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

Oh definitely unkind. Don't get me wrong, I'm probably similar age to you, or older even, and my parents didn't do that (except the occasional smacking, which didn't even hurt). But as I get older I realise that too much introspection is actually bad for you and makes you hurt unnecessarily and cut people off for the slightest reason.

By TODAYS standards, yes. But not at the time. And any parent can only do what was considered right at the time. They didn't have a crystal ball, to see that 30 years later their behaviour would be considered unacceptable.

And as people are pointing out, they were not unique, and schools were still happily hitting pupils too.

No I’ve not posted before. It’s wasn’t discipline either as in I’d done bad things it was due to not being quiet or asking questions or not following ‘rules’ like not eating all my food

I think smacking was very common, and bed without tea. I’d heard of washing mouth out with soap but don’t know of anyone actually having it done. I’m an early 80’s born.

Today we would certainly class this as abuse, but in the 80’s things were different. It sounds like your parents were on the sterner side, were they a bit older when they had you maybe?

Id be more concerned with how they treat you now.

Do you get the sense they enjoyed meting out these punishments? I say no to my daughter every time she asks for chocolate. I hate it but I know it's in her best interests.

None of what you describe was uncommon for the time. I wonder what your parents suffered as children?

It might have been common in the 40s and 50s, nobody I knew hit their kids in the 80s.

The reality is that these things happened in decades gone by. It certainly was not just in your house but hard to say how common it was.

What your parents did to you was likely a diluted experience of what they went through as children themselves

Only you can decide how it has affected you and what action you take.

Communicate with them. Tell them how you are feeling. This will then inform you if you want to go NC or LC or forgive and heal.

Sounds quite typical of parenting in the 70’s/80’s. Smacking was very common in my house and being sent to bed with no dinner. Washing mouth out was threatened though never happened but it definitely happened to people I know.
Times change

So you weren't following the rules, so you got told off (smacked). If your child wasn't following the rules, presumably you would also discipline - maybe a time out, maybe leaving somewhere early, maybe having a toy taken away. Insert any number o other options - except smacking.

Look, I wouldn't defend anyone doing this now, and accept being hit is really not great. But your parents believed that a smack would ensure you would grow up to be a decent person. And that is all most of us want for our children.

Think you need to let this go.

Unfortunately hitting children (I refuse to trivialise it by calling it smacking) was all too common then, and far too normalised. It absolutely was abuse despite not often having been recognised as such at the time. There was some sort of weird doublethink practised in previous generations that claimed hitting a child was part of loving a child!! (i.e. 'spare the rod and spoil the child') and I think an awful lot of parents bought into this and didn't at all see what they were doing as abuse. But it absolutely was.

I'm particularly shocked you had your mouth washed out though OP, like a pp said that was a common threat, but I think most parents stopped short of actually doing it. I'm sorry for what you went through.

It didn’t happen to me, apparently I was smacked only once, I do remember it, but I remember feeling bad I did something terrible but not that it hurt. but when my mum talks about it she considers herself very progressive, it was very normal for her friends and sisters to smack with a slipper, wash mouths out etc. My grandad is a kind man, but as a teacher he was well known for hitting kids with a gym shoe in the 60s/70s( plenty of his ex pupils mentioned it when they saw him and laughed about it).

I think if you’re upset you should ask if they’d do it differently now. Hopefully they would see how it wasn’t a good way to behave. It’s was not considered abuse at the time so I don’t think you can retrospectively call it that.

I didnt say that it was daily, and I didnt say it was right, but thats how they were told to parent. Thats how they were brought up, thats how they saw their peers brought up, thats how they were told by their parents and caregivers to do it.

As someone mentioned above, it was commonplace to see the neighbour slapping their child for not coming in time for tea, a swift slap to the legs for the friend misbehaving, the aunt who took no cheek, instead would raise a hand to slap. Some did or didnt do it this way but it was commonplace. I won't judge someone for slapping a child 40 yrs ago; id judge them if they did it today.

You mention pain and humiliation, thats strong language that I don't think is warranted. A stinging slap across the legs isnt pain and humiliation I'm carrying decades later

This. I was born in the seventies, not once did my mum smack me or my siblings (and our grandparents,who were born in the nineteen twenties, didn't either).

