Difficult DD

I agree with this too. My parents weren't really the smacking type, but I vividly remember my mum slapping me once. She also remembers it, and feels hideously guilty.

I didn't even think she would remember tbh, but when we spoke about it, I was genuinely baffled. To be frank, I was 12 and in the throes of puberty and being horrible. I deserved a smack. It did nothing to be aside from shock me out of my horrible behaviour and make me reflect on it. Would I use it with my own children? No. But I hold no grudge or anything against my own parents.

I agree with both of you @KimberleyClark and @FrenchandSaunders however some incidents cause significant distress, and you can't blame the child because they're a child, so yeah, they stick. And once they stick it is hard to unstick them.

I agree. Our parents are human, they will have made mistakes while trying to do their best and part of growing up is recognising that.

My mum would have said the same about mine, she went to her grave not knowing. Literally everybody in the family would say my Dad is incapable of such a thing. But he did it, and my brother, who was 8 at the time, saw it too.

You’re angry that she told her child you hit her but you admit you did? So you’re angry she told her child the truth?

She’ll stop the childcare if you keep beating her over the head with it. You’ve already said yourself she doesn’t need you to do it.

Maybe my view is distorted because my parents hit me a lot and then act as if it was no big deal. The difference is, they’ve never been allowed to have my children unsupervised. Not a chance I’d be willing to take personally. Your ‘joke’ about smacking obviously hit a nerve.

She sounds like hard work. I’d let her get over it.

Well then that's on DD. If she has all this trauma around it she shouldn't leave her child with her mum. And if she's moving through it, she shouldn't be bringing it up.

I was smacked as a child. I have no grudge towards my parents about it at all.

Well you cannot possibly know that her father didn’t smack her. You say you know but you can’t.

Joking about smacking your grandchild triggered your DD. She trusts you enough to look after her DD but I think you’re the one who needs to apologise. Maybe your DD does too but you certainly do. How old is she? Because I am mid 30s and among my friends and peers smacking happened but it was certainly not the norm by the late 1990s and early 2000s. You minimise the issue for your DD and that’s why she is triggered.

I wonder if there's an underlying sense of injustice at play for you? You mention how much childcare you do, you've paid for a holiday, you do more for them than they for you etc.

Perhaps you feel that there's not enough appreciation coming your way for what you voluntarily do for them? And maybe your daughter has a lot of unsaid feelings about your the situation too.

Might explain why a caring enquiry about the dog has escalated into this.

So many layers to this, wow.
I suppose the bits that stick out to me

• the dog comment sounds more conversational than accusatory, I don't think it sounds fair that you were snapped at like you were. Perhaps it's upsetting for her to think about so she reacted badly because she was feeling emotional.

• it doesn't sound like your joke was particularly extreme or upsetting to me personally. I think this is the sort of joke both me and my mum have done with my daughter. Where we mishear the request and make a silly joke out of it a few times. (As long as your GD didn't feel threatened or scared by it, to me THATS the important thing.)

• if any one of us saw our child get assaulted, right in front of our eyes, and thought our child was at risk somehow, we would not have left them alone with the one that did it. The fact your DD happily left her with you anyway, indicates to me that she knew she was safe in your care and that you weren't going to hit her.

• I don't think it was appropriate at all for her to tell her DD that you used to hit her, then leave you 2 alone. How confusing, unnecessary and distressing for the small child. That shit needs to be dealt with, not piled onto a pre-schooler.

• Drop the husband thing. You believe in your heart he was a good man, she doesn't. Neither of you will be convinced by the other, he can't give an opinion. It won't do any good dragging that back up.

• don't demand apologies

• maybe give her a bit of breathing room, then offer support. Not in a way "I give you free child care", "I pay for your holidays" kind of way. Actually be there for her, because it doesn't sound likes she's fully coping at the moment and there's unresolved trauma there.

I was born in the early 80s, never smacked by my mum and my mum knew smacking was abuse, so I don't buy any arguments about it being a different culture then. Yeah maybe more people did it but they knew it was wrong.

Once in my teens my father lost his temper with me in the garage, threw me to the ground and kicked me in the stomach. I never told anyone about it and even if I did they probably wouldn't believe me. But he did. And yeah I'm still upset about it.

