To think if a child accidently pours Ribena over Coco Pops instead of milk, you don't make them eat it?

[AliceAbsolum]

Me, aged 8. That memory is causing a disproportionate amount of distress. It was a lot of Ribena and I felt so sick 🙁 Or maybe I'm being a wuss and it was a proportionate punishment?

It is often seemingly little and inconsequential things like this that cause a lot of distress, because they illustrate so well that the individual made a choice to be cruel when there was no need to. It wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t a big deal, no one was harmed by the action, it was a mistake. They chose to punish when they could have been kind, they chose to humiliate and to cause the OP to feel physically sick. They chose to break her spirit rather than bolster it.

And I’m pretty sure it’s not an isolated incident.

Oh thats not very kind at all

I would have encouraged my child to taste it

Might have been lush, but if they didnt want to or it was rank i wouldn't make them

Ds1 once put sugar on his chils which was funny...but i bought him new chips

I'm not surprised it's stuck with you, OP. That was unkind. Sadly, whenever I remember my own DM, the first thing that pops into my head is of me sitting at the table filling in an UCCA form (I'm old), and her standing beside me telling me she didn't understand why I was bothering, I'd never do it, I'd never move away from home...

Some really lovely replies here. Thank you.

I'm not obsessed about it, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. Just comes into my head occasionally.
Partly I think it was stupidity on her part, she clearly lacked the skills or knowledge to bring up a child.

Aww this made me sad. No I would never do that to my daughter.

YANBU

I'm sorry your parents did that. It's cruel IMO.

It wasn't the right thing to do - and sounds an impatient response to what could have seemed like attention-seeking and wasteful behaviour.

(Not sure how Ribena and milk could be confused 'by accident' ! Not even colour-blindness would have been a reason for such an error. )

Was it part of a regular pattern of behaviour /cruelty by her? If not - forget it and move on ... or laugh.

@Purplecatshopaholic

Me too. Its damaging in so many ways. I hated eating food with other people for a long time and started eating in secret
People make mistakes and errors. All this does is show children they are ‘stupid’ and make them scared of you. It doesn’t teach them anything whatsoever

I could easily make a mistake like that today, and I’m a sensible, responsible adult. I am often away in my thoughts and I could envisage myself picking up the wrong bottle if I was feeling particularly absent minded. I’ve almost poured milk onto a plate of toast instead of into a cup of tea for example. Granted, I caught myself, but still.

And even if it was not a mistake and even if OP had been cheeky and thought to herself I’m going to try it with Ribena instead, the punishment was still disproportionate and cruel.

I hear people talk of being 'cruel to be kind'. I've tended to favour being kind to be kind, and I can't see forcing a kid to eat something, especially so disgusting a combination, as ever being constructive.

When I was 12, I use to make afternoon tea on a Sunday. Family requested tuna and ham salad sandwiches... For some reason I thought DF meant TOGETHER.. Yeah they didn't taste very nice at all.. (also made to eat a few "so they didn't go to waste" as I never listened properly)
Kinda funny now I look back on it.. Definitely learnt to use my initiative too!

Much agreed

In today’s terms that is terrible, if this was in the 1970’s I would say it’s probably what my parents would have made me do. Coco pops were a massive luxury back then.x. Try not to dwell OP it is not healthy.

Yabu. You’re talking about it being a punishment. I would have been expected to eat it not as a punishment but simply because when I was a child, both those items were expensive luxuries that were not to be wasted, even if it was accidentall

I agree that it's wrong, it was only a mistake and I couldn't imagine making DS do something like that.

I was once not given food for a day so that I would 'learn my lesson' and eat all of my tea... just me, none of my siblings had to partake. I wasn't a picky child by any means, I just didn't eat a lot. I often think to myself (now that I have a child) how can a parent do that, the logical thing to do is surely... serve me less rather than teaching me a lesson.

I will never forget once on holiday I was helping to carry BBQ food to the table and I dropped the sausages. Genuine accident but dad really went mental. I was a very clumsy child (still am). My parents showed total exasperation every time and blamed me for not being careful. I remember my grandad spilling red wine EVERYWHERE one Christmas Day, they just cleaned it up very mug 'oh dear don't worry accidents happen!' I was sat there like.... WHAT? Why does he get off so lightly???!

Ps as a science teacher who often experiences glass ware breaks etc I think there's a big difference between genuine mistakes and conscious lack of care, planning and thought.

Genuine mistakes should never be punished, we are all human, especially children.

I think as the child in the situation you remember the humiliation, so this kind of thing tends to loom large, especially if it was a total accident and/or you were a very biddable child. Ribena was very expensive and saved for illnesses when I was little, so I can imagine it being A Big Deal.

As a parent I have been a bit heavy handed at times, usually when at the end of my tether, saying something along the lines of "if you don't put that down now then.... " and then feeling I needed to follow through. I think most of us get it wrong sometimes.

I can remember being a kid and my parents were waiting for the carpet to be delivered, so bare concrete floor, and it was time for tea (dinner supper whatever you call it) walked into the room with my plate went to sit down and tilted the plate dropping the mac and cheese on the floor. My dad scraped it off the floor and told me to eat it, there were bits from the old underlay in it!

This was over 20 years ago and i havent eaten mac and cheese since.

My mother made me eat maggots. Cooked maggots, but maggots all the same. It was part of a pattern, and fairly typical behaviour for her.

I thought it was normal and it's only now when other people my age tell me that it didn't happen to them (so no, not normal for the 70's at all, just not talked about and nothing done about it) that I realise how awful my parents really were.

Why on earth is this important now in the context of your adult life!?!?

Spoken as a person who clearly has never had the moment of realisation that your parents weren’t nice people.

OP, sometimes it’s the small cruel things that stick in your mind the most. Most of the violence in my early childhood has blurred together, however I remember clearly the incidents of being made to eat something I didn’t like, or specific toys being deliberately binned. I think they stick in your mind because they are specifically cruel rather than a momentary loss of temper.

for those of you saying how could it be a mistake ... I'm in my mid 30s and just the other day put orange juice in my tea instead of milk. nothing alike but appaerntly easily done. It's very ignorant to assume just because you have never made that particular mistake other people shouldn't never mind a child.

yanbu op. did you have a difficult childhood generally and was this incident the sort of thing you dealt with regularly?

My dad once made me eat my breakfast when I said it tasted awful. I kept adding more sugar; but it tasted awful. Then, AFTER I’d finished, he started eating his and realised my elderly grandad had put salt in the sugar bowl!

That is a really cruel nasty thing to do. I can't even begin to imagine the psychology of someone who would do that. Its a deliberately humiliating and degrading punishment.

What was it meant to teach you? Not to make mistakes? Being forced to eat something that you find disgusting is, at the least, unkind, and might form a pattern of abusive behaviour.

I'm trying to make sense of a lot of incidents of harsh criticism and unkindness in childhood at the moment, I find it really hard to call it abusive, even though the effect on me as an adult has been substantial.