To resent my DF for telling my DC......

[GoingCrazyInLockdown]

That when I was a child he washed my mouth out with soap? This happened pre lockdown when my parents came round to visit but it was brought up again the other day when my parents walked to our house and talked to us from bottom of our front garden. The first time it was brought up was because I said something silly like sod off and my DF said don’t make me wash your mouth out with soap again. My kids were like what! Then he proceeded to tell them I had a potty mouth when I was a child and that was the only way he could make me stop. Honestly I felt sick to my stomach. It’s taken me until my mid 30’s to realise that what my DF did was wrong on so many levels. I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to sit there looking so smug telling my kids what he did. Once my parents left my DC asked me a few questions as they couldn’t believe that their grandad would do something like that. But to be fair that’s because I’ve never told them what their grandad was like with me when I was a child as I don’t want to upset them.

Parents visited yesterday and my kids sat on the wall and spoke to them from a distance. I came out and somehow managed to trip over the step and I said bloody hell, which to be fair now a days is the full extent of my swearing. My DF then piped up and said, in a jokey way, that he has a bar of soap at home and he can go and get it. I honestly wanted to punch him in the face. I’d had enough so told him to go and get it but clearly it didn’t work on me when I was a child. He quickly shut up and changed the subject.

The older I’ve got the more strained my relationship has got with my parents as they’re over bearing, they try to interfere in my life, they always think they’re right and I’m wrong etc. As bad as it sounds the only good thing to come out of lockdown is that I only have to see them once or twice a week for 5 minutes from a distance.

My parents did it, it's one of the many reasons my children don't know them and never will.

I hope you've at least made it clear to your children that your father was abusive to you, and that's why that happened, and no, just because you didn't 'react' to what he said with the outrage and anger that they should expect a normal, caring parent to show at an act like that being normalised right in front of them, it doesn't mean you didn't feel that way.

Sounds like your parents are close by, which certainly makes it harder to cut them off/cut contact down to the minumum.

I don't know what to advise exactly as I was quite sure that it wasn't just that I didn't want my parents around my children, it was that I was adamant that their 'way of being' just would never become part of our lives. I needed to cut them out to be the parent I wanted to be. Sounds like you just had a moment of that too. You would want to be the parent who would say 'That's a terrible, abusive thing to do to a child. A parent who did that now, the police would punish them.'

But you couldn't... because of YOUR dynamic with your horrible father, who was stood right there playing the 'lovely grandad' that you're lying to your children that he is.

I never wanted to have that in my family life, ever.

I don't think I'd want my kids to have any relationship with them. I'd consider what he did to be abuse. Not sure I could forgive that.

Our Headteacher rubbed soap on a boy's tongue in front of the whole school assembly about 30 years ago, I was outraged (and extra careful not to say any 'bad words').

Yes a lot of what you say rings true. My DF was abusive towards my DM for a long time but now it’s like they have the perfect relationship, well to the outside world at least, but I just find it weird. I don’t judge other people for being scared to leave their abusive partners but I have to admit I do judge my DM. She could see what all of this was doing to me and my siblings and she must have known the impact it was having on us yet she stayed. My DF used to hit me quite often and she didn’t do a thing. I moved out quite young had kids got married etc and tried to put it all behind me which I managed to do for many years but things have started to come back to me, eg memories I’d put to the back of my mind and I can’t help feel this bubble of resentment inside of me.

I don’t suppose it has helped that my parents often comment on my parenting, tell me that I should do this or shouldn’t be doing that. They love to make out, especially on Facebook that we are such a close family, but that isn’t the case. It’s beyond them to behave like normal loving supportive parents, they don’t know how to. Instead they make me feel bad by making me doubt myself but try and disguise it as this is them showing that they care. Don’t get me wrong they’re interested in my kids, come to see them regularly etc but they’d rather spend stupid amounts of money buying them gifts than actually spend any time with them 1-1. Not that I have ever wanted that but then I tell them not to keep buying them things all the time as I don’t want my kids to be spoiled but they don’t listen. No surprise there though as they constantly tried to buy my love when I was a kid with over the top Christmas’s and birthdays, but looking back now there simply over compensating for their parenting being the way it was, shit!

And as for upsetting your children...

The dysfunctional dynamics in my family go further back than my parents. I witnessed many times my grandmother slagging off my mother, or (much more damagingly, I think) coming out with subtle ways of undermining her to me, of demonstrating that she thought my mother could be disregarded, that at heart my own mother was just 'my grandmother's silly kid'.

That's what your dad did to you today - showed you, in front of your children, that you can be told off/made to feel small. Oh but as a joke - of course.

It's damaging. More damaging than having them know the truth about a nasty grandparent.

I wish to goodness my mother had cut my grandmother off, I think she'd have been able to be a better parent if she had.

Well what a cross post that is!

Think about cutting them off.

You just reminded me that my mum made me lick a bar of soap after I called her a bitch. She never did it again so maybe she figured it was a bitch thing to do.

It has been hard but over the years my DF seemed to mellow and my DM seemed much happier so I never brought the past up and I wanted my kids to have a decent relationship with them. But fast forward to now, my kids are older and it’s got to a point that I see things more clearly and I’m quite bitter about my childhood and my parents. I haven’t dealt with and processed it over the years and now it feels like it’s come back to haunt me, and I have all these feelings
I don’t know what to do with.

You are completely unreasonable in allowing your children to he near a poisonous, abusive cunt like your father. (I use that word because he certainly isn't a dad).

