It was at the time grandmother came for an extended visit. She was nice to have around but was clearly a no-nonsense person, who rather dominated my mother.

One day, my brother and I got home late from a trip to the mall and my mother was very upset. She announced that we were to be spanked and hauled us into the family room for the punishment. My grandmother came in to watch the spectacle, as my mother gave me a hard hairbrush spanking on the Bottom. My brother got the same treatment, and we were both left in tears by our punishments.

As we stood there , trying to simultaneously rub our stinging bottoms and wipe away the flowing tears, my grandmother looked at us thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to our mother.

“Well,” she said, “it’s clear to me you know nothing about disciplining children. I think it’s high time you learned how to raise these two properly!” Mother turned bright red but remained silent as my grandmother grabbed the hairbrush from her hand and put it down on the chair where my mother had previously been sitting.

Grandmother pulled me over to the chair and hauled me over her knee.

Then she began to smack me with the hairbrush, attacking the same spot on my bottom again and again. I went wild with the pain and writhed around on her knee. I heard her call across the room to my mother. “Hold her arms so she can’t protect that butt!” I began to plead for the spanking to stop but Mother just looked down on me sternly as she held me and Grandmother began to spank even harder.

It seemed to go on forever until she finally pushed me off her lap. Trying to rub the pain from my butt, I danced around until I realised what a show I was putting.

Grandmother pulled him over her lap tooMy mother held his arms too. My brother’s legs kicked wildly as he begged for mercy as the hairbrush smacked his bottom. Grandmother eventually pushed him off of her lap and he danced around as I had.

“Go to your rooms,” was all Grandmother said. We quickly gathered up our clothes and ran to our respective bedrooms, tears still running down our faces. Once in the privacy of my bedroom, I looked at my bottom in a mirror – it was deep red and covered with bruises too.

I just laid face down on my bed. As I did so, I could hear my grandmother yelling at my mother. Then, to my astonishment, I once again heard the unmistakeable sound of the hairbrush once again being applied to a bottom. Mother was yelping and promising to do better in the future, but eventually her words became just a crying babble. Her spanking went on for much longer than the ones her children had just received.

Then I heard both of them outside my room and my grandmother told my mother: “It’s soapsuds for you, my girl!” “Please, Mom, no! Please let me go!” I don’t know exactly what happened but it was about 15 minutes before I heard Mother walking away, still crying, followed by my grandmother’s footsteps shortly afterwards.

The next morning, my brother and I sat very gingerly at breakfast – but it was a least a day before we saw our mother sit down and even then, it was with a grimace. After that, we were always on our best behaviour when my grandmother was around – and so was my mother.