Hello, everyone. I just had something on my mind for a bit that I wanted to share. I am originally from a post Soviet country, but have lived in the UK for over 10 years now, married to a British person and have a wonderful 2 years old DD (just turned 2). We recently went to see my parents in my home country and the whole trip made me so upset that I still cannot recover from it. The whole time we were there I was constantly critised about my parenting. My DD either ate too much or was too picky, but never perfect, my parents complained she was still not potty trained (when we were kids we were all potty trained before 18 months apparently). They said she is wild and has too many tantrums. My DD is a very active and emotional child, but also tantrums are developmentally normal at this age. In my opinion she is no different from other kids of her age that I know. But my parents made me feel like I failed as a parent and its my fault she had tantrums. They said she was badly behaved. One time we were driving in the car for a long time (over 3 hours) and then we stopped to have a meal. In my opinion, its hard for toddlers to cope with long car journeys but my daughter did so well and did not cry at all. At the restaurant she wanted to run around, which I stopped her doing. Then we were at the table she kept dropping the menu and then started shouting. I admit it was bad and I did my best to stop her. Maybe the long car journey influenced it. My parents were very annoyed and my mum just took my daughter out of a restaurant and did not let her finish the meal because of 'bad behaviour'. Later when we got back to the car they said that I need to start creating boundaries. I asked in what way. They basically said I need to start physically punish her, so give her a smack, pull her ear, pull her hair or just something like that to make her feel uncomfortable / feel pain. They said without physical punishment, my DD will grow up a spoiled brat. Needless to say, during the whole visit they made comments about my daughter like 'she deserves a smack', 'if gran was alive, she would pull her hair and she would stop that behaviour'. My dad once told my daughter 'if our cat was alive, he would scratch your face and teach you a lesson'.
All of that triggered memories from my own childhood. My parents used to give me a smack, pull my hair, pull my ear, slap my face, a couple of times they used a belt on me. They used to hit my brother with a belt in front of me. This was all normal in the 90s in my country, so I forgave them long time ago as I know they did not know better and it was pretty common back then in my country. I know my parents were also abused a lot as kids by their own parents. But I thought after all those years they would feel bad about it and regret it and maybe rethink what they did. However, this trip showed me they did not just not feel regret but also still think its normal to hit kids and offer me to do the same to my own DD. I would never do any of this to my child, I am completely against any kind of physical punishment, it terrifies me they think its ok to offer to cause pain and discomfort to my 2 year old child. They basically said 'words don't work', but I believe that talking to kids and be patient and understanding would do much more and go further way than giving them a smack. So basically that is it, I don't know what to do now and I also don't feel comfortable to let my daughter be around them. But I also not be able to cut any contact as I know my parents had hard life raising us, we were quite poor, and I would just feel enormous guilt cutting any contact with them. They still say they love their granddaughter a lot and constantly ask us to video call them and chat, but I just can't talk normally to them now not thinking about all this. Im glad we are back in the UK and not around them.