Did anyone else's parents over-use 'smacking'?

[chickaboodledoodle]

My father is a very angry, controlling man. He used to sulk a lot when I was a child, and would always tell my mum to tell me when I'd upset him. Him and my mum are both extremely oversensitive, so I'd often get told off or punished because I said "thank you" in the wrong tone or something.

I am in my thirties now but feel extremely angry as my dad totally over-used smacking. He used to smack me around the head, hard, or punch me on the arm, or slap my face.

What is even worse is that he continued "smacking" me until I left home at the age of 20, whenever he felt that I had done something wrong. My younger sister would get shouted at, but not smacked as much as I was. Apparently whilst I lived in his house then he had the right to smack me.

One of the final straws before I moved out was a morning when my dad woke up and thought a table in the hallway had been moved, and he came storming into my room in the early hours, removed my duvet and slapped me really hard on the thigh.

It's assault really isn't it? I still feel so angry about it.

We got the slipper, df was very controlled and didn't hit in temper. For him it was discipline - and way less than he had growing up.
He's not a bad man, was just the way it was done back then.

I don't hit my dc's, but I don't hate my df for doing what he did even if it bloody hurt

my dad was very heavy handed too..I grew up in the 70's and thought it was normal but now realise how abusive he was. He used to hit all of us (four kids) on a regular basis, from slaps around the ears, thighs and bottom to grabbing and hurling me on the bed then slapping. for the slightest of things too...from saying something in the wrong tone to making too much noise when he was trying to watch tv, for scraping a chair against the skirting to trying to defend my sisters or brother from his abuse. He would trap me in my room asking questions why I behaved in a certain way and when I tried to defend my actions or said the wrong thing he would slap me so hard it would leave finger marks on my skin the next day. He would mentally abuse me and all of us individually then slap each time a wrong answer was given. This would go on for hours until I was a quaking wreck and couldn't answer himthen I would get more slaps. He treated all four of us like this and we were all terrified of him. My mother used to ignore it and never helped or tried to defend us. We werent allowed friends back to the house and I left home at 19 with no contact for 8 months as I had enough. Later in life having my own family I tried to talk it through with him as I needed closure as it was affecting my relationships and self confidence. My dads aggression had not changed and he and I had several very heated disgusting arguments where he criticised my own marriage and made me feel bad for suggesting he should give me an apology. My mum denied he ever did anything to any of us and accused me of making it all up. We eventually moved 250 miles away and they make no effort to call me or stay in contact with their grandkids. I try to call them once a week to see how they are keeping just cos i feel obliged but my dad never speaks more than a millisecond to me before handing me over to my mum. They haven't visited us for 2 years and we refuse to go visit them in their house cos of their ridiculous rules and inability to be sociable. I am 47 and my parents talk me like a child and their attitude towards me transports me back to my childhood and undermines my confidence. In the past few years my marriage has suffered from their lack of contact and lack of anything. My husband and i have come through our difficulties but now have absolutely no support They are not willing to call me or FB me or skype so they can have some kind of relationship with their grandkids. I have no feeling for them anymore and know there is nothing I can do to change them. They have no friends and never socialise and I have never been out for x meal with them on a level basis or chatted to them like a normal daughter/parent relationship. Whenever I try to tackle them about keeping a contact with the grandkids they sau I am being unreasonable to expect anything if I live so far away. But they have money and a car...my eldest son is 21 and my youngest 4 with 2 in between, and they have never took any of them to the seaside, never had them overnight (not that I would anyway as their house rules are so strict) nor have they picked them up from school or bought school uniforms/shoes like other people's grandparents. I am afraid to admit to my work colleagues that my parents are the way they are as I know they wouldn't believe me. I do sometimes joke about my poor hearing saying it was cos my dad slapped me around the ears. They think I am joking but I am not and truly believe that is why I suffer with some degree of hearing loss. I think only when theyare gone will I reconcile it in my heart. My sympathies go out to anyone eho has suffered similarly and has believed for years mistakenly that it was normal and not abusive.

