Being smacked as a child has caused me long lasting harm

[Bibijayne]

Mid-30s. I was smacked a lot as a child. I have ASD. My parents did not smack me.until advised to by a doctor when I was 2 or 3, because I was just naughty and girls can't be autistic.

So smacked I was. A lot. Often very hard. At least once or twice a week at some points.

My parents are mortified now.... Decades later. Admit it was wrong etc.

But it meant I never felt I could go to them with problems as a child and teen. Bullying, say nothing. Sexual assault, say nothing. Eating disorder, say nothing.

And obviously, that has long standing implications for my life as an adult.

As a mum to a toddler now, it's brining a lot back. Especially how I have no good role model memories for dealing with two year old meltdowns. Learning distract, distract, distract. Which works well. But I've found reflecting on those memories is really painful.

[Bibijayne]

@Waveysnail

Yes. We now believe my mum is also autistic. She had until that point been trying to reason with me. Doctors and others told her she was silly to try and talk me round. I think there was also a bit of concern about the impact not being able to soothe me, my not sleeping etc. had on her. They were also told to just walk away and let me exhaust myself with a tantrum. Like a time out. No soothing. I once had a meltdown in the middle of town. A woman called the police because they were not comforting me. The police officer was a family friend who knew about my 'legendary tantrums' and laughed about it and waited with them for me to calm down. I don't remember this fully, but this was a story retold by my parents and extended family/ family friends throughout my childhood to emphasise how bad my tantrums were.

[Bibijayne]

Thank you @Strugglingtodomybest - I do believe having a toddler is really bringing things back. Making me reassess past experiences and their impacts.

[Redcups64]

It’s because you have had a child. You love them so much and couldn’t even muster the thought of doing it to your children like that and it brings back painful memories.

[bumblebeefairy]

Yep, this happened me too, often with implements. I remember the pain. I also remember the injustice, particularly when I was fairly objectively wrongly accused of whatever I was being punished for, but couldn't prove it.

Just because it happened various people and may have been culturally 'normal' at a time does not mean it was ever right.

[Winniewonka]

It's awful that you've had to suffer this as a child. Do you think there's a chance your Mother could have misinterpreted the Doctor's advice e.g."You need to discipline your child more firmly when they 'misbehave'!" (Which is also wrong) into You need to smack your child?.I really don't think any doctor even thirty years ago would advocate hitting a 2 year old.

[JellyNo15]

I was smacked often as a child by my mother and very rarely my dad, as we're my sisters. I don't feel it effected me but I could never have smacked my own.

[Alisonjabub]

@ShebaShimmyShake

I'm really shocked that 28% of voters have told a victim of abuse that she's being unreasonable for feeling that the abuse has caused her harm. I'm guessing they're the current crop of smackers.

Smackers always insist that nobody is harmed by it and that they know better than someone who says they definitely are. If we're lucky, we'll be told that they do it the RIGHT way. There is indeed a difference between a hysterical angry beating and a light smack, but the latter is still not acceptable and is the obvious gateway to the former. Once you've given yourself permission to hit your misbehaving toddler, it doesn't seem such a big step to slapping your teenager, and then of course you've already destroyed the main boundary that would prevent escalation. Oh, but the kids aren't damaged. The smackers say so!

If your child is old enough to be reasoned with, then for fuck's sake reason with them. If they're not, then for fuck's sake don't hit them - they can't understand why you're hitting them because they can't reason, remember??

Did any child ever suddenly STOP crying or screaming because you walloped them? Of course some prat is going to come back and say yes, but a) I doubt it and b) even if so, what, you think they stopped out of respect for you and the surroundings?

Discipline is quite obviously vital. The only way to discipline is by associating the relative negative consequences upon the action of bad behaviour. Theres a line obviously but no reason to think any decent person would cross it just because they approach it. Thats what being a good parent is.

[zigaziga]

I often hear people say that when they have children themselves they feel closer to their own parents. I don’t feel that. Parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done but equally it’s the most important thing too and it has made me look at my own childhood and question things more. I feel like I actually judge my parents more now.

Yes it was a different time etc but nowadays lots of people parent in different ways and there have been things that HV have advised that I would never do so I don’t really agree with the argument that parents were just doing what they were told to etc.

[ShebaShimmyShake]

Theres a line obviously but no reason to think any decent person would cross it just because they approach it.

No reason to think it? This thread is full of people, including me, whose experiences show that people do indeed cross it, if there is indeed an "acceptable" level of hitting a small child, which I don't believe there is. Smackers always think they're being "decent" and they haven't "crossed the line" and so on. Those of us who were raised on this shitty parenting generally disagree. Once you start hitting, you've opened the door to whatever undefined level of violence you think is OK. My parents thought they were "decent" because they never used an implement, just open hands, fists and feet. God bless! And has it occurred to you that what feels like a "light tap" for a grown adult might feel a bit different to a small child?

The general consensus on this thread and others like it, by those of us who were hit by our parents and are now old enough to understand, is that it did us harm. In many cases, it crossed this mythical line of "decency" that you're imagining, so don't tell us there's no reason to think that what happened to us would happen. In the last thread there were people who admitted they had sometimes smacked out of anger and exasperation, exactly what discipline and good parenting shouldn't be, but once you've said hitting is fine as long as you're "decent" about it...

Even those who say they weren't damaged by it are generally choosing for some reason not to hit their own children.