Smacking - how your parents did it?

[notalreadyinuse]

• [Message from MNHQ - please note, this thread was started in 2011]

I assume that most people who were young children in the 70s were smacked by their parents, but a thread today reminded me about something that has been bothering me.

My dad always pulled my pants down to smack me - until about the age of 8 I think when I think the smacking mostly stopped.

I wondered if this was "normal" then?

Namechanged for this one...

Never needed to be. we were just well behaved.

Oblomov

I really hope you aren't of the opinion that some of the stories told here weren't written by 'naughty' children

This is bringing back memories.

My father would smack me, never my mother and rarely in front of her. Since I can remember he did it, for anything and nothing. Usually because he was in a shit mood, which was very often. Once he hit me across the back of the head in a shop, I hadn't said or done anything "naughty". Another time he flew into a complete rage, nearly tore a door of its hinges and then started smacking me around the head. Tbh I was too scared of him to be naughty.

It carried on into my teens. Once I shouted something 'cheeky' at him in the garden from my room upstairs and i remember him pounding up the stairs bursting into my room and hitting me around the head. I was cowering on the floor waiting for him to stop.
No sexual overtones though so there's something to be thankful for. need icon for an ironic smile.
I hit him back when I was 17 and that ended it.
I didn't realise it was abuse until I was 24 and having a breakdown.
We still have a relationship, I sometimes wonder why.

Born in 1974 btw

Dad only slapped me twice, and I was a pain at the time!! Never affected me though, as he was a kind, thoughtful, caring dad all the time.

Now the interesting bit is mum said she did smack (our bottoms mostly) but I cant remember it- so it obviously wasnt painful or traumatic.. But I wonder if I dont remember because she was also a very loving, cuddly, kissy lovely mum!

So my question is, do you remember all that smacking etc. because that's what your parents were like mostly? And if they were perfect (as near as!) mostly with a really loving family environment do you erase it , as it's not typical and true of the realtionship you had with them?

I was born in 1989. If our crime wasn't too bad my mum would give us the choice of being smacked on the hand or the bare bum. We soon discovered that if we chose the hand then you could make it so it didn't hurt. But then she cottoned on to us and we no longer had a choice. If we had done something really naughty it was bums all the way.

We were always told that if we didn't like the way mum did it, dad will do it and he will do it the same way he was smacked - with a belt. We were never hit by my dad though.

Mum had to stop smacking once we were big enough to run away or "block" her (10 years old or roundabout)...that was when things started to be thrown at us......remote controls really hurt if they hit you on the head by the way .

Oh god this makes her sound like a terrible mum even though she wasn't. None of us have been mentally or physically damaged by it.

I did get slapped on the face once though, I didn't get a warning and I don't even remember what I said although at the time my mum said I had called her a bitch. I was about 7 at the time. That one sticks in my memory (possibly because I can't remember my crime.)

What does strike me as odd though is that we remember all the times mum was really really angry at us for something we did but a recent conversation with her showed us that she doesn't remember any of these incidents at all.

I suppose that shows something about how it can affect a child.

The thoug of being given the choice is shocking! It is never justifiable to strike a child no matter how many fingers in sockets stories are churned out smacking as a lack of control and generally about how the parent is feeling. If it was acceptable then we would all be slapping each other as adults if anyone did something we didn't like

That last line should have said, "I suppose that shows something about how it can affect a child, when to the adult it was nothing at all."

I think that is the main reason I do not want to smack my children unless there is a major incident (and I can't even think of an example of something my ds could do that would count as "major" - drugs maybe.)

I don.t think there is anything which anyone would reconsider doing again as a result of being hit! It is really a no argument. We were smacked as children and we all remember it and resent it. I have never hit my ds not because he is a paragon of virtue but because it is wrong.

myfriendflicka We used to get the "don't flinch" thing too, followed by "Or I'll have to do it again".

Reading this thread is making me remember all sorts now....

Once we got to teenagers the things that would make her angry seemed to get less and less important and it led to me leaving home at 16 after a particularly nasty argument which again my mum doesn't even remember the details of.

My brother has been experiencing similar problems with her now, although she has calmed down a lot and he is no where near as well behaved as I was as a teenager!

Aside from smacking we would be forced to stay up until the small hours of the morning while we got told off, "why do you make me do this to you" "don't you think I have enough on my plate" "why can't you just behave!".

