How bad - or normal - was this parenting "trick"? (90s)

[CornwallCucumber]

Been thinking about my childhood recently and how little I can remember of it. I googled this and found something to do with depression and amnesia, and how kids with bad childhoods repress their memories. I don't think I was abused as a child but I tried to cast my memory back to my worst childhood experiences I could remember, wondering if anything could explain it. I came to the conclusion that it's probably just plain poor memory and nothing to do with trauma, but anyway - I remembered a "trick" my dad would use to get me to shut up and go to sleep, and now that I reflect on it as a parent myself it seems pretty cruel. I'm wondering how normal this sort of threat actually was back then:

I was always terrified of being on my own in a room especially at night and if I didn't have a parent with me I was too scared to fall asleep. If for whatever reason they didn't want to sit with me, I would scream and cry and refuse to sleep. If this continued and I didn't settle down my dad would pretend to phone a man to ask him to come and take me away because I wasn't behaving. He would actually pick up the phone and have a theatrically loud pretend conversation about how I'm being naughty and not sleeping and okay great, you can pick her up soon then. Then I'd go quiet because I was four and that sounded scary, and he'd say to this man, hang on, don't worry, she's settled down now. Then I'd just lie there feeling terrified, not of being taken away, but of whatever it was that scared me in the first place - monsters, the dark, ghosts, I'm not actually sure what precisely but I know it was a real fear and not just a bedtime delaying thing. And I guess I eventually did sleep. I don't know when it started and ended but I'm sure this trick was used from at least he age of 4-6.

Now I look back on it I think that was pretty shitty although I can see how you might go to desperate measures when dealing with kids who just won't sleep.

How normal were these sort of parenting threats in the 90s?

Also, this shouldn't be necessary and I'm sure it also has no legal standing but FUCK OFF tabloids, you do not have permission to share this story or quote any of my posts.

I don't agree with, but also don't "blame" my parents, for their parenting approach, it was common and what they knew or were advised by parents/peers at the time. My own dad was physically disciplined by his father who made sure he toed the line, dad then in turn avoided physically disciplining us but used verbal threats like the ops example.

Parenting has come a long way in the last 20+ years, this took time to develop to what it is now, and will continue to develop, hopefully for the better but not too far the other way where kids don't have any consequences at all.

@Hardbackwriter

I think it's interesting how many people on this thread assume that we're 'better' now and now we've 'got it right'. I suspect that the current generation of children will have plenty of criticisms of how they're parented, just like every generation before them.

Oh yes. I think my parenting in the 90s was very child-centred, but to hear my DC tell it, it was apparently akin to borstal.

My mum used to pretend she’d been “possessed” by a creepy old man when I was being annoying

The "bogeyman" is definitely a staple of parenting through the centuries and fairy stories are often pretty gruesome tales of what will happen if you wander off/misbehave etc.

Scaring children into compliance isn't new, I think these days we see how damaging it can be, and it's obviously something that's upset you as an adult looking back.

I suppose it depends what he was like as a father overall - and whether cruelty was frequent or if this was just an ill judged way to get you to go to sleep?

I was a sensitive child and once my father recorded me having "a tantrum" and played it back and laughed, and the whole family joined in laughing at mme. Otherwise lovely childhood but I remember being bewildered and upset at the time and it feels cruel in the light of day. Nice people are sometimes arseholes, that's all I can think.

I was a child in the 60s. I was scared of the dark, and my dad would hold my hand until I got to sleep. If I woke up in the middle of the night, he'd very kindly make himself a coffee, and sit with me until I went back to sleep.

However, it made me no less scared of the dark. That was just my personality.

I agree with Hardbackwriter.

Been thinking about my childhood recently and how little I can remember of it. I googled this and found something to do with depression and amnesia, and how kids with bad childhoods repress their memories.

I didn’t know this, CornwallCucumber. Interesting, and explains a lot. Thanks for posting.

We used to get threatened with being sent to the children's home if we were naughty. It used to work until one day I realised it wouldn't be so bad so started to pack my clothes ready to be collected.

@bofski14 Seriously your mum isn't firing on the right cylinders. That wrapping up a doll as a replacement baby craziness is really, really unhinged.

I'll confess I threatened my dc with the police when he unbuckled his seat belt whilst we were driving down a dual carriageway. Needs must

From my experience parenting years ago was shit all around. People didint really care about kids then, like they do now.

