Speaking publicly for the first time since Adrian Peterson was indicted in a child abuse case in Texas, his mother told the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday her son is "trying hard to be a good parent."

"I don't care what anybody says. Most of us disciplined our kids a little more than we meant sometimes," Bonita 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."

From the article:

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.

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.

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