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.

@PumpkinKlNG

It’s funny there was a thread on here a few weeks ago where a mum hit her toddler because the toddler threw something at her and the majority of the posters were telling her it was totally understandable and even a normal reaction! I was one of the lone voices saying Erm actually no it isn’t! But apparently she was a good parent 🤷‍♀️ Mn at it’s finest

I didn't see that thread and I will cop to not following MN obsessively to make sure I'm commenting on every topic to the exact proportions of my feelings about them all. It's just an irrelevant deflection from you anyway.

Have you realised yet that you like to talk about children deserving it when you actually know very well that it's about adults losing control?

My DD12 is pretty traumatised this week as through her bedroom wall she has clearly heard next doors 9 year old getting smacked (the fathers screams of 'bend over' and then smacking over and over).

When she came rushing down to tell me she was visibly shaking. She is also scared that the next door neighbour could do something to our cats. I am in no doubt that the poor smacked child is traumatised. I have reported it of course.

I was smacked as a last resort when my mum who was one of the most patient people I knew had lost her temper. This was because I had ignored her and continued to be a pain in the butt. I'm not scarred by it at all. My father didn't smack but used hurtful words instead. 40 years later I can still remember them and his words deeply affected me. Given the choice I would rather have been smacked.

@PumpkinKlNG

Well plenty did comment on the thread, in support of the mum so there you go. I don’t smack mine but I understand smacking was more socially acceptable back when I was young and also my culture smacking is normal and most people I know where smacked growing up.

Ah ha, and there's the other one. "Smacking is fine, I deserved it, no harm, no problem...

....but I don't smack mine."

It's good you don't smack yours, but it does suggest that you do know what's wrong with it even as you weirdly try to justify it at every turn.

It's hard to see our parents' faults sometimes.

Dances that's awful 😞

@DancesWithFelines

My DD12 is pretty traumatised this week as through her bedroom wall she has clearly heard next doors 9 year old getting smacked (the fathers screams of 'bend over' and then smacking over and over).

When she came rushing down to tell me she was visibly shaking. She is also scared that the next door neighbour could do something to our cats. I am in no doubt that the poor smacked child is traumatised. I have reported it of course.

You've absolutely done the right thing.

I was slapped in the face regularly. Now I have kids of my own it just makes it sadder, that someone would do that to their own child. My mother does the same to my children so has to be closely supervised when visiting. It makes no sense to me, I thought maybe once I had kids I’d understand, but no, it seems even stranger.

@Franklyfrost

I was slapped in the face regularly. Now I have kids of my own it just makes it sadder, that someone would do that to their own child. My mother does the same to my children so has to be closely supervised when visiting. It makes no sense to me, I thought maybe once I had kids I’d understand, but no, it seems even stranger.

You'd be well within your rights not to let her see them at all.

YANBU. I hate it when people say “It didn’t do me any harm”.
Lucky you.

The absolute worse consequence for me, was that it left me with no skills or parenting techniques to discipline my own children. The way my parents dealt with bad behaviour was punishment. Nothing else. There was no patience, no time, no effort, no understanding.

I got hit when I was bad and hit when I wasn’t.

I was smacked by teachers in Primary, we all were.
I remember once I turned my head to say something to my classmate sitting behind me and teacher run to me and hit me across my head with her big fat hand.
Also teachers threw keys, chalk on us if were were not concentrating..

At home I was very rarely smacked- I would have to do something really bad for my mum smack me, maybe rarely, I can only vaguely remember once..

I was smacked as a child. Legs or bum. I’m not aware of any trauma as a result of it. I don’t even think about it unless somebody asks.

Being smacked on the face though seems to be on a different level altogether.

Well posters were falling over themselves to defend the op for hitting her child saying she was sleep deprived stressed she’s a Single mum etc, well my mum was a single mum of 6 so if people can justify and understand why a mum would hit a toddler then I can understand why my mum occasionally hit us as teens.

My boyfriend says this. Says it really shocked him to his core as a little one.

I was smacked a bit, worse than him, but it didn't really affect me.

So everyone's different and nobody's wrong

@PumpkinKlNG

Well posters were falling over themselves to defend the op for hitting her child saying she was sleep deprived stressed she’s a Single mum etc, well my mum was a single mum of 6 so if people can justify and understand why a mum would hit a toddler then I can understand why my mum occasionally hit us as teens.

It's irrelevant. That mother failed too. Stop the whataboutery and deflection. Hitting your kids is a parenting fail designed to alleviate your own strong feelings. Stop telling us that kids deserve it.

No. I was smacked and although I think it was a shitty thing to do, I don’t harbour any ill feelings about it

Whether or not deserve it I don’t hold any bad feeling and don’t feel upset about it.

@PumpkinKlNG

Whether or not deserve it I don’t hold any bad feeling and don’t feel upset about it.

Well that's great. Of course it's better when children are not damaged by bad parenting.

But stop spreading the idea that kids deserve it. Especially if what you mean is "parents are angry and frustrated".

YANBU. I was smacked as a child but it was worse than just a tap on the back of the legs. I was a little brat at times but I don’t think I deserved to be treated the way I was. My dm was too lenient and mu df was to strict so of course I pushed the boundaries. My dm couldn’t cope with me and my dsis so she used to threaten us with our dad eg just yiu wait until your dad comes home from work. I’d hear my dm tell my df whatever it was I’d done and the next thing my df legged it up the stairs and completely lost it. I was hit over the head repeatedly left sobbing on be floor. A couple of times he even dragged me to the bathroom and shoved soap in my mouth for swearing. Oh and there were spells were he would hit my mum. You wouldn’t think any of this happened now though it’s like my df has amnesia and we are one big happy family. But I’ve finally as an adult taken time to process things and I’m
at the point now we’re I resent both of my parents. They have a good relationship with my dc but I wish they didn’t in a way as I’d like to see less of them. So yeah that’s my take on it.

Nobody ‘deserves’ to be hit, least of all a child. If your two children were playing together, and one whacked the other one for hogging the toys, would you say no sweetie you deserved that because you were hogging the toys from your sister? No, you would tell the smacker that’s not what we do, we use our words and tell people if they are making us upset.

I think I only remember being smacked once. No it didn't traumatise me.

And as for the teenager who apparently deserved to be ‘punched round the room’ by her mother, I don’t think that can ever be justified. If violence is unacceptable then it’s unacceptable, it’s not okay when somebody is a certain level of irritating/upsetting to you. Otherwise where does it end?

I'm still affected by childhood smacking. If people raise their arms near me, I flinch. It's entirely involuntary and has drawn comments from friends and colleagues.

Both of my parents used to smack me. The incidences that stick in my mind are the ones where they'd accuse me of something I hadn't done and hit me across my head until I'd 'confess'.

To give my mother some credit, she recognised it as a problem and sought counselling for her rage issues (I didn't learn this until adulthood).

It definitely continues to affect my relationship with them though.

Just to add that by most people's standards I was a very well-behaved child. Top grades in school for every subject and very conscientious. Never got into trouble at school and always has glowing reports.

Didn't save me from being smacked about at home, though.

That's awful, Fatya.

No, I was hurt to leave marks too. I'd never hit DD though and never had but I'm in a different time to my parents....I know they did it as they thought only way to teach right and wrong.... they very anti it now...