Nope, I was smacked for serious things. It was necen in anger, never out of control or abusive...although I'm sure many people today would say all smacking is abusive. From my own experiences I'm happy to disagree with the majority but obviously don't condone abuse (although I'm sure many will still pride cut their issues onto me and still think I am).

Just seen this post.

Op I feel for you, he sounds a lot like my dad.

He used to hit me so hard, he'd always use something as well. The hoover pole was his favourite. He used to corner me in a room and he would just carry on hitting me while I would cry and beg him to stop and my mum would just turn a blind eye.

When my dad was at work my brother would hit me (he has my dads anger) He knocked me unconscious once.

Really shitty childhood really, and even tho I have been through periods of not talking to my dad, I'm still in contact with him. He's emotionally abusive now really.

I feel angry about it, I want to cry for my younger self. I also feel sorry for him, he is a sad old man, that has had an angry, miserable life. Who has nobody that truly loves him.

I was hit ALOT with hand and various implements. It was almost always my mum.
But then my mum was also smacked a lot by her mother. I still have very vivid memories of being hit. I was terrified of her. She feels awful about it now.

Gosh OP that's dire and not normal even for the 70s/80s. What you describe is not what I consider smacking. You have every right to be angry and I think NC sounds the way forward if you can manage to maintain it.

This post has highlighted something I still feel uncomfortable about. I grew up in the 50's and 60's when smacking was normal and widespread and corporal punishment was normal in schools. My father was an only child and had had a difficult childhood, although I don't think he saw it as that. He told me that his father would use his belt on him for punishment, I presume only for the most serious misdemeanours.

We therefore grew up with smacking and clips round the ear, but then so did most of my friends. As time went on, I began to get fed up with a smack round the head for saying something out of line. I have an impulsive sense of humour and still do say things without thinking first and happy occasions would often be spoilt by a smack round the head before I had even realised what I had said. I came to mistrust enjoyable family situations because I knew that one wrong remark could change the whole tenor. My dad hit us far more than my mum and he could hit far harder. I don't think mum really liked smacking us at all, but that was their agreed approach to discipline, I suppose. The ultimate deterrent was the cane, which my father kept on a ledge above the kitchen door. If we would not do as we were told, he only had to move his hand up towards the ledge and we would comply immediately.

I don't believe my elder brother ever had the cane, but I did once at the age of 10 in an episode that I shall never forget. I was curious about the opposite sex and had been asking a little girl to show me her private parts. She obliged, but told her father who then informed my father. I had been taught about privacy, so I knew that it was wrong, but childhood curiosity had got the better of me, I suppose. I certainly don't remember any sexual thrill from it. Anyway, my dad flew into a rage, ordered me upstairs to his bedroom and absolutely laid into me with the cane on my bare behind. While he was beating me he was saying in a very angry voice "I'm ashamed of you!" When I thought it was all over he said in that same angry voice "And some more!" and proceeded to do it all over again.

I don't remember the physical pain, just that it bloody well hurt and took a while to subside afterwards. I had to go to bed straight after tea for a week and my pocket money was stopped, although I don't remember for how long. I suppose that would be the least memorable part of my punishment. What I also remember is that for many years, for me my life was divided into before and after that episode. If I thought back to things that happened in the past, I would reflect on whether it was before or after that event.

Shortly afterwards, I don't remember when, a friend told me how babies are made. After my experience I couldn't see how that could be right if what I had been punished for was so wrong. There was no sex education at school and I dismissed what he had said from my mind until the next person said it to me. Gradually, more and more friends talked about it until I thought it must be true and my elder brother showed me a little booklet he had been given which explained the facts of life in very simple terms. I didn't dare ask my parents - the very people to whom I should have been able to turn - because it was clear to me what their attitude was to anything below the waist.

