If you have children, can you tell me if this is something you have done or can imagine doing if you had a terribly behaved child?

[user63212]

I think I had been badly behaved, aged 11 to 13, somewhere in that...i may have shouted in public at my parents or something horrible. i dont remember the specific reason but i remember driving home with my parents furious with me. when we got home (it was a reasonably long journey, at least over 45 mins), they went up to my room, which i had ran to, to hide, burst in and completely trashed it.

tipped over chests of drawers and the wardrobe, threw clothes everywhere, ripped some of them, smashed up a ornaments and things like an alarm clock and photo frames, glass was on the floor, the bed turned upside down, stuff from drawers like school work thrown onto the mounds. they took drawers from the hinges of the bedside cabinets and emptied everything out and threw them across the room. i was scared. i think i tidied what i could and then a few days later they were angry about the mess so they moved the furniture back.

as ive got older i am thinking about things like this more and more. is this self indulgence and self pity, or am i right to think this was unusual and wrong? like i say i dont remember the reasons why there was a big argument that day when we were out, but let's assume i had behaved awfully. my parents have always said i was a nightmare to bring up and i almost ruined their marriage. when i think back to days like my bedroom being destroyed, it fills me with waves of panic.

Awfully abusive behaviour from your parents. I cannot imagine EVER doing that to my DC no matter what they had done.

Awful for you.

also this destruction of the bedroom only happened once.i just meant things like this or days where there was lots of anger happened a lot.

You know thats not normal. Maybe get some counselling?

peri i think i must have shouted and sworn at them in public and embarrassed them with people they knew. i dont remember exactly but i just remember they were furious in the journey home and then that happened.

grass i dont know if it is normal, hence why i have posted. i dont think i would ever do that to a child, but i dont have children and dont know how it feels to be so angry at your child.

Once is too many. That was abusive behaviour by your parents. It doesn't matter what you did, you didn't deserve to be treated like that.

So sorry you went through this.

You're not wrong- this is abuse, to trash your stuff, and it has an overtone of threatening to spill over into physical violence towards you rather than objects.

' my parents have always said i was a nightmare to bring up and i almost ruined their marriage.'

I think this is an emotionally abusive thing to say,

Have you had any therapy/counselling? Might be worth a go. Hugs xxx

That is abusive behaviour and must have had a terrible impact on you.

So what if you shouted at them? They can still be cross with you and not do that. How about getting a telling off, being grounded and having your pocket money stopped if they wanted to 'punish' you for bad behaviour.

What they did was unhinged.

my parents often hit and dragged me by my hair if i was behaving badly. they said they didnt know what else to do.

My dad often says that my brother was difficult to raise, hard work from birth etc. He ignores the fact that he was shit to him and my brother was a child reacting to inconsistent and hurtful parenting.

It is abusive, my mum used to do similar. I’d find washing up in my bed and my room trashed. I think now you’ve come to this realisation, it will be easier to start working on how to get past it

It sounds like they were regularly emotionally and physically abusive. Abuse is never OK, nothing justifies dragging your child by their hair.

i had everything i needed though so it is hard to think badly of them. food, clothes, warm home, good education, money, support with school and my future. theyve been good in lots of ways, emotionally i am starting to see that that part was very rubbish and my childhood despite all the above was very sad.

Oh, sweetheart. No wonder it makes you panic, what a thing to go through.

You can try and say things like they didn't know any better but the reality is I think they probably did. They wanted to scare you and they did. They were angry and showed you the full force of that anger. They endangered you.

What do you want to do moving forward? Because it's OK to say that what they did was abusive and you're not willing to pretend any more.

if you were to become a parent, you'd know precisely what not to do.

No that's not normal. As a parent you try to model the behavior you want and normally you have bought the clothes, furniture etc so want them to be looked after. Also you are trying to teach your children how to handle their angry feelings in an adult way, is express it but appropriately.

Obviously we all lose it sometimes but your parents actions sound calculated and deliberate.

It's very hard as you grow up to realise you have been treated quite abusively as a child. It's a shocking and frightening experience to realise these people you love that have been your whole world did not care for you in the way you imagined.

