To say that making your child eat cigarettes as punishment is abuse?

[Roostersmum2]

DH has just told me that his brother, about 14 at the time, was forced to eat cigarettes after being caught stealing them from their mums packet. He then added that his gran chimed in and said that she should have made him smoke the whole packet.

DH is virtually no contact with his mum for reasons that are nothing to do with this, but that is abuse isn't it?

One of my flatmates in my early 20s told me his dad had made him smoke a whole pack of 20 after he caught him pinching one.

Things like that happened more often in the past but that doesn’t mean they weren’t abusive.
I am a psychotherapist and work mainly with young adults. I know from professional experience and my own therapy how hard it can be to recognise and acknowledge abuse from parents. It’s all too easy to assume that because what happens to us growing up is our norm that is actually normal.

I have seen this many times with my own patients who accept horrendous behaviour from their parents as ‘discipline’ and assume they deserve it but it took me over 6 years of weekly therapy to finally realise that my own mum’s punishments in my childhood were actually a total abuse of her power over me. It was a very painful discovery but the relief of finally recognising it as abuse was powerful.

Even now my adult children and husband don’t know how bad things were for me and my siblings and how cruel my mum was. Even after years of therapy I still feel as if I were in some way responsible for what she did and so I cover it up in shame. Cognitively I know that’s nonsense but the formative years of abuse have shaped my emotions. I’m sure there’s an element of that for the OPs husband too.

OP Would you feel differently if you could imagine that your MIL had the opportunity to post on MN at the time, and that had been the advice she had been given to protect her child from acquiring an addictive habit?

OP Would you feel differently if you could imagine that your MIL had the opportunity to post on MN at the time, and that had been the advice she had been given to protect her child from acquiring an addictive habit

Absolutely not. It didn't work regardless as BIL is still a smoker now.

Obviously it didn't work. What I am trying to say is that she believed it may stop him smoking, the same way as people in the past believed physical chastisement was effective.

According to today’s definition nearly all children were abused in the past. However awful this was fairly common so abuse yes but societies accepted ways.

Prior to the late 1800s abusing children in this fashion was not the norm. Abuse was popularized in child rearing advice for parents publications that asserted failure to enforce strict obedience with corporal punishment would 'spoil' a child.
To this day there are people who claim that treating a child like an autonomous human being spoils them.

I am interested to know if OP DH smokes now. It should have been v strong deterrent.

It was fairly common in the 60s, 70s.
I had the paddle a few times and once at school even.

My parents had the look down.
That was enough for us to behave 99% of the time.

I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction with children ruling the roost. Some talking to and treating their parents like dirty dogs. Hitting and swearing.

Of course its abuse. Obviously attitudes have changed on things like smacking, but making a child eat cigarettes is the behavior of a sadist.

Nicotine is a poisonous substance.

My wee sister was running around shortly before going to nursery, with THREE BOTTLES; ONE IN EACH HAND AND ONE IN HER MOUTH:My Mum decided it was "time". She got some awful tasting stuff and kept it by the sink. There was a cat who would come to visit - he was called "Noddy" my sister loved him, but my Mum told my sister that the cat had peed on her bottles.My sister would see my Mum washing the teets but sneakily dipping them into the whatever it was.It must have been so horrible my sister gave up the same day. I happy to say that she has grown up a well balanced person and will be 60 this year.- Did my Mum practice child abuse ?

Just because we survive does not mean we were not abused.

Different times.

People used to do that to kids.

These type of punishments aren't sadistic per se, in that it's very likely the person administering them didn't derive pleasure from them.

Oh some people definitely did.

My mother would brag about the marks she left on my legs from 'smacking'.

I was basically a piece of property.

Mine was more psychological than physical. This was because for the most part I was very very very good having witnessed what would happen if I stepped out of line and spend a lot of time hiding, alone in my bedroom. My brother and dog bore the brunt of the physical stuff. According to him he is unaffected and physical punishment is ok. Right oh. We are nc because he is a physical threat to me.

I remember being absolutely hysterical when my father was going to hit me when I was 7/8. I was trying to escape and he grabbed me. I was hysterical, screaming the house down. He was so shocked that he didn’t carry it through. I still don’t know how to feel about that. My brother otoh had always just taken it. He certainly never hit me after that. I don’t remember him hitting my brother again. My mother continued to hit me.

As for some of the punishments. I sucked my thumb Plan. Awful awful. As is the cigarette eating and other things described. My ex told me his father made him smoke the entire packet and seemed to think it was funny. That would have happened in the late 80’s. Washing mouths out with soap was only something I read about in books written perhaps in the 50’s / 60’s.

I do struggle with comments that this was across the board normal. I am late 40’s and was friends with people, who grew up in households, where I knew at the time physical punishments were not dished out.

I think the soap in the mouth, making kids eat cigarettes, or smoke all of them, were more common punishments back in the 70's and 80's, than people realise.

None were ever done to me, but I know plenty of people to which is has, and many on MN.

I thinking people judge the parenting of back then, too harshly. I'm not saying it would be ok today, because things have changed, and views have changed. I'm just saying you can't use your views of today, to comment on what the parenting of that era was.

If we were to class this as abuse then it potentially changes the accepted demographic of historical abusers as many mothers now fit this criteria.

Definitely abuse. My father (abusive in every way possible) forced me to smoke a carton of 200 cigarettes when I was 12. I’m nearly 40 and have never managed to quit successfully - of all the things he did, this might be the worst in terms of longterm impact and damage.

I agree it's not wrong to discuss historical abuse but I think the thread needs a trigger warning.

IgiveupallthenamesIwantedareg0

Could your mother have done a bit more forward planning and gradually weaned your sister off the bottles?
Should a child pay for a parent's lack of planning or organisation?
How was your sister able to get her hands on three bottles?
Should an animal a child loves be included as a villain in a story that is part of a plan to remove a comfort object from a child?

There were many small cruelties in your narrative.

When my mum caught my brother smoking she made him smoke a whole pack of 20. I’ll never forget him being sick and crying. (I was in the next room) I went on to smoke but she never made me. I am a stronger character than my brother and I always fought back. He’s ended up with a bullying wife.

My mum used to be horrible when drunk, still has bit of a drinking problem.

WTF!! It’s the sort of thing parents threaten but I never realised they actually did. How dreadful, I’m sure they did worse too.

Sadly so much of this was not unusual. I've heard of the eating cigarettes, soap in mouth, chilli sauce for kids who sucked their thumb or tongue.

I know someone who was in a children's home and the nuns would put the bedsheets over her head when she wet herself. How cruel for people who are this position to do.

It was bad enough that she was in there because she was biracial and her maternal grandparents wouldn't allow her mum to bring her home because of the shame that their granddaughter had a black father.

All these things are abusive, but I don't think they realised it at the time.

Same as going to bed with no dinner...it's abusive.

I'm so glad it's not as bad as that anymore, but child abuse is still a part of our society sadly.