For calling out my parents on abuse as a child

[Welshmum2010]

I have been thinking a lot lately about things my parents did to me as a child that are illegal now and would be classed as abuse. Because if this I don’t really want to have much to do with them but do I tell them or just reduce contact. I think if I said anything they would say all parents did it but I dont know if that’s really the case. I’m realising now I have my own children how bad it really was. I was a well behaved and polite child who did very well at school. I’d be smacked on a regular basis and this would be arranged to happen at a certain time and not just a tap on the hand at the point of doing something. I’d be sent to bed with no tea for a minor issue. I had my mouth washed out with soap on 2 occasions, once for saying a word I dint know in a sentence and another time for asking what something meant. We’re these typical in 1980s or was I harshly treated. They are very judgemental people or others for example if someone is what they would consider to be ‘common’ which now seems crazy when they used to hit kids and lock them in their room

You were hit with a belt at the age of five for spilling some milk? Your parents were massively abusive.

Surely only a psychopath could do that to a five year old. It must have hurt so much and left marks and broken skin. You didn't deserve any of that.

I’m a 90s child and smacking was not uncommon in my time. But I’ve never heard of that way of smacking - seems quite cruel to build up the anticipation like that and ruin a child’s whole day rather than get it over with.

Other things you’ve said like bed without tea were less common but still a thing. Washing mouth out with soap was threatened but I never heard of anyone it actually happened to so I think that also was an unusual punishment for the time.

How are your parents now? Are they kinder to you as an adult child? Or does the same cruelty show up in other ways? I think that should determine your approach on whether it’s worth raising it or not.

No, this sort of abusive parenting was definitely NOT common in the 1980s, and hadn't been since the 1950s/60s when post-war society largely woke up to treating children as something more than an income stream. Sending you up a chimney ended in Victorian times, then by the 1950s/60s you left school at 14, got a job, and handed your wages over. By the 1980s you were in school until 16 and society was investing more in the next generation, and that included not just education but child welfare too. What was common was for mothers to decide they were going to raise their children differently from how their mothers had raised them (fathers were still mainly in the background), and that included no smacking.

Your parents were abusers, and they won't have changed. What particularly marks them as abusive was that you were not smacked in direct response to you misbehaving, you were told in advance that you would be smacked later - so the punishment was both the smack and the hours of dread waiting to be smacked. I doubt this behaviour of your parents would have been common in any era.

Whether you want to hear them deny it or just cut straight to having nothing to do with them depends on you. They are extremely unlikely to accept they were abusive, and hearing them deny it could really hurt you.

All those saying it was common either didn't live through the 1980s or themselves came from very abusive families.

Op - what is your relationship like now? I am willing to guess if you had been smacked, but unconditionally loved and valued, then you wouldn’t feel like you today. You would be more forgiving, I am assuming. I get the feeling there is more to this.

80’s child here I was smacked pretty much for any slight mistake, ie a whack with the hairbrush to the back of the legs if I wriggled when having my hair brushed. Weren’t allowed to leave the table unless we had eaten what was in front of us, even if our parents had served something like liver which I hated (still do).
My DH same age remembers his mouth being washed out with soap for using a swear word once, he was also smacked as a child.
I don’t smack my children, I don’t serve them food they hate and would never dream of washing their mouth out with soap.
My parents parented us how they were parented, they didn’t think about it and to be honest they believe children were better behaved because of how discipline was doled out in previous generations.
There is a little point in looking back I find, my parents did the best with the knowledge and skills they had at the time, we know a lot more now and as a consequence parent differently with the laws changing to support that, as they should.

But does "they were different times" also apply to men who sexually harassed women in decades past? My mum was sexually harassed by her employer in the 80s, and after she left the job she found out he had done the same to other girls he'd employed. It wasn't seen as worthy of going to the police over in those days, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a predator.

I grew up the same, my parents are people pleasers to everyone else but were so different behind closed doors. I used to dread every football match of my Dads favourite team because god help me if they lost. I made sure I would play out during that time but obviously can’t be out all the time. My Mam was just as bad when I started getting older aswell. I’ve had chairs thrown at me, hitting my face that much it throbbed for ages after… I was also a good kid, tried my best in school etc.
When I had my daughter 10 yrs ago, I put them off babysitting when they would constantly ask. Then one day I told them it was because they were violent at home and if my daughter made a mess or anything at their home, I don’t think they would calmly resolve it like I would.
Fast forward a few years, they seemed calmer and they had a tradition of taking my daughter to the pantomime and things like that until she felt too old for it.
I will never understand it, but I’m glad I don’t. Do better than them and trust your gut.

• Edited to say I grew up in the 90s

It really surprises me to read that people think that this was normal for the 80s.

I grew up in the 60s & as far as I'm aware it wasn't the norm then.

I know that my mum, who was born in the 30s wasn't smacked.

Sadly my dad (born in the 30s) was, although not routinely & his sisters never were.

I had thought that theirs was the last generation where it was so commonplace for some.

How old were you when your face was rubbed in wee or poo if you wet or soiled yourself? I can't believe what I am reading. That is the behaviour of a sadistic abuser, not a loving parent.

I can’t believe the responses. This is abuse, and it will likely have had some impact on you, regardless of whether it was normalised.
It may not help to call it out, but maybe you can get some counselling to process it.

