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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

in thinking that children usually realise by themselves....

23 replies

IZIAH · 26/04/2019 07:52

....that one of their parents was abusive towards the other?

My ex, was awfully abusive. I have the paperwork to prove it, but don't want to confuse my son or to be accused of poisoning.

My ex is a nasty person and isn't particularly nice to our son either, but courts say he has to go there.

Does it all usually come out in the wash?

OP posts:
IZIAH · 26/04/2019 08:22

Bump

OP posts:
regmover · 26/04/2019 08:25

I don't know. As the oldest of 3 I was always aware of the verbal and mental abuse that my father subjected my mother to. He was a horrible, horrible man. But my two siblings seemed more inclined to overlook it and now, after he's gone, they regularly go on about how lovely he was. He really wasn't, and they were there to see it.

EvilDog · 26/04/2019 08:27

Similar to regmover I’m the oldest by a good few years and remember, but I took the brunt of it as I used to shield/protect the younger kids and none of them remember

IZIAH · 26/04/2019 08:27

Gosh @regmover - that's concerning. Sorry you had to be witness to that.

OP posts:
justarandomtricycle · 26/04/2019 08:28

I have faced a similar situation and I decided to tell them when they were older rather than poison them.

Unfortunately this led to a very uncomfortable situation and the feeling I had left them more open to manipulation by an abuser than they needed to be. I am all for protecting innocence and not poisoninh, so I don't think I could have been persuaded to say something sooner, but I sometimes wonder if I should have done.

IZIAH · 26/04/2019 08:28

@EvilDog you took the brunt of it. I'm so sorry. This is all very concerning. I don't want to poison my son against his dad but would be nice to know that once he's old enough he might realise why I left.

OP posts:
IZIAH · 26/04/2019 08:29

@justarandomtricycle it's so hard to know what to do. What to say. How to say it. Whether to say it at all...

OP posts:
YetAnotherSurvivor · 26/04/2019 08:33

Absolutely, I think in most cases the children realise eventually. But then I was abused by my father and saw things no child should ever see, which obviously expedited that process.

IZIAH · 26/04/2019 08:38

@YetAnotherSurvivor that's really sad. I'm sorry you had to experience that Thanks

OP posts:
Lost5stone · 26/04/2019 08:39

Totally not the same thing as my dad wasnt abusive but my mum never said a bad word about him and I realised very early on that he was useless and selfish. Probably by 10.

IZIAH · 26/04/2019 08:40

@Lost5stone are you glad your mum never said anything? Or do you wish she had sooner?

OP posts:
Lost5stone · 26/04/2019 08:43

No I am glad I worked it out for myself. She would speak more openly once I told her I thought he was useless. But to be honest before that I probably wouldn't have liked her saying bad things about him.

queenofkale · 26/04/2019 08:52

Hmmm.

My DHs father was an abusive alcoholic, not physically abusive but verbally and emotionally. He didn't speak to him for the last 7 years of his life. His younger brother remained close and although accepting of his alcoholism never really realised how horrible he was. My DH unfortunately took the real brunt of everything protecting his mother and brother.

The brothers relationship is very strained. DMIL protected his brother from lots and it has not gone well long term for the brothers relationship.

BuzzPeakWankBobbly · 26/04/2019 08:53

I knew one of my parents was a drunk. But I don't think I knew the half of what they did to the other. Even now 30+ years later there is one incident that plays on my mind. I could never ask about it (horrible for the person) so I have to just wonder. And that wondering takes me to some grim conclusions.

ginghamtablecloths · 26/04/2019 08:58

I think that many children eventually work out for themselves if there's an abusive parent. The sad thing is that it's regarded as normal and little is said so as not to rock the boat. It's just brushed under the carpet and enables the bully to continue.

Sadly, mum pre-deceased dad by many years so we never got the chance to ask her why she put up with it.

MaudebeGonne · 26/04/2019 08:59

Similar to Lost5Stone my Dad wasn’t abusive but was a selfish lazy fucker who should have never got married. My Mum never said a word, and I would have hated any critisism of him. I figured it out for myself and we don’t really talk about i5. I feel a bit sad for her that she stayed with him - she could have had a much happier life alone. So hopefully your some will see that and will feel proud that you were brave enough to take you both out of a horrible situation.

icecreamsun · 26/04/2019 08:59

I think I mostly figured it out for myself, perhaps not that he was abusive but spending time with my dad I soon realised what sort of person he was. I realised he wss abusive when i heard my mum and older sibling talking, I always hated that I was never told anything but I understand my mum's intentions and that she wanted to protect me. She was more open with my older siblings because they were old enough to remember what it was like living with him, there was no point lying or covering anything with them. I have some memories of it but very few are negative, probably because I really adored him back then. She has been more open about with me in more recent years after i went no contact with my dad

