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

Smacking was absolutely normal and it was premeditated. You could be sent to the head teacher to get physically smacked or caned well after the crime, smacking in schools wasn't abolished until the mid 80's.
Not nice, but quite usual punishments, considered to be discipline and good for the child.

This sounds like really cruel and unloving parenting OP and not normal, no.

In the context of the time the punishments themselves were within the realms of what was considered normal, but the way they actually did it sounds very cruel. My mum in the same era would threaten to wash our mouths out with soap as a joke, but we knew she would never have done it, I think to actually do that to a small child especially for a very minor thing is quite sadistic. And routinely saving up punishments for an evening punishment session is really horrible.

I also think that people who were cruel and cold enough to do those things probably won’t react well to being told how cruel and cold they were. It sounds like there’s something in them that made them behave that way, rather than just it was the accepted ways of treating children at the time. I’m sorry for what you went through.

Smacking was an everyday occurrence in my 70s primary school.

In the 1980s all those things were done by plenty of parents, but not by most. Especially not for minor things. Your childhood sounds on the harsher end of things, though not as harsh as that of those who were removed from abusive parents.

The point is, OP, your parents didn't form a loving bond with you. You feel the harshness of how they treated you and it's soured your feelings for them. You don't have to pretend that they treated you really well when they didn't. You don't have to accept that they were just doing what other parents did and so it's irrelevant that you hated it and it leaves you wondering how they could, how they couldn't look at you and want you to be as happy as possible the way you feel when you look at your DC.

I don't know that it's worth telling them how you feel. You seem to think an apology is unlikely and anything else will probably just add more bitterness to the way you feel. Just treat them in a way that matches the way you feel about them. Don't go too out of your way for them. Don't spend too much time with them. etc. Look elsewhere for ways to bring love and stability into your life.

I remember soap and water being threatened at the convent school I went to, as a punishment for swearing, never anywhere else. I don't remember the threat actually being carried out.

You don’t think parents who do this to their children should be held to account? And be made to know how much emotional harm they caused their child?

I was born in the mid 1940s and an only child until my sister came along after 7 years. Of course I was jealous and behaved badly by the standards of the day. No one then thought about the need to tell an existing child that they were still loved. Or taking the trouble to inlude them. Instead I was told that I had £Got my nose pushed out".

When I reacted my parents used language like📧
We dont love you anymore. Were going to send you to a home for bad children

This could be a really happy family only for you.

So I was made to feel that I was to blame for everything - the fact that we were poor and there was often no money. That was somehow my fault too. My father had a violent temper and I was one of those spirited kids who answered back. I was his with his belt, his fists and anything that came to hand. Once it was his steel soled boot. My sister the golden princess was never touched.

That was not average 1950s parenting. It was physical and psychological abuse.

If you could be bothered to read OP's posts, they were not good parents, her mum positively revelled in punishing OP and are still awful to her.

Your moral compass is way off.

Eras change. They were old fashioned if this was the 80s, these things were coming to an end then. There will be ways you treat your children now that when they are your age will have become socially unacceptable.
think no re work, how different behaviour and culture is. What’s acceptable and what’s not.

think about learning styles, how you were taught to read isn’t how kids are now. How long you spend in hospital after giving birth to the process now. Times change, advice changes, rightly or wrongly.

for context: when they were growing up smoking was the thing and they drove after drinking. Your era drinking was the thing and smoking was becoming socially unacceptable. For the next generation drinking is on the way out and drugs are the thing.

They didn’t abuse you, they treated you as a child of the time, as you are now with your own children now. How will you feel in 40years when they “call you out”?

It sounds like your parents enjoyed scaring you and also thought that they were morally correct. The way they treat you now, from what you’ve said, doesn’t sound at all empathic. Actually positively draining and negative. Not what you need as a woman bringing up her children alone. I think that if your parents can’t see things from your perspective that you should at least limit contact. They don’t sound like they add anything to your life. Whether practical help, love or support. Also- you sound alike someone who thinks about what you’re passing on to your children. Listening, showing love and working out problems together is something it sounds like you might be showing them. Sounds like their grandparents criticise unhelpfully. Do they encourage each other or does one just sit back and let it happen. Sounds horrible.

Definitely wasn't normal and I was born in 1973. I had a, wonderful childhood and very loving parents who never laid a finger on me. I experienced none of what you describe Op and it wasn't normal. Sadly you had /have abusive parents.

That was definitely not normal in the 1950s when I grew up. It was a terrible thing to do to a child. I say that as a mother occasionally who smacked our children - but it was never held over their heads and it was rare and light and then only after "I tell you once. I tell you twice. And then you will have a smack." A smack was a deliberate choice they made after deciding to keep being rude or disobedient.

