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

I was born in '66
There's a fine line between discipline and cruelty
Unfortunately my Mother crossed the line frequently and because of that I gravitated more to my lovely Dad, which then caused more problems etc
I didn't feel safe with her, she's now nearly 90 and throughout the years she's become more verbally aggressive as the days of hitting me have long gone
I moved 100 miles away to get away from her
I can't wait for her to die to be honest and those that are supporting her will be told one day what an absolute bastard she was

I hear you OP

@Welshmum2010 it is up to you to decide what relationship you want to have with your parents and if you want to confront them about how they parented you.

I was raised a child in the 70s & a teen in the 80s and was walloped regularly, hit with kitchen implements, went without food as a punishment, was forbidden from leaving my room as punishment and we were also hit at school too. I think my upbringing was at the harsher end of the spectrum but was by no means uncommon.

I know I'm safe now and that the past that I experienced only exists inside my mind, so it is entirely up to me how much I let it haunt me. The present and the future is all mine and I get to decide who is in my life and who isn't. If that isn't your parents for you @Welshmum2010, then that is your choice as a fully grown adult. The only person you have to be sure is comfortable with that choice is you. I hope you find peace, whatever you decide to do.

It wasn't that long ago it was banned...

I think there is a spectrum - yes kids were smacked, but how often. I always wonder if those who say "didn't do me any harm" were given a small smack when they had pushed every boundary known to man and that was all - very different to a parent who smacked every day for the slightest reason! The soap thing, I never knew anyone who received that as a punishment (I'm mid 50s). Only you know the overall picture of how you were treated OP. It's more than "everyone did it/it was standard punishment".

But it was normal up to the late 20th century. You must know that historically life was much harsher for children. However, the fact that it was normal doesn't mean that it was right, any more than sending children up chimneys or down mines was right.

I’m not convinced that smacking was normal after the 80s when corporal punishment was banned in schools. (I have vivid memories of being smacked in schools during the 70s.)

I grew up in the 1980s and my mum was a naturally “gentle” parent. She used reasoning not aggression. We were never hit, or anything like that. She instilled respect and discipline by modelling respectful behaviour. She was not a soft touch. She just nurtured us.

she left school at 14 and was an economic immigrant to England from Ireland. She learned to parent from her own mother (my granny) who was equally as loving and patient.

i think it’s unfair to say this kind if abuse was normal or accepted. My mum certainly never held that view.

i remember being at a friends house and watching her dad smack her little sister in a completely uncontrolled way. He lost it and he was lashing out and shouting. It upset me so much I asked to go home. I had never seen anything like that.

i think you have broken the cycle in the way your parent your own kids. This is hard to do. My husband had a violent and traumatic upbringing and it has been hard to break the cycle.

if your parents aren’t open to taking responsibility then you may be wasting your time. And it may cause you more hurt. But I understand the importance of having your experience and feelings validated.

When I had my counselling I learnt to accept that all parents are responsible for the choices they make.

For every poster on here who is giving their horrific examples of the physical punishment they received but choose to brush it off, your parents chose to do that to you. It wasn’t normal for parents to physically abuse their children. It isn’t normal to feel comfortable with hurting your children and be prepared to do it.

There are the parents who choose to hurt their children and those who choose not to because they know it’s wrong, but more importantly because they don’t want to hurt their children because the thought of it is abhorrent.

I was going to say times change and this kind of thing was seen as acceptable in the 1970s/80s. But you say 1990s.
I brought my kids up in the 1990s and this wasn't acceptable or common then. It also sounds quite extreme by the way you describe it.
I don't think it's unreasonable to call your parents out on it. Let them know how you feel.
Whether I went nc with them or not would depend on their response.

Ok so you don’t think cultural, generational etc factors play any role at all?

I'm sorry you were treated like that.

This. If you're looking for a stick to beat your parents with you'll always be able to find one. If you're looking for someone else to blame for your problems you'll always be able to find someone. If you want to be a happy functioning adult pack this s* in and get on your life. Constantly seeking victimhood is not going to make your mental health improve.