Weirdpenguin · 26/04/2019 08:59

Sadly I don't think it always does come out in the wash. An abusive parent can be capable of manipulating the children into seeing him/her as the good guy. Sometimes they can even abuse the other parent by turning the children against them. Parents who stay with a difficult spouse are blamed for being complicit but I have seen parents who leave being subjected to alienation. I hope things do work out for you but I am sorry not to be able to reassure you that they always do. I wish CAFCASS and the family courts had better training. .

Hoppinggreen · 26/04/2019 09:11

I went NC with my father as soon as I realised what he was really like
My brother ( who is quite like him) has a completely different view of our childhood and thinks it was “fun”.
Mind you, he’s pretty deluded about a lot of thi

qazxc · 26/04/2019 09:12

I grew up in a unhealthy environment and when you are young it is hard to recognise as this is your "normal" and you don't know any different.

It's taken life experience and distance to realise how fecked up my upbringing was.
At age 40 I still come upon stuff and think, I never realised how messed up it was (for example: I was always on a diet as a young child (5 or 6) and told I was fat, but when I looked at childhood pictures of me at that age I look quite underweight).
I've also blocked some of the abuse out, my father once blurted out "well I didn't used to beat you, your mother did that". I didn't remember beatings. I remembered bruises, a doctor questioning how I had got them, not being allowed to tell anyone if I was sick/ never being taken for treatment when I was(this has caused me health issues), moving schools frequently; but I didn't remember her hitting me. Even though in retrospect she was doing all the other stuff to avoid being found out.
Also compared to DP or friends I can't remember a lot of my childhood, which makes me think I'm blocking things out.
So it might be a while for the penny to drop for your DS if left to his own devices. Maybe contact woman's aid or similar to get advice on how to talk about it in an age appropriate way.

lookingelsewhere · 26/04/2019 09:26

My NPD mother spent our entire childhood running down our father constantly. The worst insult she could throw at us if we displeased her was, "you're just like your father". My brother recently told me he was ashamed of becoming a man when he hit his teens as Mum was constantly going on about men being awful.

She would have tantrums and rows every time Dad was at home and throw stuff at him - cups of hot tea, a portable television. We all lived in fear of her rages.

She divorced my Dad when the youngest of us kids hit 16. In fact, she spent our whole childhood telling us she was just staying for us until the youngest hit 16. Way to pile the guilt on us, Mum! Hmm

There was nothing wrong with my father. He ran a business that he spent more time at than he perhaps should have, but as he told me many years later when he was dying, he felt there were fewer rows when he was out and that it wasn't good for us kids to be around those rows. That was true - she was better when my father wasn't around to vent her spleen at. As kids, we didn't get too close to him when he was around as Mum would get jealous and we'd pay for it later.

She never had any cold hard facts about what was so awful about him, but she had a habit of falling out with her own family and not talking to them for decades over nothing anyway. Meanwhile, my father never said one negative word to us as children or adults about our mother.

35 years post-divorce and Mum is still the same. She has guilted another family member into sharing a house with her and that family member's mental health has gone right down and I am quite worried about them, in fact.

So to answer the OP, despite years of indoctrination, we all realised the other parent was not the awful person they'd been made out to be.

BillyGoatGruff007 · 26/04/2019 09:59

My H grew up with an abusive parent. His father was awful; a nasty, violent bully who regularly used his fists when things didn't go his way.
My H and his siblings hated him.
And probably still do.

TheNoodlesIncident · 26/04/2019 12:44

If the child's father is a bit of a lazy arse who's usually negative about things, I wouldn't say anything about them and let the child come to their own conclusions.

It would be different if that parent was abusive though, your child is more likely to be damaged by that. So I would want to warn them in an age appropriate way that not everybody has their [the child's] best interests at heart. It is difficult, but if there is a significant risk that the ex will lie and upset your child with malicious tales/behaviours, they should be warned that people close to us don't always behave in ways we would want. So warning them without actually badmouthing anyone.

It depends on the age of the child, some become able to assess people independently earlier than others. Hopefully there will be other adults that your dc would feel comfortable speaking to about their issues - like a teacher, TA or similar - if they don't want to raise it with you and perhaps if you could stress that this is an option open to them. (I would have liked it if a member of staff at school had been available to talk to about issues that troubled me, but I never felt there was anyone I could talk to then.)

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