I read an essay on violence the other day and the author argued that violence is not instinctive; it had to be taught.

That got me thinking about a fight that I had had after school, long ago.

The fight was not of my choosing, and my opponent was bigger than me. However, I knew that I would be the physically dominant one, because this other kid did not have a violent nature.

So, we began flailing away at each other, and in the corner of my eye, I saw my mom pull up. I wanted to impress her, so I increased the ferocity and quantity of my punches until she got out of her car and yelled at me to stop.

Later, my mom castigated me for hitting the other boy, and informed me that he had asthma and it was horrible that I had been pummeling him. I felt terribly guilty and made up with the boy the next day.

I only put it together, today, 60 years later, how ironic the incident was: my mother would hit me, in a fury, with a belt or wooden coat hanger when she got angry with me.

The epiphany I had was that the rage that she inflicted on me I had passed on to that unfortunate young man.

I could emotionally revisit that moment and viscerally feel that at that moment, I had been passing the violence that I had learned from my mother onto my victim.

I guess that is why I never hit my own children, nor do they hit their children. That is not to say that children don’t need discipline.

And, here is what many people, in my experience, don’t understand: violence and discipline are not the same things. Parents must set limits.

When parents do not set limits, they create in their children, what one psychologist calls “tyrannical child syndrome.” This occurs when a child does not know his/her limits and thus becomes frightened. This fear leads to anger, and then, you have an out of control and angry “brat” on your hands.

So, the point that I am making is this: don’t hit your kids. It may make you feel better, but it does not help them. It teaches them to hit.

And, don’t let them run wild either; that will make them angry and they will probably hit out of anger in that scenario as well.

Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.