Yeah maybe LouHotel. Glad she didn’t put you through that again. My DF did it a few times to me. He’s literally grab me and force me to open my mouth. One time I did my best to keep my mouth closed and because he couldn’t get the bar into my mouth he rubbed it all over my face in my dad eyes etc. I remember sobbing my heart out and when I walked out of the bathroom my mum was stood there and said nothing.

My Mum does this. Tells little anecdotes from my childhood that are oh so amusing but what I remember was the beating or abuse I got for them, eg I cut my own hair - don't all kids do this? And she was so furious that she attacked me and cut half of my fringe off at the scalp. It looked horrendous and I had to go around like that till it grew out. My kids mentioned one of them had cut their hair and my Mum said "now I remember a little girl who did that!" as though it was a fond memory. I was boiling with fury but just stayed silent and looked at her until she changed the subject. I don't know why they do it. Do they think we don't remember? Or are they trying to reframe the situation as a positive family member? I don't get it.

I completely get what you’re saying but my DF has never and would never hurt my DC. If I wasn’t 100% sure of this I would never have let him anywhere near them. Plus I’m pretty he knows exactly what I’d do if I ever crossed the line and it wouldn’t be pretty.

Look him dead in the eyes and say “just try it” if he says it again

Wow can’t believe your own mum did that to you. My DM never hurt me physically but she did damage in other ways. She sat back and did nothing when my DF hurt me. She was obsessed with the house being spotless all the time and I felt like I couldn’t make any mess and had to watch were i put my hands like leaning on the wall to take off my shoes. She’d go mad about that. Now she is even more of a control freak and it’s like the tables have turned and she bosses my DF around telling him to do this and that and my DF seems surprisingly content with this. My DM is obsessed about taking pictures of my kids when we are together and then you can guarantee that when I check my Facebook she’s posted pics of them usually with the words my lovely grandchildren. But it’s all bollocks. They didn’t have a normal relationship with me and they don’t really with my kids. My grandparents were lovely and whilst they didn’t have a lot of money so couldn’t spoil me, they were hands on grandparents and often had me stay over, took me on holidays, on days out etc. I have such fond memories of them but i can’t say for sure if my kids will of my parents.

I know. I should’ve said that. It’s mostly the fact he seems proud of what he did to me and felt the need to tell my children. What did he think he would achieve by doing that. I don’t get it.

Christ, I never thought that parents really did this-I thought it was an empty threat/just a saying.

I didn't have abusive parents & perhaps that's why I can't for the life of me understand why you'd let them anywhere near your own kids.

What a privilege that they don't deserve.

Just ask him straight out in front of kids if old enough "why are you so proud of abusing your daughter? Does it make you feel more of a man to tell your grandkids how you hurt your own child?"

What a cunt.

Would talk to your DC about your parents’ abuse of you.

Reduce contact and the information you share with them. And don’t let them have any unsupervised access to your DC.

Ask your DM to cease posting pictures of your DC on social media.

I say this as the DC of parents with problem parents, who took sensible measures like this, for our benefit.

I know I probably come across as weak for letting them. My DH wasn’t happy when I told him about my past as I’d kept it to myself for years. He has always thought my parents were a bit odd and he knew that there was something that didn’t feel quite right but he wasn’t sure and didn’t want to bring it up in case he upset me. I guess after I moved out my DF seemed to have become
a reformed character and him and my DM seemed to have got their relationship back on track. I know I couldn’t ever forgive if my dh was abusive towards me, but I was content with pushing things to the back of my mind, maybe in a way to protect myself, and wanted to try and move forward. It worked for years and my relationship with my parents was ok but the last couple of years things have changed again and I’m finding I have less tolerance for their bull shit.

Any time he says something like that I would calmly reply, “That is not a good memory for me.”

I guess you’ll have to explain to your children in age appropriate words that he was the type of parent that didn’t know how to parent.

I think if he mentions it again I'd say, "Well thankfully these days people are more enlightened and we recognise that kind of behaviour as abusive, so I wouldn't boast about it if I were you. I certainly won't be following your example with my own children."

I know I sound pathetic but I’m not sure I’ve got it in me to say that. Christ I can’t even say some things that aren’t meant to be offensive as my parents will flip it and become defensive like I’m attacking them. Well mostly that’s my DM. I’m not at all good with confrontation and I know my childhood has played a part in that.

The thing is, you’re following your mum’s behaviour by continuing to maintain a relationship with them aren’t you? She didn’t protect you against his abusive actions and essentially ignored it or brushed it under the carpet. By continuing to allow them normal access to your/your children’s lives you’re essentially doing the same thing, like you’re just ignoring the past abuse for want of an easy life?

Abuse is abuse. Either forgive them, address the elephant in the room and confront them, or just cut them off.

You’ve allowed them to create their own rhetoric that their abuse was normal discipline because you’ve never told them how disgusting it was. Therefore how can you be confident they won’t do anything nasty to your children, as they don’t see anything wrong with their parenting approach with you?

This thread is very upsetting as you could be talking about my childhood. My father is the same as PPs - we were on a zoom call the other day with my siblings and he tried to embarrass me with a story from my childhood. Not one person laughed or commented and he ended up looking like a dick.

OP I am very low contact with my father (he’s many miles away thank goodness) my children have very little to do with him. My grandparents were wonderful and they made out childhood more bearable and we loved spending time with them.

Out childhood = our Childhood