Traumatised by being smacked

[Babyparrotdog]

Sounds dramatic to some maybe but am I the only one who feels they are genuinely traumatised from being ‘smacked’ as a child? I feel so much worse about it since having my own child.

I also rememver my brother getting hit a lot, and my father saying, numerous times, he'd give him a "thick ear".

Interestingly, the day my brother hit back (which is a natural reaction after years of abuse), he had to leave the family home and it was the talk of the family about how my brother had hit our father.

Another reason I despise their actions. The level of hypocrisy was something else. Made worse because Foster parents were supposed to make your life better, right?

I'm not so traumatised by getting a smack on the bum, although I don't agree with smacking.

I am traumatised by the way my mum would suddenly lash out and and slap my face when I was in my teens. It happened too often and the pain was acute. She was always threatening to slap me as well.

She was a cold woman. Never came to see if I was ok and never apologised.

Personally no. Got smacked (vaguely) regularly and quite hard sometimes but I've never had an issue with it. For some others it's been an issue. I guess it possibly depends on what the rest of your family life was like and if smacking was just part of a bigger issue at home.

It wasn't the smacking itself that was traumatising but the 'humiliation' of it all.

Parents and grandparents always made lots of threats to me and my siblings... 'I'll pull those knickers down in front of everyone and rattle your behind'. Sometimes such threats were actually carried out and it would be repeated smacking on the bare buttocks in front of whoever was there (family, friends, local park, school gates etc) until your bottom was glowing red, hot and sore!

Yes it definitely affected my future relationships.

My parents didn't beat us or anything but would sporadically give us a stinging slap round the legs (or the head for my brother ) while lashing out if they were frustrated. The fact it was always done in anger and it was never predictable - what you could get slapped for one day would be fine the next - meant it was often the shock of it that hurt more than anything.

It made me quite nervous in other relationships growing up, I didn't really know how to handle conflict. The opposite of what I want for my daughters.

My parents weren't bad people, just quite immature and unable to control their own difficult emotions.

To echo @SquirryTheSquirrel and @Fatya I too was a high-achieving student and have become a people pleaser as an adult, often to my own detriment. So, bad behaviour wasn't really an excuse for slapping me - I was a regular kid, no bad behaviour. I hardly went out, didn't drink as a teen or any other behaviour that might've been perceived as needing chastisement. My DM lashed out mostly because of frustration and she was/is quick to anger.

Another thing a PP said which has really resonated with me: my parents modelled smacking and shouting as methods for dealing with children when they misbehave. I have to fight every instinct not to parent in the same way. When I had PND I slapped a very small DD across her leg and am still ashamed of it.

My brother pointed out that my parents only ever smacked us and smacked us hard when we misbehaved in public - we could behave appallingly and be completely feral at home but in public we had to present as the model family - their smacking was a reaction to their embarrassment - the biggest sin of them all!.

Why anyone would want to physically hurt a child, who has no means to defend themselves, is beyond me. And I'm not on about a tap on the bottom, although still not great, is it?

I'm my opinion, there is NO excuse. Work colleagues, partners, etc have made me more angry than my children ever have, but I have never lashed out and hit those people.

Let's be honest, people hit there kids because they can get away with it.

Any parent who does this is not, in my opinion, a parent that shows unconditional love. I do not physically hurt the things that I love, including my dogs.

I think some people on here would rather internalise the mistreatment they had rather than admit that their parents' actions were inhumane. After all, they are our parents, and we are meant to hold them in high regards, right?

Wrong.

their*

If it leaves marks it's not smacking, it's beating. Massive difference imo

@Annoyedanddissapointed

If it leaves marks it's not smacking, it's beating. Massive difference imo

Smacking is not ok, beating is not ok. Physically attacking someone is not ok.

"..repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses"

• Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse

There is a spectrum of shitness for this, and if you push me I'll have to concede that the "tap" everyone insists they give (does it feel that way to someone a third of your size, with the accompanying fear?) isn't as shit as a hard beating. It's still nothing but a spectrum of shit though. And if your benchmark for your shit parenting is how much of a mark you do or don't leave...

It's still nothing but a spectrum of shit though

Exactly this.

Smacking is just a nice way of saying hitting. It’s never ok to hit a child, I don’t care if the hitting doesn’t leave marks.

People should challenge the use of the word smacking when they see it being used. It glosses over and minimises the reality of what’s happening to a child.

I remember forcing myself not to cry after being smacked. Which would make my mother hit me again. And again. And again. My father stopped her in the end.

The smacking stopped when I grabbed her hand and threatened to snap her wrist.

dentydown, yes. My sister used to have to cry, when she was smacked, or else it would make my mum really angry. Psychological /emotional abuse is just as damaging. Disgusting behaviour from so called care givers.