Not enough to justify abuse, no.

I used to spend a lot of time with my friends and their families and see how their parents treated them (as in how my friends were treated by their parents), and I used to wonder what was so bad about me as a child that I deserved the treatment I received from my mother.

My mother chose to treat me and my sister the way she did.

Since I have learnt the truth about the kind of childhood I had, and really faced what my mother did to me, I started opening up to my friends about it and they were horrified.

I’m talking lates 80’s and into the early 90’s here.

In fact, as part of my treatment I dug my old diaries out of the loft and found entries from when I was 16/17 years old (year 2000) and me and my sister were still being treated horrendously by our mother.

Nice of you to give her permission.

Bit gobsmacked at people saying these things were common in the. 80s. I was born in the early 60s. I was smacked very occasionally, when I’d been naughty, but never had my mouth washed out with soap and never sent to bed without any tea.

But ‘abuse’ is subjective. I don’t feel my mother ‘abused’ me by lightly smacking me now and then when I was naughty. I did feel my dad ‘abused’ me by screaming in my face and hitting me a lot more and usually just because he was in an arsey mood over something. She was more reasonable than him but still a 90s parent with 4 small kids and a limit to what she could take.

It sounds like the OP endured a lot worse than just being “smacked lightly every now and then”.

Just because you are/were happy to still have your dad in your life despite saying you felt he abused you, that doesn’t mean the OP has to tolerate her mum being in her life.

You have a different view as to what is acceptable parenting compared to what other people do.

We are all allowed to make our choices about what behaviour we will accept for ourselves, and what we will (or won’t) forgive someone for.

It should be though.

In my 60s childhood it was never even fare for a day.

60s child here, we got the old slap round the legs from my mum but I know without doubt that should anyone have washed our mouths out with soap or hit us with implements my mother would have gone berserk. As to going to bed without tea, it would never have happened. My father was away a lot with work, I know it was tough on my mum but we were never told to 'wait till your father gets home', why would any parent want their children to be terrified of the other parent? My mums reasoning was always that misbehaviour was dealt with there and then, not with violence or threats just a 'ok, no sweets for you today, or 'well, we wont be going to the park now'.
Being sent to our rooms was never done either, a childs room should be a place of safety not punishment.

My children were born in 1991 and 1995 and were never treated the way you were.

I got the belt in school in the 70s but I was never hit at home.

90s parent here! I have never raised a hand to my children.

I grew up in the 80s. I don't remember ever being smacked. I only knew one child who had ever had their mouth washed out with soap and that was because her parents heard her say the word 'fuck'. I don't think it was even remotely normal - at any time in living memory - to wash a child's mouth out with soap for making a mistake over the meaning of a word or asking a question.

So yeah, while those were accepted punishments at one time, it wasn't normal to be dishing them out for minuscule transgressions. My grandparents wouldn't have done that to a child over a mistake or minor misbehaviours, and they were born in the 1910s.

Just accepted as being normal. Many kids went through the same kind of childhood. I come from a family where smacking or slapping was pretty common. My friend was smacked with a shoe.
Children were expected to conform and when they didn't they might be punished. Any kind of psychological understanding of behaviour was in its early days.
OP there's an interesting psychologist (?) on Instagram who talks about how the current thinking is straight to LC or cutting off people in your family. It's deeply painful for people and they often don't understand the reasoning. She advocated hard conversations and where appropriate, apologies.
I'm not sure why you are spending so much time reliving your childhood? What is to be gained? Your parents aren't those people now, they may adore their grandchildren and behave very differently.
We can't undo but we can understand and make sense of the past. My own resolution was to look at the action of my parents and be kinder.
To borrow a political phrase, 'Jaw, jaw is better that war, war' or in your case, possibly cutting off your own parents for 40 year old actions. Talk to them, find a way.

Mine would though. Families are very individual.