I have never spoken to anybody about this, not even my wife, but it has never left me. I accept that my punishment was probably appropriate to the times, but in hindsight I regard what I did as no more than curiosity. Perhaps the girl's father made it out to my father as more than it actually was, but we never spoke about it again so I shall never know as both my parents have passed on. I don't resent my father for it, I just think he was a little naive about the situation, but again they were different times. Fortunately, it did not affect my attitude to sex as I have been happily married for 38 years. We have 4 grown up sons. I smacked the first, but only a little dab on the hand when he was a toddler to teach him not to touch certain things. Subsequently I realised that physical punishment is not the answer and never laid a hand on him or his younger brothers. They have no concept of 'a good hiding' from a parent, although you can imagine that 4 boys growing up would present many opportunities for it if it were the correct form of punishment.

He sounds like a thoroughly nasty, bullying man.

My parents occasionally smacked me - people did in those days.

What was out of order was that my mother, when I got "too old" to be put over her knee, would slap me hard around the face. It REALLY hurt and I still can't forgive her.

Oh God - this thread has made me feel sick...

My father was an only child whose own father went off to war & as a result my father was raised by his mother & his aunt. I don't really know what happened other than he was bullied at school. Whatever it was, he grew into a totally paranoid individual who was a complete bully towards women.

Being brought up in the 70's, I remember my mum was knocked around for pretty much the whole of my younger childhood. He soon followed suit with me whenever I either failed to behave in the way he thought I should, or whenever I didn't do well enough at school for his liking. In his mind, children should be "seen and not heard" and anything less he took as an insult. He had a particular way of looking at us which made me stop on my tracks and just shut up. It was even worse when he'd been drinking.

If he had a bad day at work or if I had a report card in from school, mum used to pack me off to my grandmothers for the evening so he wouldn't be able to get his hands on me.

I had a terrible childhood and it's only now, some years later than it's finally occurred to me why I didn't do well at school - how on earth could I with that atmosphere and fear at home, pretty much constantly. My personal favourite was at about age 13, running the entire length of the garden to escape him, only for his to hurl a screwdriver at me - I went down like a sack of spuds when it hit my leg.

My father lifted his hand to my brother once, when he was old enough to be able to stand up for himself - and never did it again. Although my brother wasn't on the receiving end of the physical abuse like mum & I were, he was certainly party to it & we all suffered the emotional abuse.

Mum eventually divorced him - the turning point was when he had a broken bottle against her throat. I have had NC for the best part of 20 years and I hardly give him a thought. I know he'll die at some point and I really have no idea how I'll feel about that - I certainly won't be going to his funeral. He's now just a lonely old man who's lost pretty much everything.

wideboy that is a brave and lovely post.

OP, that isn't smacking, it's assault

Its abuse! Sadly!

I'm so sorry that so many of us went through this.

My father was the smacker at home, although mum did too she wasn't quite like him!

My father carried on 'smacking' my sister well into her late teens, I was away at uni so couldn't stand up for her, he used to enjoy it I'm sure! He's chase her up the stairs whip her quilt off and thrash her! I would often throw myself in her to stop him. That resulted in me getting in the firing line but she was younger than me, I felt protective of her.

He spared my brother. Typically!

My mum would say how bad it made her feel but never intervened!

I remember once being told how he knew she was on her period and in agony but continued to punch her stomach as she had spoken out of turn ( aged 18)

My parents are divorced, he's a vile man who had a string of affairs!!

His new wife is welcome to him.

My sister and I have NC with him. My brother sees him regularly, we (sister and I) have NC with brother either, why might that be? Well that's because he saw fit to treat our niece ( brothers own daughter) in the same way. Dragging her around and hitting her. (Aged 2)

We called SS. (Whole other thread)
History WILL not be allowed to repeat itself again!

I hope my father dies a sad lonely old man. It's no more than he deserves!

It feels better to get that out!!!!