She would also trash our rooms and give us 2 minutes to tidy it up or anything left on the floor was thrown away. Nothing ever did get thrown away because we became really good at tidying a whole room in 2 minutes.

This is very theraputic. My mum did/does have a lot of health, personal and some mental problems (depression mainly) and we were the only people there for her to take it out on, there wasn't anyone else. My dad fucked off and left us and last time I heard from him he was still going on about how messed up my mum is. My thought is "You knew this and yet you still abandoned your young children with her?".

Now a feel so sorry for her, she wanted children more than anything else in teh world and had to suffer many miscarriages before she had us, then she wasn't able to enjoy it. I don't blame her for anything and I love her to pieces and as I said, there's nothing wrong with me but my life could have been much easier. My son's childhood will be nothing like mine.

Eek just seen how long this is...sorry!

Born 69. My dad never smacked me ever. My mum smacked me twice IIRC, across the back of legs as I walked upstairs once, and once on arm. She ended up crying and apologising. I felt I'd "won". Didn't really hurt either.

I thought that we were smacked all the time when we were little, but in fairness, we probably weren't as we tend to remember either really happy times or really sad times more. So I think maybe it felt like we were smacked loads because when we were, it was so awful, that we remember that more than anything else.

But when we were smacked it was pretty bad. I remember once when she hit me so hard that I fell over, I laid there and pretended that I was dead. She just walked away. I was about 5 I think.

Only once when we were on our way out one evening, do I remember being hit with something other than a hand. My Mum was trying to put my hair up and was being really rough while brushing it which made me cry. So she hit me on the head with the hairbrush, so hard that it broke in half and I had a massive lump on my head for ages. I told her and she didn't react.

I can't imagine ever ever wanting to inflict any pain on my DD.

When we talk about being smacked in front of our Mum now, she always says 'you were all so well behaved that you hardly ever needed to be smacked' .

Dad walked out when I was 12 and Mother and I pretty much ran the poultry unit between us until I went off to college. She would go off most weekends to see friends leaving me all the birds to feed and clean and no transport. 5 hours work for 2 is 10 hours work for 1. I had to take a horse or hitch a lift to go shopping because she didn?t bother about things like that. I would be fined meals if I did things wrong (ie go hunrgy) and sometimes she took me to the woodshed to knock me around. As in knock me over, pick me up by my hair then knock me over again.

Remember my Dad smacking me - really hard - a few times, I think for 'naughtiness' generally, fighting with my little brother etc, but he and my Mum divorced when I was around 7 (she left for another 'man'). Not too bothered by this smacking, as it was part of the norm of parenting at that point, I think (born mid 70's). I am really sad though that they are the some of the only points I remember about my Dad in my childhood. Recently he told my 4yo that he'd "get a smack" if he didn't stop being "naughty" - I was so but just didn't know what to say. DS didn't speak to him for the rest of the weekend.

My Mum smacked me regularly as a small child, and as a teen added slaps to the face/body and hair pulling. I wasn't a 'bad' child/teen, in fact I was positively timid at times, but she seemed to have a really quick temper and zero patience. Probably wasn't helped by the fact that she was often drunk and her boyfriend (the 'man' she left my Dad for) would often hit her during heated (regular) arguments. I only remember him being verbally abusive to me up until I was about 15 (fat bitch, useless piece of shit, ugly cunt etc ) but then one night when my Mum was passed out drunk on the sofa he & I had an argument (can't even remember what about) which culminated in him repeatedly shoving a mop in my legs and face (breaking my glasses), shoving me around, hand prints from his grip on my arms, and him mocking me as I cried and tried to defend myself. My Mum never mentioned anything about it, even though she had come through to the kitchen to find out what the noise was about . She beat him around the ears telling him not to touch me. She left him a couple of years later, but there were similar occurrences before then.

She wonders why I struggle to give her the time of day now. She's asked me to forgive her in the past, but I just can't. I know she was in a shit place at the time, and I feel really guilty about how poor my relationship is with her now, but I cannot bring myself to 'let her off the hook' for allowing that to happen to me.

onepieceoflollipop - your story that your dad continued into your early teenage years and the fear that went with that made my heart completely go out to the teenage you and want to give you a huge hug.

Gosh this thread is heartbreaking.

I was born in '74 and was smacked regularly. I think my mum just couldn't find a better way to handle us. She was also very controlling, she took our behaviour and opinions personally and really didn't like any of us expressing ourselves.

She went through a phase of putting us over her knee and smacking our bare bums which was so humiliating.

