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.

And no, I don’t usually “overreact” like this. My in-laws have a dry sense of humour, can be sarcastic but neither me or my dh are at the brunt of it and they don’t make unnecessary sly comments.

Omg why are you judging me like this? I hide is lot of my feelings from my kids, like I did with my DH for MANY years. I didn’t want them to have a skewed relationship with my parents despite everything so I kept quiet. Being sensitive doesn’t mean that you’re a crap apparent, being abusive however does!

Crap parent that meant to say.

@PafLeChien are you this much of a victim blaming arsehole in real life or do you just bravely save it for randoms on the Internet? Genuine question

OP please ignore. What a nasty person.

This is so sad. OP, I had an abusive childhood (my mother was the abusive one). I have a distant relationship with her but have never confronted her about it - partly because I find the idea of any sort of intimate discussion with her, any revealing of emotion, absolutely repulsive. I only ever talk to her about the weather, basically! I would rather cut my finger off than show her any emotion, including anger, or see any on her part. (Plus of course she'd never admit it, not in a million years.) Do you think there is anything similar going on with you? Is avoiding confrontation a distancing measure, rather than fear? A way of avoiding intimacy?

If so you could of course discuss it with your DC (depending on their ages) without breaking this barrier. You could ask them what they thought about the soap remark, if they thought it was ok to do that to a child, how they thought you would have felt at the time, why grandpa might have done it, and why he mentioned it now. And lead on to - how do you think I should react when you swear? What discipline is appropriate?

My parents used physical discipline as a first resort. They would slap with their hands and also sticks/canes. I'm mid forties now so this was the 80s. When the older siblings hit their teens and began to rebel, after one incident where DM told a neighbour she'd physically punished one of us for sneaking out, someone called social services. We were taken out of school and interviewed and DM only found out when we didn't come home at our usual time. That put the shits up DPs.
In their case, they didn't think that 'softer' punishments worked and were pretty proud of the fact they were strict. But when SS took us out of school the whole village knew and it really shamed them.

But it also changed them. They never physically punished us again, and they did put into place the techniques that the parenting course they were made attend. My younger siblings had a different upbringing, which I'm glad of. And I think they genuinely were glad to have found a better way of addressing misbehaviour. DF is dead now, but DM speaks of regrets she had from our childhood and praises all of us parenting (none of us have ever hit our children), and she would never make suggestions on how to discipline our children. If it wasn't for that, then I do think I'd still be very resentful of my childhood.

Thank you I will. One of the reasons I’ve kept tithings to myself all these years was fear of being told I was over reacting as in my day it seemed acceptable to hit your children and wife. Having to hear my DM being beaten was just as hard as being hit myself. As a young child I couldn’t understand why my DF would hit my DM one minute and then the next they were kissing and all happy again. I know that no relationship is perfect we all have our ups and downs but looking back now that was messed up.

I was born in 1971
My parents were far from perfect but they never ever hit me or physically abused me in any way so I dint think you can claim it was just how it was in that era

Last summer, my mother was talking to my teenage son and he made a flippant remark (to me) - she said something like "careful, I washed your Uncle's mouth out with soap when he was rude to me!"... which she did. This is DB2, who is 10 years older than me, didn't live with us growing up (he and DB1 lived with our maternal grandparents, through their own choice), and he was her GC.

He would have been maybe 5 or 6 when our mother dragged him to the bathroom and used carbolic soap and water on him - for, I think, using a swearword his new stepfather (my father) had said around him. I do wonder if this was why DB2 (who was later adopted by my father) chose to remain with our grandparents, actually. I wouldn't blame him one iota if it was.

When my mother told this to my son, a great big grin of... I don't know: pride, maybe?... on her face, he looked at me, said "did she do that to you, Mum?". Which no, she didn't. When I said that to him, he turned back to his grandmother and said "good, because if you had - I'd be reporting you for historic child abuse!"

Knocked the grin right off my mother's face.

DB2 went NC with our mother years ago - she's never met my now mid-20s year old nephew, for instance, and she was the last to know that he'd emigrated to the other side of the world a couple of years ago. He and I had an awful relationship as siblings, until very recently - caused and continued by our mother. I felt guilty for rebuilding bridges that I'd not set fire to in the first place, and he was wary of me (naturally so) in case I was a flying monkey. My son is DB2's virtual double, so it's horrifically easy for me to imagine my mother dragging him into the bathroom and "punishing" him in such a way, As my son said - it wasn't "punishment"; it was abuse.

OP, you're not being unreasonable in the slightest. If my mother had threatened my son with that at a younger age, that would have been it. As it was, when she did, he was old enough to put her down, essentially; to stand up to her, himself, and effectively warn her of his very black/white views when it comes to such things. Regardless, though, its not acceptable behaviour - past, or not!

Bu the way OP ignore the silly poster who doesn't understand why you reacted the way you did! Your suffering as a child was being made light of, and you felt unable to respond, and to stick up for the child you were, and what that child suffered. It was entirely normal to react the way you did.

Yes @Ilovemystarter That’s exactly what it is. I’m in no way afraid of either of them now. My kids have already made it clear that they were disgusted with what their grandad did. I’m sure my teenage ds swears when he’s out with friends but to be honest he’s never once swore around me or his dad. Even if he did I would deal with it very differently. I’m
Not perfect and come out with words when my kids aren’t around but to me they are just words. They might not sound nice but as long as people know when it might be appropriate to swear and when it definitely isn’t then I don’t see the problem.

I am glad that I have read this, as my mother too seems to take some bizarre pleasure in documenting various abusive punishments she inflicted on me. I used to have my hair pulled, ears pulled, regularly got slapped round the face and so forth. I was also viciously verbally belittled, including being compared to a pig. She would happily do these things in public for the tiniest infraction. She continues to think that this made her a good parent.