I was born in 1964 so throughout the 70s discipline like this was normal. Me and my sister would be regularly caused up the stairs with my DM smacking us on every step. She was a tyrant and I was frightened of her until my 50s. She's very outspoken and can be cruel, even now. My dad was emotionally unavailable and made the bullets for her to fire. I didn't feel loved or wanted, they were never proud of me and most interactions were negative. As a result I suffer from low self esteem and anxiety. I have never felt good enough and don't understand why people even want to talk to me. Children weren't treated like people, their emotional needs just weren't considered and feelings not taken into account. This was also the generation that made us kiss lechy old uncle's when our skin was crawling. reading this it definitely feels like abuse.

Of course this is abuse OP. Anyone suggesting otherwise is honestly diabolical.

Slavery was normal at one time in history but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t abusive or wrong at the time.

I was born in 1985. I was smacked round the legs a few times despite being a very well behaved child. Other than that none of the other things you described happened to me.

You are unlikely to get the recognition you’d like from your parents, but I’m sure they would be horrified to see you treating your children the way they treated you and that says it all.

The nuances of parenting change from generation to generation but it has never, ever been anything but abusive to hit children. Whether it was normalised or not. It was always abusive and it’s harmful. & there were parents in every single generation who made the choice not to hit or otherwise physically discipline their children, so there was no excuse.

We have to stop viewing the past through today’s eyes. It’s a dangerous thing.

How will you feel, OP, if in 30 years time your kids cut off contact with you for doing something to them or for them that is the norm now, but that will be viewed very differently in future?

Smacking really was a lot more common than you seem to think. As I said, especially in Christian circles, it was taught as a necessary mode of discipline in Christian parenting books. So my DM thought she was doing the right thing (she accepts she was wrong now, though).

I wonder if you really want to cut your parents off now for things they did to you when you were a child. I strongly suspect that you want to cut them off now because of how they behave to you now.

If that's the case and you're sure you can't change them, go for it. Cutting off my mother has hugely improved my life.

Where has this 'thing' of blaming your parents for everything that's wrong with your life come from?
I suppose it's far easier to look for scapegoats rather than face up to your own shortcomings.
I think this trend for judging your parents by today's standards and assuming today's parenting styles are the definitive gold standard of parenting are going to be amusing when today's children (have have been brought up The Best Way) grow up.

I generally don"t believe in blaming parents. But this is abuse..My DH was smacked as was common in Asian families but only a brief tap if he did dangerous things.

If it was not happening in the 80s, why do so many people on this thread remember it?

Smacking was unfortunately very normal in the 80s and early 90s. I have an incredible relationship with my mother, but she did smack my bum on occasion (although nothing like the volume that you are describing). Washing your mouth out with soap sounds so horrible, it makes me incredibly sad to hear you had that done to you, but even that sadly was not super uncommon either.

I actually don’t think you should resist talking to your parents about this. It’s likely they will justify it by saying it’s what you did at the time, or even misremember all downplay their own part in it. But I do not think you shouldn’t hold them accountable for the trauma that they infected on you, even if it was not deliberate.

I didn’t smack my DC in the 80s, but I knew plenty who did and my peers considered me a bit strange by not smacking as it was rare not to smack.

Some of the behaviour you are describing sits more in earlier decades than the 80s and may well have been how your parents were treated as children and was probably common practice then. Smacking and corporal punishment went on in schools until the 1980s. We had a teacher in junior school who was handy with a slipper in the 70s.

Not to minimise your experiences, but you are at risk of judging at least some of their behaviours by standards which have changed. Having said that, only you can work through whether their behaviours towards you were outside what was not uncommon and then decide how you want to move forward.

Op, you said, 'It’s still abuse, time doesn’t change that. It wasn’t criminal but it was still unkind. Especially to plan it and both watch'.

So both your parents would be present when they smacked you? They tallied up how many smacks you needed from the so-called minor misdemeanours you were doing, then you would get 5 or 10 or more smacks and one parent would do them and the other would watch?

I was brought up in the 70s and 80s and this was in no way common or normal. All I every heard of was a smack in the heat of the moment.

I never heard of a kid being smacked for not sitting upright at a table, a parent keeping a log of how many smacks their kids deserved or the other parent watching as the smacks were administered. I definitely didn't know anyone who got their mouth washed out with soap, but I did hear it threatened.

It sounds to me that your parents were indeed abusive to you. And no, I wouldn't give them a free pass because it was just the way everyone parented at the time or some such nonsense because it really wasn't.

We were never denied food or had mouths washed out with soap but would regularly get belted for some quite minor transgressions. The one I remember most clearly is being about 5 and accidentally spilling a cup of milk. I got a leathering off my dad. My mother could be quite handy is well until I was about 15 and shoved her away from me.
She never did it again

Fuck I need.to go hug my.mum. Dad long.gone but he needed a hug too.
Leathering for spilling milk. 😥