Mom: Adrian's a loving father

The mother of Vikings running back Adrian Peterson said Wednesday that he is "trying hard to be a good parent" even as he faces allegations that he committed child abuse when he struck the backside of his 4-year-old son with a wooden switch to discipline him.

Speaking publicly for the first time since her oldest son was indicted by a Montgomery County grand jury, Bonita Jackson said Peterson is far different from how he is being portrayed in the media. She said the 29-year-old is a loving son and father who grew up in a family where children were disciplined from an early age.

Jackson said that both she and his father, Nelson Peterson, who lives in Dallas, were "big disciplinarians" with their children as they grew up. She said she used her hand, switches and belts to occasionally spank all of her six children in order to correct their behavior.

"I don't care what anybody says. Most of us disciplined our kids a little more than we meant sometimes," Jackson, 50, said in an interview from her home in Spring, a Houston suburb. "But we were only trying to prepare them for the real world."

"When you whip those you love, it's not about abuse but love," Jackson added, accompanied by her current husband, a Baptist minister. "You want to make them understand that they did wrong."

She said her son is getting help to learn other ways of disciplining since this happened, such as having the child stand in the corner for five minutes.

Jackson said that she would be "so angry with anybody who willfully hurt her grandbabies," whom she says she loves more than her own children.

But she believes Peterson was only trying to discipline his son in the same manner he had been disciplined growing up.

"My son is not a perfect man by no means, but in the end I'm proud to be his mom," she said. "For the most part he is trying hard to be a good parent, he's working at it. People are judging him, but they don't know his heart. This was never his intent."

She said she is still in contact with the 4-year-old's mother, through text messages, and feels nothing but love for her.

"We're not mad at anybody. She's so sweet," he said of the boy's mother, who lives in Minnesota and is studying to be a nurse. "At the end of the day, we want to protect our children. It happened and so now we as a family need to work things out and move forward."

The saddest part is that Jackson and her son have been barred from any contact with the 4-year-old boy, who had once been an important part of their lives.

"But when we talk to her, we can hear him laughing and playing in the background. He sounds happy," she said. "I know his mother has much respect for Adrian. She knows he's a good father, no matter how much people attack his character. Only God can judge us."

Peterson owns a $5 million home in The Woodlands, a short drive from where the Jacksons live.

She said her son, who married in July, has six children from different mothers. He supports and sees those children often.

"He wants to be a good father to them all," she said.

While her son's success has brought him accolades, she said it also puts him in the limelight so that every nuance of his life is dissected under the microscope.

"People are cruel and forget that this is about a family struggling to survive and do what's best," she said.