‘Spare the Rod’ Plea Sparks Responses

(Regarding) Mike Spencer’s “Family Life” (column) on “Spare the Rod”: My parents were raised in England to young adulthood. . . . I was born here--my mother did the discipline.

All my mother needed when I was young, and still does (she’s 87, I am 62), is to fix a steady gaze on me and say, “I am very disappointed in you.”

That was enough to totally destroy me and my sister and brother. I cannot recall that either parent even once struck or otherwise physically disciplined any of us.

Frank A. Anderson, Irvine