"She was a young mother in the days when people still believed in the idea of “Spare the rod and spoil the child” – or rather, she didn’t really believe in it, but one day when her little boy did something naughty, she decided he had to have a good hiding, the first one of his life. She told him to go out and find a suitably supple stick or rod for her to use. The little boy was away for a long time. He eventually came back in tears and announced: “I can’t find a rod, but here’s a stone you can throw at me.” At which point his mother also burst into tears, because it had suddenly dawned on her how her little boy must have regarded what was about to happen. He must have thought: “My mum wants to hurt me, and she can do that just as well by throwing a stone at me.”
She threw her arms round him, and they spent some time crying together. Then she placed the stone on a shelf in the kitchen, and it stayed there as a permanent reminder of the promise she had made to herself at that moment: never violence!"
-Astrid Lindgren
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