a place to find alternative ways to handle parenting situations, share information, and offer and receive support.

Olive Branch might be helpful to those of you who:

• currently smack, spank or physically punish your children, but would like to find an alternative approach.
• have smacked or spanked in the past, but are now trying to parent without corporal punishment, and would like to find support in this choice, and perhaps help others
• have never physically punished your children and feel you would like to help others to parent without corporal punishment
• are an individual or organisation who would like to offer information about parenting without corporal punishment

Olive Branch welcomes people of all nationalities and cultural backgrounds, of all faiths and none. We seek to create a safe and respectful environment in which we can learn from each other and move forward towards gentler parenting approaches.

Please let other individuals and organisations know about Olive Branch. Thank you! Together we can find better ways.