So do almost ALL abusive parents deny it then?

[NemoTheRedNosedFish]

Just curious!
My mother and stepdad deny everything and for years I kind of took their side against myself.

I blamed myself and thought that I had been raised they way I was because I was a 'bad' child. (I wasn't).

When confronted with anything to do with anything they did wrong, they come out with pathetic excuses for very basic neglect (I never brushed my teeth or got bought a toothbrush until I was 6 years old and my teeth were all rotten - my mum says she thought the water was flurodated so I didn't need to brush my teeth - she has dentures) or just brush everything aside. I was abused by older boys and my mother literally shrugged her shoulders - same when I was 13 and anorexic. I don't get it - I would be filled with shame and remorse if I had ever done anything like this. How can she forget / deny it?

They call me mentally abnormal and mad and allude to my past drug problems meaning that I don't remember things properly - sadly that is not the case, I have an excellent long term memory and I remember things that I would rather forget!

So I am just coming round to the idea that abusive parents talk shit deny it like this, and it isn't me being 'mean' to poor mummy...

if you thought that what you were doing was abusive, wouldn't you stop doing it?

There is a sub-group that has the rhetoric of acknowledging they're abusive but continue doing it. Because, if they could stop, just because they'd decided not to behave that way any more, they'd have to accept that they could have Just Stopped at any previous time.

And that says Bad Things About Them That Can't Be True Because Fundamentally They Know They Aren't Bad.

So, abuse will continue. As will the rhetoric. Careful observation reveals that rhetoric is never followed by action.

I was adopted and my adoptive family have a VERY warped recollection of my childhood (although the one nice sibling does back up my version, so it's not just me imagining it). Apparently they never did anything wrong and I was an ungrateful demon child......they seem to forget the beatings, the screaming about how no one loved me and not even my own parents wanted me, ignoring the sexual abuse I told them about, going for trips without me, I wasn't allowed to call them mom or dad, wasn't allowed to play out or go to people's houses or allowed internet (somehow for such a tearaway demon, I wasn't actually allowed to do fuck all - might explain why i was such a misery though!). Just to throw in there, I did better than all their own children academically and now professionally, I was the only one to pay board when I worked, never sneaked out, never smoke/drank/did drugs and didn't run off with a paedo (all of these things their own children did - tip of the iceberg) I still did regular favours for them until recently going NC - which of course has started a torrent of abuse about how terrible I am. None of them will accept any of my version and would take any swipe at me, especially in public, to say how awful a child I was and try to humiliate me.

Then there is my own mother.....I had limited contact with her until I was a late teen, now NC. Completely un-maternal and made sure we all knew what mistakes we were and that we ruined her life (because it was our fault being born?) and that we were all failures. If ever called out on it, her excuse would always be 'but I never had a mother myself *cry about how terrible her childhood was'. bullshit excuse. Her parents split but she was raised by a very loving father and grandparents, and spent most holidays at my gran's farm - with her sisters - all of whom have turned out perfectly well and are fantastic parents to my cousins.

Some people are just cunts. You can either repeat history or learn from it. I would never ever put my son through what I did or make him feel the way I felt growing up. Not saying I'm perfect - I have next to no patience and highly strung - but at least I don't smash his head against a wall and tell him how I wish he was never born.

Would you want to admit you are a nasty child abusing arse?

Hard thing for anyone to admit and if you are capable of hitting your child over and over you are unlikely to admit it was wrong.

Not always but the majority.

I think the worse the abuse the bigger the denial, which is all the more difficult for the victim