You are not wrong to feel traumatised as you feel how you feel.

What is wrong is others (not OP) telling everyone who was physically punished how they feel as though it’s a blanket feeling.

I’m old and grew up in the age of corporal punishment, cane at school and the belt/strap at home or if mum the wooden spoon. Some siblings still have physical scars. However, it was just the done thing at the time and patents were not horrid or uncaring. The reverse in fact in that they thought it was their duty to make you a good citizen and if they didn’t then they had failed you. Hurt like fuck at the time and the saying couldn’t sit down for a week was true but it did make siblings and myself the people we are today and often when we are together and taking a trip down memory lane we have a bit of a laugh about it. I appreciate everyone is different though.

Should add, the one we laugh about the most is one of us getting hit with the wooden spoon (by mum). The spoon broke which made mum irate as we had broken her good spoon. The rest of us found it funny and laughed so then we all copped it with the strap when dad got home. Several decades later we still crack up remembering the look on mums face when that spoon broke and all agree the belting we all got afterwards was well worth the laughter at the time as was most of the stuff we did in order to be punished.

I was smacked a lot by both my parents, probably more viciously than most but certainly it never caused injury or marks or anything. Now I'm in my 20s, I realise how much it's messed me up. I have always had this gut feeling that romantic partners will hit me one day, and that it will be my fault because I pushed them to it by being annoying.

Now luckily I'm married to a wonderful man who I absolutely know would never ever do that, but if I annoy him there's a part of me deep inside that's preparing to be hit. The worst part is that whilst I absolutely know that no one should ever hit someone else and there is never ever an excuse, if I were to be hit by my partner I truly don't think I'd leave him because it's so normalised in my brain that if someone hits me, it's my fault for being rude, for being annoying, for being disrespectful.

It really upsets me to think about. It's silly really because I do know my partner would never, but I feel ashamed about the fact that I would probably just accept the behaviour.

I can say with absolute confidence that I would never lay a finger on my child. It just seems so utterly wrong to me, and it makes me feel sick to think about. I don't think it's right to teach children that there's ever an acceptable scenario where they deserve to be hit or abused.

but it did make siblings and myself the people we are today

How did being hit make you the people you are today. I have never understood that comment?

Oh also I'd like to add that throughout my childhood I thoroughly believed I was an evil child and that's why my parents had to hit me. It felt like this horrible secret that I had to live with, that if anyone else knew who I truly was and how I behaved at home then they would hit me too. It stopped me from wanting to be close to other family members.

Looking back and after having frank conversations with my mother about it, I was actually a pretty well behaved child. I did really well in school, and neither me or my mum can name a single notable occasion of bad behaviour from me. The only thing was I was a bit of a sarky mare. But I never got in trouble at school, I never did anything at all remarkable. And yet to this day I still feel like I'm a bad person despite not really knowing why

What is wrong is others (not OP) telling everyone who was physically punished how they feel as though it’s a blanket feeling.

If that's directed at me, that was not my intention. I'm looking at the actions of the adult, not the child. You are, of course, well within your rights not to feel fazed.

However, more often than not, people who have been at the end of their parents' anger, feel traumatised.

My trauma comes from watching my sister being beaten. Like you, it doesn't seem to have affected her. That does not make the actions of my parents more palatable.

And yet to this day I still feel like I'm a bad person despite not really knowing why

You were the scapegoat; someone to take their anger out on.

You see, their narrative was that you were naughty and needing punishing, although you now know this not to be true.

A similar narrative was used on my sister. She was this evil, manipulative child who needed severely punishing. Truth be told, she was a well behaved, kind child. I, on the other hand, was a bit of a handful. But if they had laid a hand on me, I would have hit them back, in defiance. So, they decided to label me schizophrenic, instead

I reported them to the police for the abuse of my sister. But my sister felt guilty pressing charges, and didn't. She was annoyed with me for pursuing it (which I kind of understand, TBH).

Well I'm not going to tell you how you feel, HoppingPavlova, but I am going to tell you that is fucked up. I absolutely understand using humour as a defence against it, definitely when your mother destroyed her preferred tool of assault, but it's not the beating of children that's funny.

Everything that happens to us makes us the people we are today. That's just a neutral fact, not necessarily a good or bad thing. Is it good that someone has grown up to think children deserve to be hit or that it's character building to be beaten so hard that it leaves you injured for a week?

The smacking stopped when I grabbed her hand and threatened to snap her wrist.

Haha. Amazing how many parents who just can't be expected to control themselves or couldn't possibly find any other method of resolution suddenly have alternatives when they face getting bashed right back. Alternatively, I suppose some parents see it through and end up having an actual brawl with their adult or nearly adult children, but it's still not exactly a ringing endorsement of their amazing parenting, is it?