There aren’t many people defending Adrian Peterson these days, but at least he has his mom.
The Minnesota Vikings running back has drawn the wrath of public opinion after he was indicted last Friday on a charge of injury to a child. Things only got worse this week, as a report from KHOU-TV alleged that Peterson admitted to beating another one of his sons this past summer.
Peterson recently released a statement in which he claimed that the way his parents disciplined him as a child made him who he is today. Apparently his mother, Bonita Jackson, feels the same way.
“I don’t care what anybody says, most of us disciplined our kids a little more than we meant sometimes,” Jackson said in an interview with The Houston Chronicle. “But we were only trying to prepare them for the real world. When you whip those you love, it’s not about abuse, it’s about love. You want to make them understand that they did wrong.”
Jackson added that both she and Peterson’s father, Nelson Peterson, were “big disciplinarians” with all six of their children and used a variety of instruments to punish them, although, she claims, “not to the point of injury.”
She told The Chronicle that her son’s recent trials have been a “heartbreaking experience.”
“He is trying hard to be a good parent. He’s working at it. People are judging him for this one incident, but they don’t know his heart. It was never his intent to hurt his son.”
The Vikings placed Peterson on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list early Wednesday morning.