Take your time OP to think it through. Remember they are only human but also that it wasn't not is your fault. It's their failings. Now you are an adult you can choose how much you invest in the relationship with them.

why would they want to do that though? why would they want to scare me? i dont understand it.

if i was badly behaved (and i do remember acting out when i felt unhappy), why didnt they talk with me and try and better our relationship? i remember wanting to talk with my parents so much but even when they were listening it was like they never really heard me.

Yes. My mum would do this. But carefully so important pieces of furniture and electrical items didn't get broken but there was a lot of mess to clean up for me. She'd appear to have lost control but hadn't really. It was usually because the room was messy (in her opinion) or that's she would say. Looking back I realise that an episode of "naughtiness" or "defiance" from us had us walk preceded it so it was obviously a peacocking temper display to get us back into line. It always worked because we were terrified of her.

If your were a badly behaved child it seems obvious as an outsider this was because you had emotionally abusive parents.
Whether that is because they got some pleasure from exerting power or had dysfunctional upbringings themselves or just weren't able to cope with the responsibility of parenthood and took it out on you we can't tell.
You may never know yourself.
I'd strongly recommend counseling for you to help lay this to rest.
Also if this emotionally controlling aspect of parenting still exists in your relationship with your parents please don't bring it up with them until you have established a good support system with a counselor and friends.
They could leave you more hurt and confused and blaming yourself.
Take Care

You didn't have everything you needed though, did you? You didn't have loving parents who you could feel safe with. What they provided materially is neither here nor there. They are possibly very damaged people themselves but whatever the reason, the way they treated you was inexcusable. It was wrong. Children can be frustrating and annoying, just like othervadults can. But behaviour like that towards another adult would obviously be a criminal offence and rightly so. NOTHING excuses treating a child like that, and the fact they were/are trying to make it your fault somehow, just proves their unfitness as parents.

My parents were similar and they did that thing of trashing my room several times. It was because I didn’t keep it tidy enough.

I had fitted wardrobes in my room - one with my clothes, one with spare clothes from my mother and one with lots of toys and books. They used to take all my things out of my two wardrobes and throw them in a huge heap. Toys and ornaments would get broken . I remember it took me days to tidy it all up and it was so hard not to cry about my broken things ( they would become incandescent with rage if I ever cried ).

I actually feel quite ill just typing this out here.

When I was in my 20s I went for counselling and through this I realised that they were very abusive. They were also physically abusive , hit me with a wooden pole etc.

So I went very low contact with them for a long time. Saw them maybe once or twice a year.

When I had my own kids I still had a small amount of contact , for my children’s sake . I told myself the children deserved grandparents . I soon discovered that was a bad decision - they were emotionally manipulative and abusive to my children and I stopped all contact completely.

I wanted to believe that they had “ learned their lesson “ , that they were “ older and wiser “ and all these cliches.

And of course, like you OP, deep down I believed it was my fault, I was a bad child. And that they use have been under sone terrible stress to act like that.

Whereas my child was good and also they were rarely left alone with her, they weren’t under stress so of course everything would be fine.

I was totally deluded. I feel terrible that I exposed my oldest child to them for a few years. She only remembers a little and just thinks that they said weird stuff to her.

They have never met the younger ones and never will.

I never talk about it RL because so many adults find it hard to think about taking such a decision, they tend to judge very harshly. Either they must think I am lying about the abuse or they think that in my situation they would rather that their own children were abused in order to “ keep up appearances” of a happy family. Because “what will the neighbours think “.

So I just never talk about them - everyone I know ( except my immediate family of course ) assumes they are dead. Which they are to me.

And you may never understand why they were that way. They may have no idea (just a false and entirely self-protective fiction that it was somehow 'because of you') and they are unlikely to want to challenge that, to say the least

This is abusive. You should ask to get the post transferred to the Stately Homes thread which deals with adult children of abusive parents. You will get excellent advice on there from people who have experienced similar.

Feeding, clothing and financial support in childhood was their job OP, it wasn’t an act of benevolence on their part. How they treated you was abuse 100%

Maybe they thought you were on drugs, the thorough searching (tearing up your room) suggests they were maybe convinced you were on something.

My DDad did similar but with kicks and punches thrown in. Nearly broke my nose and stopped me going to school but I had to pack all my trashed room into a big box.