The last time she smacked me was when I was about 15, I was being very cheeky and she smacked my face so hard my glasses fell off and broke.

I don't really feel too badly about the smacks, but the silent treatment was terrible, she could go for hours without speaking to me, one time which sticks in my mind was the day I got my exam results (I had passed them all and was over the moon) and because she was still in a sulk with me she didn't even acknowledge what I was telling her.

I have smacked my own kids a few times, always when I've been at the end of my tether, but I am learning more effective ways of dealing with bad behaviour. I never ever give the silent treatment and once something is dealt with it's all forgotten. I never want my kids to feel invisible, unloved, insecure or unable to talk to me.

I don't hate my mum at all, in fact we get on quite well now, but I have very little respect for her. She is very loving now but I don't really trust it IYKWIM? She had a terrible upbringing herself and I feel upset that she couldn't enjoy her children more.

Born in 68. My Dad never smacked me once. We have a great and close relationship and always have done.

My Mum on the other hand...... She smacked us mainly with a slipper. She once pushed my brother over and started to kick him in the stomach because he had made a 'rude' noise with the ketchup bottle. She once slapped me across the face because she didn't like the photo of me that came out of the photo booth. The list goes on. I think she suffered from depression and jealousy over me and my Dads close relationship. I have put it behind me after speaking to so many friends who experienced the same.

It's for the above reasons that I vowed NEVER to smack my DC and I never have. Luckily my DH feels the same after also being smacked often by his parents.

thinking about it, the emotional abuse was just as bad as the smacking/hitting

we were told we were stupid, useless, evil, twisted, lazy, cruel - everything she could think of really

particular pearls I can remember include "you've never brought me anything but heartache", "what have I done to deserve a liar for a daughter" and "oh just piss off, you stupid little cow" (aged 6)

she had huge rages first thing in the morning for no apparent reason, she would just wake up blazing angry and come thundering down the stairs and attack whoever she could get hold of

my stomach still freezes at the sound of somebody walking around upstairs

the worst thing she did to me was take the phone out of the wall and refuse to communicate with me for several weeks - I was at boarding school and I knew she was angry because I had been speaking to my brother on the phone (who was 17 and suicidal and had left home at 15 - it was "disloyalty" for me to speak to him)

some people really just shouldn't have children

Its interesting that most the smackers were mums - probably because they were the ones fighting fires at home day in, day out. I got smacked by my mum - can't ever remember getting smacked by my dad. It has made me not want to smack my kids though.

My DH's parents used to keep a slipper with them at all times (and take it round to friend's houses) in case they needed to use it!! Funnily enough my husband is not against smacking!!!

At times my MIL has 'suggested' smacking as a punishment and I have hit the roof with her and said under no terms should smacking ever be acceptable in my house and it shows very lazy parenting skills. She said she regrets ever smacking and wished there would have been more advice about how to deal with challenging behaviour.

The fear of not being able to go to Cubs is enough of a deterent in my house.

My mother remains resolutely pro-smacking, and when DD was smaller, advocated me smacking her. I did not, as DH and I used different discipline methods that seemed to work.

Strangely, mum also claims that she only ever smacked me twice. I am fairly sure it was much more than that, although not often. She never says what it was for, and I can't remember, apart from one occasion. At least once it was that horrible pants-down bend-over thing, and I got double for trying to run away. She also hit me on the head with a hairbrush occasionally, usually for petty things. The last time she did that, I was 12 and I hit her back - a feeble slap to the legs. For that, I got an arm jerk and a smack to the thigh. The argument was about my hair, FFS.

Born in 74.

My dad used to slap me in the face, over and over, various ages. When I was quite little I have what I think is a memory of being thrown. My mum dragged me upstairs by my ear once. We had 2 physical fights when I was in my early teens, one was because she threw a bowl of cocoa pops over me, the out of control bitch. She never appeared when my dad was hitting me, though she knew full well what was happening. She's a weak, pathetic woman.
On a lighter note, before the cocoa pops went over my head she slapped me holding a cheese slice and it stuck to my face while we were at it

My mum did the ear thing as well - twist and pull at the same time.
I'd forgotten about that.
I do think she must have been depressed and miserable -our father was travelling all the time, money was tight, so she can't have had it easy, and her dad used to beat her when she was a child, so I can understand.
I bloody hate it when she brings it up now and there's never even a trace of being sorry for it.

they didn't do it at all