My mother hit all of her children when she was angry, whether our behaviour warranted punishment or not. She beat my brother with a cane a couple of times. She only truly beat me once that I remember, when I was 16 and she was drunk. I was being knocked around the floor while my siblings cowered (including my 6' older brother). I was genuinely afraid for my life, so I slapped her face. She never hit any of us ever again. I think she realised that all her children were actually bigger than her and that at least one of them had been pushed over the edge, and the others could follow.

My father always hit me more than his other children. I could never understand why. When I got a bit older, I realised that he hit me most when he was angry with my mother. He couldn't hit his wife (because he was ever so fucking proper), but he could happily smack the shit out of the next best thing. Prick.

They both used to tell us that we were lucky because such and such a person got beaten with objects if they so much as breathed loudly. They also told me I would understand and that I would thank them for it.

If by 'thank' they meant 'never forgive', they were right on the money.

My parents were smackers. Bare bums and wooden spoons when we were little- from as young as I can remember. Always done in anger. They weren't the only ones in the 70's. I can't even imagine doing that to a toddler.
They continued to hit me right up until I left school in the name of discipline. I got the brunt of it because I was the eldest.

My father was basically 'beaten' by his father and I think he thought if he wasn't doing that he was a good father. My mother was the instigator of the punishments although she usually left it to my Dad to administer them. She was also irrational, moody and quick to anger so she was always permanently cross with me. It was def. corporal punishment and being man handled not beatings in my case but it was humiliating and painful. It wrecked my relationship with them and wrecked my self confidence. I was a quiet, well behaved child who did well at school and never got into bother. I think I was an easy target. My sister who was lazier, more mouthy got away with blue murder. I just don't think my mother liked me.

They both worked with children and would never dreamed to lay a finger on any of those kids but it was ok to whack your own.

My Dad is dead and I have a seemingly ok relationship with my Mum as long as the subject is not talked about. She says we were never hit - she has completely wiped it from her mind. I get on fine with her but I will never love her.

Sadly another one here who went through this hell. I don't want to go into details as it is too painful, but so much of what has been written already is my story too.

I still struggle with the memories from my childhood and now can see how damaged I was as a young adult. I made some bad decisions in relationships as I had no self confidence at all. I have turned things around now, because I wasn't prepared to be a victim any more. I know that I am lucky to have done that.

I learned from my parents how to be a good parent by basically doing everything they didn't and not doing what they did. It worked and I have a wonderful DS of who I am so proud.

As for my relationship with my parents, I love them and see them regularly. They have apologised for what happened, although my mother does like to diminish things a bit, but I can see that and let it go. My father now has dementia and it breaks my heart to see him like this. I would give anything to make him well.

My Dad used to smack me round the head all the time. His term for it was a "clip round the ear." However it never was. It really hurt, to the point where my ears would ring and one side of my face would go red raw. He thought this was normal as he had a victorian upbringing. I can still feel the pain he used to cause me. It never disaplined me nor made me feel I should respect my father more. I was just terrified of him. The thing is, he never talked. Only hit. My mother wasn't around as she died when I was 11. Even when she was, she was too ill to control it and I know she tried too. My Dad remarried and met my step mum after my mum had passed. They ran off, got married and didn't tell us. Sent myself and my brother to a camp while they went to Vegas and got married. This was only a year after my mum's passing. Unfortunately I didn't get along with my step mum. However over time, learnt to love her and got on with it. I was happy my dad was happy. She used to condone it too. However she hated us and still does so im not surprised. At the age of 12 i sat on my Dads lap ans gave him a cuddle and she turned around and called it "discusting." I was never close with my dad since. I remember we used to get sent to taekwondo lessons and me and my brother were the only ones there. We had to do circuit training. However if we didn't do it all or refused to do parts of it they got the teacher to beat us and they used to stand there and laugh if we used to moan or cry when it happened. This was only within the last 15-20 years. I even used to get told "do you want your dad to go to jail? Do you want to loose another parent." It was the only thing that stopped me from putting myself into care or ringing the police. I loved my dad so much and still do. Putting all this aside he is the most wonderful man. Unfortunately he doesn't want to know me as I've stood up to him now and told him how much he hurt me. He is now "having to keep me at arms length." I still ring him often though and I ask how he is. He doesn't bother with me really at all. I think my step mum still has a big part to play in it and now everyone is starting to see her true colours. Im 29 now, can deal with it and move on. I guess we all just have to deal with it eventually.