Oh fuck off @PafLeChien.

You’re an abuse apologist who’s parenting I’d worry about. Also, you obviously haven’t RTFT.

What is it with all these abusive parents who look back and think it was admirable, charming or funny? Dad used to talk at length about all the times he bashed me around and laugh at how funny it was. I wish we could just get them all in a room and drop a fucking car park on them.

Hmmm.

My "mom" squeezed dawn dish liquid into my mouth when I came home in second grade and called her a fucker. That shit coats the mouth 🤢 Until adulthood I could taste it every time I smelled it.

I've told that story to my oldest and laughed. I've never considered it abuse. And until she died she was my absolute best friend.

You only have to look at the number of women on here asking if their horrible, nasty, violent relationships are abusive to know how difficult it can be for people, especially kids, to recognise abuse.

It's a powerful word, and abuse is complicated. My father would never have considered himself abusive, he thought he was the good guy and a victim. Abusers are not all evil monsters with no redeeming features or good points; if they were, nobody would stick around. And it's natural to love your parents even if they did you wrong. It's complicated. Women stay in abusive relationships all the time and they always say he's a good person really, he's misunderstood, when things are good they're good and so on.

But it is abusive to force a noxious and toxic substance into a child's mouth. It always was, even when children weren't allowed to say it was. There were parents who didn't do it and it's not because they had some secret knowledge denied to everyone else. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.

QueenArseClangers
Does swearing at posters really bring anything to your arguments?
Some of us manage to express their opinion without being rude or trying to start a fight.

Some people should really be embarrassed.

As a young child I couldn’t understand why my DF would hit my DM one minute and then the next they were kissing and all happy again. I know that no relationship is perfect we all have our ups and downs but looking back now that was messed up.

Well that happened at home mind you my mum gave as good as she got she being Irish and had a real temper, she was very good at plate throwing;!!

But they loved each other in their own odd sweet way they had a great deal of respect for each other the place was warm and friendly, people were made welcome but there were no sadistic words or comments, me and sis were encouraged to do well at school and have a better life than what they did after all they got together at the end so the second world war!

But i've never raised a hand at any of my DD's ever, ex wife did once or twice but they were well bought up and are still supported well. I dote on the grand children when I can see them these odd viurus days.

It is odd to read of how some parents were proud of abusing their children I just wonder if they ever saw it as abuse?, or was it one generation handing down and on what they suffered or underwent and not seeing it any differnt?.

My mother did this.

It involved holding a bar of soap under a hot tap, turning it around and around to get it sudsy, then jamming it in my mouth and holding it there

• one hand on the soap, the other on the back of my neck.

@PafLeChien Really? I’ve expressed myself without swearing, so you can’t possibly take the moral high ground with me, yet you seem to have a problem with my post. Mumsnet have removed your post and your post only. Speaks volumes.

There seems to have been a time when it was more acceptable and expected for parenting to be about control, power and point scoring than actually raising children to be secure, balanced and developed. Hence all the parents for whom their anger was noble and justified and deserving of whatever abusive action they wanted, and their kids' anger was just something they had to repress. Obviously there are still parents like that, it just seems that as a society we have (rightly) become less tolerant of it. I remember the snacking debate coming up in the 80s and 90s and the anti smackers were always being portrayed as namby pamby and ineffectual, and of course it was always claimed that their kids were the worst behaved and the most horrible people anyone had ever known.

Some people should really be embarrassed.

Yes, you. After the really nasty and ignorant assertions you made to the OP earlier in the thread - now removed by MN. Why aren't you?

OP,

You sound so lovely.

Your story of your childhood sounds so sad, frightening and lonely.

Lots of good advice above.

You do sound as if you are struggling with your anger towards them.

Trying to push your very understandable anger down.

This is not good.

Anger is sometimes undiagnosed depression.

What I mean is that you are trying so hard to not express your anger you are at risk of harming yourself.

Your father sounds like a nasty abusive bully.

Twice a week is a huge amount to be seeing your abuser.

I cannot imagine how stressful it is for you to be in your parents company when they are clearly neither nice nor good people.

I can't see the value of having such abusive people so closely involved in your life.

I definitely think some counselling would be great for you, to help you really OWN your anger.

You have every right to be angry.

Pushing your anger down is not good for your mental health.

I would look at not seeing so much of them.

You sound like a wonderful mother, but a very sad, stressed one.

You deserve space and peace.

Learning to own your anger and perhaps standing up for yourself will help you.

You hadn't any choice as an innocent child but you do now.

If you do pull back, I think being honest with your children in an age appropriate way is the best way to go.
Your father was not a nice Dad.
He was terribly abusive and your mother stood by and allowed.
I honestly can't imagine the stress involved in being around them, being questioned and being mocked.

No wonder you are so stressed.

I think that where grandparents joke about their past abusive behaviour, it means they're unrepentant and should never be trusted with unsupervised contact with their DGC.

My DM made many mistakes when my siblings and I were growing up. She didn't keep us safe, and she was physically abusive by today's standards, but she certainly never jokes about any of it. She's shown real contrition about the mistakes she made, so that's entirely different. The key thing of course is that the parent who was genuinely abusive is dead.

I wouldn't be allowing my DM contact with my DDs if she acted like some abusive parents PPs have described, and I'm really sorry to hear that. I agree with @billy1966, OP, that suppressing your anger isn't good. I used to do that and it really eats you up inside. I'm sorry if this has already been addressed in this thread, but talking therapy would really help you to process it.