Yes, introspection can do that. But what sometimes happens instead is that introspection clarifies people's values and makes them realise what they themselves are/aren't prepared to tolerate, as opposed to what they were told was supposedly acceptable.

Schools did until 1986
I was born in 1973 and got smacked as a child
Other kids used to talk about getting the slipper.

I think context is key. Yes, smacking was still common in the 80’s as a ‘tool of parental discipline.’ My own dad would chase us around the room and give a smack. But I would always know if I was going to get one because we’d of done something like smash an ornament. I do remember one time my brother got smacked unfairly but the reason it stands out in my memory is because it was unusual. If we were mostly behaving we didn’t get smacked and we were certainly never hit/beaten. Although it was still common it was definitely on its way out and I don’t really remember any of my peers getting smacked.

What op describes is a well behaved child getting smacked regardless. That makes the context of other parents smacking for discipline at the time mostly irrelevant. Op wasn’t being smacked as a parenting technique, as why bother to smack a well behaved child? My parents would have better things to do with their time. It sounds like ops parents were doing this with an element of sadism. Often abusive behaviour runs in families. Op is within her rights to want low/no contact imo and I think child abuse should never be played down.

You just can’t judge people’s past actions by today’s standards.
having kids of your own brings up all kinds of stuff. Best to mull it over and let it go. People arnt perfect and we’re doing what they could at the time with the conventions of the time.

you can absolutely take them with a pinch of salt but just accept them for who they are. We don’t all have to be amazing. We’re just people.

im a child of the 90s and was absolutely smacked as an infant and locked in the stairs. I’m not mad now about it. When I had my first child I did go through a short period of reflection about it but what would I gain from holding onto it?

Unfortunately I think the things you mention were very common in the 1980s, everyone I knew growing up was smacked etc. My friends mother would pull her child’s shorts down infront of us and smack their bum if they were naughty on the way to school in Primary.

I think if those things are the only things they have done you will have a difficult time justifying having a go at them because all of the parents of their generation will say they did the same.

It’s like if you go back to the days of kids going up chimneys, working from the age of 11/12, having a cane hung up in their living room for their parents to punish them with (my grandparents generation), - its wrong by todays standards, but was normal by theirs.

In the future all of the iPad/mobile phone kids will probably accuse their parents of neglect.

I think some things are generational rather than abusive IYSWIM.

I was born in late 60's none of that happened to me, apart from maybe a smack on the legs, but it never really hurt. I was never scared of my parents.
Although the boys were still canned at my secondary school in late 70's, l csbt remember why they stopped canning girls

I was smacked a few times in the early 80s but it was straight away for direct disobedience. I was never sent to bed without food or had soap in my mouth. Honestly it does sound kind of abusive if you just wanted to know what a word meant. And smacking for vague reasons kind of sounds like they wanted to do it.

You were treated very badly as a child. How may I ask do they treat you now? Is it the more recent relationship with them that has you feeling you would rather break contact with them? Do they treat you warmly, care about you now?

I was beaten as a child and I don’t care how common or uncommon it was. I didn’t go to my father’s funeral because of the way I was treated and disregarded growing up. My mother should have intervened and tried but was stuck in an unhappy marriage until she eventually left when I was 11.

I am close to my mother she shows care and support to me when I was a teenager and now as an adult. If she didn’t I am not sure I would have bothered with her either.

I think it’s easy when you have young children and you adore their every move to to think like this. But I would caution you to wait till your children have been teenagers. I have had a teenager who whilst wonderful now, her version of events in the past has been so so far removed from the actual reality. I don’t think she ever intentionally did it, but teenagers can be so so self absorbed that they are literally blind to their own part in things. So where you said you were sent to bed with no dinner for example. I don’t know you of course, but I can absolutely see my own teenage girl remembering something like that whereas the reality might have been with so much added context.

Getting smacked was par for the course in the 80s. Clearly. There's always someone who comes along and carries on like the rest of us were imagining it. Bed without dinner, far less common. Actually washing your mouth out - rather than just threatening to, that is pretty out there. I suppose at this point, all of this will have been normal for your parents in their childhood though - and worse. When you hear about people getting the belt, and at school too, Jesus.