My mother used to smack. She also used (and broke in the process) slippers, a wooden breadboard (broken that beating my disabled brother), feather duster, bamboo cane. Usually at the top/inside of thigh as it hurt the most and was out of sight. I was 16 the last time she hit me (2 punches on the top of my head).

In more recent years she has denied any of it happening, even when confirmed by myself and DSis.

She also used to snack my nephew. On one occasion he moved to dodge a slap and cut his head open on a door catch. That resulted in a very late night visit to A&E. Think that scared the shit out of her as she never did it again.

Been NC for a few months now.

I was hit like this and it was a generation thing because he was even more abused than me - I got the liter version

Once I was old and large enough to fight back I did until one night he held a knife up to me and I screamed and screamed and ran out of the house he was so terrified I would get the police round that he would just threaten all the awful things but not actually do them

The pants down thing was true humiliation. I once caught myself in the rest mist of rage with my DD and realised I would repeat his mistakes if I didn't get help and I have had a lot of counselling over the years. Smacking is not part of my parenting I do not wish to pass this down the next generation

You know what this has brought back, that feeling of terror when someone is going to chase you to hurt you and you don't know what it will be. I think he liked that more than the action of the hitting or smacking. The terror

I'm late 40s - I don't think its a generation thing - my Mum and Dad never smacked us - we were told off when appropriate.

This - from OP - sounds abusive. A friend of mine's father was v similar and she is very slowly coming to terms with the fact that his kind of behaviour wasn't normal and he was - in honest truth an abusive bully.

My dad smacked us, my mum gave that as a reason for their divorce. She didn't mention that she was much much worse, emotionally and physically

The memory that stands out was one morning she was in a bad mood, I'd said the wrong thing and ended up pinned into the corner of my bedroom while she hit me over and over. I shoved her, hard and she fell over.

I ran, I ran the entire 2 miles to school, no coat, no bag absolutely terrified she would follow me in the car.
I got to school (year 8) and went to reception to sign in. I was obviously on a state and the reception ladies told me to sit down in the chairs. After a while the headteacher came down and took me into his room, I'm 33 so this is 20 years ago and I still remember " I know what's happening at home and if you tell me I promise I will make sure you don't have to go back"
By the end of the day I was being cared for by my dads girlfriend (they didn't live together and dads house wasn't suitable) I lived with her until I was 18,she's still my mum even if she isn't with my dad anymore

Remembering that made me cry

My mother would slap us when angry and threaten us with a wooden spoon. Also used to say that one day she would have enough of us and just leave. As she had done that to my dad it sounded pretty likely.

Now she complains that none of us can remember the nice stuff and we all just remember the smacking. I.e. we are being horrible again. Doesn't get why the memory of your parent raging into your room where you were hiding and angrily whacking you might be the more persistent memory.

Yes, it's assault. If he wasn't your dad, just a random stranger in the street beating you, it would be assault wouldn't it? The fact it was your dad and within the home changes nothing.

When you were 20 years old and still living at home, he wasn't "smacking" you, he was assaulting you. This wasn't harmless parental discipline (I don't believe in "smacking" anyway, it's called hitting your kids) he was slapping and punching you for no reason.

I'm really glad you're NC. You should keep it that way.

Username, I'm so glad the school did right by you and you were cared for by your dad'a girlfriend.

to everyone.

It was generational or maybe, familial is the more appropriate word. It was socially acceptable to smack and it seemed acceptable within the family remit to abuse, with parents passing that down to children.