I'm not sure why you've posted on AIBU as you seem to be very clear in your head that you aren't, and only your daughter is being unreasonable regardless of what anyone says. So why bother making the thread at all?

There may be faults on both sides, tbh, but what is most striking is that your lives sound far too intertwined. Going away on holiday together isn't a good idea, for a start. It sounds like a bit of a distance from each other would do everyone a power of good.

I am sorry for your situation OP. All I can offer is my own perspective. I was terrified of my mother growing up. She smacked me hard and often, including for things like laughing at the dinner table and having an asthma attack in church (the First Aid responder had to stand between us to stop her hurting me "for embarrassing her and making that stupid noise"). My late dad sometimes smacked me too, usually at her request. One of the worst times I remember was from my dad - I had to take down my jeans and underwear to be spanked.

My brother was there for much of it. He even tried to intervene and stop some times. But now he minimises and will even say it didn't happen, because that is what he thinks our mother wants to hear.

She has no insight into the damage it has caused me, nor to the effects of other things that went on that she knew about but turned away from. When I was trying to deal with "my issues" a couple of years ago, she made me go to mediation sessions. They ended in chaos with her screaming at me again because she could not or would not accept that her actions were in any way wrong. The mediator (HER choice, all arranged by her) was stunned and put a swift end to proceedings, never to be repeated. He took me aside privately and apologised, saying he had no idea from the way she represented things to him about the true picture of things. He was horrified that he had inadvertently enabled such a scene.

Anyway, I am sorry to go on about my issues. And I am NOT saying that I disbelieve you, OP. But what I suppose I wanted to say is that my brother (I do love him very much, but he is definitely the Golden Child) now says that it did not happen like it did, that I was the problem. Whether this is, in his mind, more respectful to our late father, out of deference to mother, or to ease his own conscience. I cannot say. However that may be, a joke about a smack from someone who used to smack me, would be a difficult thing to hear. It trivialises past humiliations and hurts, however intended or perceived at the time of the smacking.

I hope that you are able to find a happier way forward with your family. But perhaps demanding "heartfelt apologies" may not be the best way to go. Recollections may vary, as they say, but it sounds like there is a lot of hurt there. I am sure that your daughter doesn't want or relish being at loggerheads with you.

I'm sorry I haven't got better advice to offer than this. Best wishes to you.

What do you want from this thread? Validation?

You're not willing to accept your failings, and you're just agreeing with those being unkind about your daughter.

Just as you did when your daughter told you something and you went behind her back to undermine her memories by getting another opinion that agrees with you.

The thing is, with childhood abuse, you often don't realise how bad it was until you have your own child and they start getting to the age where various things happened.

This is likely what's happening with your dd, and your super funny joke about smacking your granddaughter has brought back memories.

You won't accept any wrongdoing though, so there will likely be a LC or NC situation as your dad grown up.

Yeah sorry OP you've lost my sympathy - not that you needed it, I'm sure. You won't accept on any level that your perception of events are wrong. You describe her as difficult, imply she's happy to take money from you (holidays), and don't seem like you like her very much.

Making bottles in advance is not the same as assaulting children. Of course parents should be very sorry they hit children. We know how damaging it is. There have always been parents who managed not to assault their children. People who experienced violence at the hands of their carers are absolutely entitled to an apology.

Exactly this. Laugh and have fun together. Lives too short.

I’m sorry but unless you where with her every single second you don’t know that.

Look at all the people many many people who commit crimes who have even admitted they did yet their parents / partners / children would swear blind they just where not that kind of person, not a bad bone in their body, wouldn’t harm a fly.

You don’t know. You just believe/hope/trust he wouldn’t and didn’t.

That simply is not true. Many people leave their children with parents who assaulted them. Some because their parent has actually owned their behaviour and people have moved through it. Some because they know the gp would not do it to dgc, because they realise times have changed etc. There are many reasons.

The daughter is clearly unhappy with the way she was parented. The op admits assaulting her dd. What has she done to heal the trauma?

I bet you did lots of things differently years ago. I certainly did. Just off the top of my head, babies were weaned at 12 weeks, slept on their fronts under a quilt, potty training started at a year old, 24 hours worth of bottles made before bed every night. Are we now supposed to apologise our child's whole life. We all did our best, same as they do. I bet in 20 years it will be different again.