I think there may be a difference between what people are seeing as normal - yours does sound like organised abuse - the storing up smacks and washing your mouth out when you hadn’t done anything - is it that they used punishment sanctioned by society but inappropriately?

the fact that you don’t feel loved is in there now too

Ive always been told you can still have your feelings about it

and I know plenty of parents of that era that would never have smacked and cherished their children instead

Do you hate them now?
Like why would you decide to go NC now?
Are you that traumatised?
I went through some of that and it doesn't bother me at all.
Like it's such a long time ago!
Noone does that anymore and good riddance to that but what's happened that's making you think of this now?
Why not 10 years ago?

I would say they were common. 'Spare the rod, spoil the child' was a common saying - that didn't come from nowhere. I think people forget that corporal punishment was common and legal until relatively recently. Personally I wouldn't have called what you have described as abuse, but you are entitled to reduce contact if you want to.

This was abuse at any time, anywhere.

What you’ve described isn’t normal even for the time. Yes children were smacked but adding them up to deliver later on a regular basis is just nasty abusive behaviour. I also don’t know anyone who had their mouth washed out with soap in the 80s - possibly the 60s/70s but not the 80s. It also sounds like your parents have continued to be unkind to you which is reason enough for you to cut contact if that’s what you want to do.

Because we are socially conditioned to believe that cutting of parents, especially mothers, is just the worst thing you can do.

Plus, this thread is a great example of why people feel they can't go no contact with their parents - because everything is so normalised or brushed off.

We are told to just let it go.....
What's the point in bringing it up now?
Etc etc etc

But that doesn't men the trauma goes away or that the feelings it causes can simply be ignored.

Well said - it’s even harder when you are an adult and live separately etc but it doesn’t go away - how you felt when younger esp if it’s dismissed

My chldre

Yes, this verse from Proverbs has been used to justify corporal punishment, and many Christian parents have believed they should smack their children, my DM once quoted it! In fact, text isn't even talking about corporal punishment at all, the ‘rod’ refers to the rod of instruction.

That’s interesting about rod of instructions.

It refers to instruction not punishment anyway, which makes sense in wisdom literature. It certainly isn't a parenting instruction manual!

Oops, distracted.

My children were born early 80s. Smacking was not in our parenting arsenal, nor was washing mouth out or withholding food. We used time out, as in go to your room or into the garden, we will all try to calm ourselves down, and come back together when we’ve all figured out a different way to behave.

Looking back, I do not recall friends or family using any of the strategies described by the OP.

I was born late 1950s. There was the occasional smack, always reactive never scheduled, no soap washing or sending to bed without food. I remember my mother, who was not noted for her gentle or soft approach, deploring the soap in mouth as cruel and old fashioned. There are things my parents did that i think were abusive but not those.

My experience is that the techniques described were not usual in the 80s.

I haven’t physically abused or neglected them. What could be that harmful that we do now and don’t know the effects. They knew hitting hurt

I think there’s balance to be struck - a lot of our parents were doing their best with the information that they had at the time. They will also have been parenting through the lens of their own life experiences. My immigrant parents knew life in their home country to be harsh and tough- especially to those who didn’t obtain superior educational qualifications / a professional job. So my parents had very high expectations for us and their parenting reflected that - but they did it as a form of love so we could avoid the life-threatening consequences of academic failure (as they perceived it).

Yes that might mean we had some traumatic childhood experiences but it does not necessarily mean that we need to raise those issues with them unless the abuse still shows up in the relationship in other ways.

An example I have is cry it out. I used to do that along with the naughty step with my eldest. But when I knew better I did better. If I could go back I’d change my methods but I can’t really - all that dwelling on it does is deepen the regret and keep me in the past. Better for me to work on trying to be a better parent each day.

Similarly, our parents may not realise that they did anything wrong, and even if they were informed, they can’t go back and change their parenting style. I suspect OPs parents aren’t very loving in general and that’s why she’s still feeling the way she does about the harsh parenting today.

I left home when I was 20 in order to go to Uni and I was obviously still in contact with my mom and saw her 3-4 times a month, but she was enough of a distance away from me that she wasn't overly involved in my life. Prior to that, when I was growing up I had always just told myself I just had a mum who was "really strict" and didn't really give it much thought. (Now I know I just didn't want to face what kind of mother I had).

As the decades passed I still lived near my mum and our lives ticked along nicely. To everyone else we looked like we had a pretty normal mother and daughter relationship.

Then when I was 40 years old she moved house and moved a lot closer to me, and her suddenly being a much more active part of my life, and seeing her at least 3 times a week, made everything start coming back to me again. This time I saw it all differently though as I was a mother myself by that point, and I struggled to cope with the idea that a loving mother could treat her child in the way she'd treated me. My entire viewpoint of my childhood had shifted.

When she started being actively in my life again, I began seeing her nasty, manipulative and controlling behaviours all over again and I realised it wasn't very easy to keep all the bad memories of my childhood pushed to the back of my mind when my mother was in my life every day. I felt so much anger towards her.

Ultimately I just couldn't suppress it anymore and I had to face it.

Going NC isn't easy, but everyone has a breaking point where they realise that emotionally they just can't cope with having someone in their life anymore.