That’s my experience of it anyway.

I don't think it sounds great but I also wouldn't consider it abusive. At four you should've been able to go to bed without playing up.

Op, did your parents not use even use night light, or (if they were aware you were scared of the dark) not try to reassure you about it etc.?

It is shitty, yes imho.

@Happymum12345 don't, you won't of caused trauma!

Sorry I find this just a bit strange as a thread, yes parents did this, parenting styles have changed so much.

I'm a 70s baby and had all of the above, and at 45 I don't feel the need to dwell over the "trauma" of my upbringing just live my own life and bring my children up the way I feel is right.

I've used threats to get the DS to behave as have many parents not that they will admit it and while it may not be right, in the moment it's what works.

We are going to have 45 year olds talking about the horror of the naughty step and the stress of the sticker charts?

Children need guidance and discipline, they need to be loved and feel safe as well, there is a balance.

I'm sorry if anyone did suffer abuse, but I feel there is a fine line between calling your parents abusive and them just being strict and using threats.

My ils used to bundle dh into the car and pretend they were driving to the naughty boys home to drop him off..
He is nc now.

Adults certainly did come before children then and they were expected to know their place in the pecking order with Dad at the top

we are talking 1990s, not 1920s

No, OP this was not normal in 1990s, or even in 1970s when I was a child. It is cruel.

And my grandparrents, who were born in 1899, 1910, 1910 and 1912, woudl not have behaved like this either. They would have thought is was cruel. They were strict, and had more adult centered ways of parenting, but they would not have scared a frightened child to sleep by scaring them more.

I am getting pissed off with threads on mn assuming everything before 2000 was somehow 'in the dark ages.

I was brought up in the 60s/70s I agree with other posters that we were brought up to respect adults and authority but not by threatening us with punishment but educating us with simple explanation. I work in healthcare and cringe when young people address elderly patients by their first name. Even now, aged 56, I would always wait to be invited to use their first name.
I’m glad I am unlikely to be around when the children growing up now are attempting to raise their own children.

I've always thought it would be disturbing and disorientating for a small child to wake up in the dark (or even try to fall asleep in it) so I've always had a night light.

If my DD days she'd rather not have it at any point I'll obviously not use it.

I've also always thought that logically, babies and small kids may not want to sleep separately .. because they'd be quite vulnerable to night predators in a "natural" situation. You'd have thought they'd want the reassurance of others pretty near by. Of expect that to lessen as they got bigger less physically vulnerable. I know lots and lots of people who say their kids would come into their bed til .. nine or ten at latest.

As a result, while I encourage my DD (almost 3) to sleep in her own bed, both our doors are left open, with a night light on, so she has the option of coming into the larger (king size) bed if she wants. She varies in what she does/where she sleeps. It can be irritating to be women by her and she it's unbelievable how much of s king size bed she can take up.at times.. but I'd rather she felt secure and know it will be a lessening phenomenon.

Yeah... “The Man”

I was terrified of men when I was little; dentist, hairdresser, male teachers...genuinely phobic and my mother would always say “she has a phobia of men”

Yet I do remember “I will tell the bad man to come and get you”...so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out why I was scared of men!

I was also told that if I was naughty, all my toys/nice clothes/treasured belongings would be sent to “Sarah-Jane and Lucy, the nice little girls in Ireland who are so much nicer than you. They are always very well behaved and poor so they will be more grateful than you and they’ll happily take Dolly/Teddy and love her/him more than you do. Dolly and Teddy will be much happier living with nice little girls than a horrible little girl like you.” I was about 2 and it was usually for saying “no, don’t want spaghetti hoops” or something trivial like that. I hated Sarah-Jane and Lucy. I was about 10 when my mum turned round and said “Sarah-Jane and Lucy? Who are they? Oh I just made them up to make you behave haha”.

Psycho 90s parenting.

*woken by

This is a really interesting thread and I agree that, abuse aside, our children will likely have just as many complaints when they're adults. It's what humans do.

I have threatened to put my kids out the car a few times when they're battering each other and screeching in the back and I'm on a motorway trying to concentrate and keep us all alive

My Mum once stopped the car and left dsis, 8, who was being a nightmare, on the side of the dual carriageway, then drove around over the flyovers and picked her up again. It wasn't mums proudest moment and tbf dsis is wonderful but was frankly impossible to parent. I think what you describe remains a common parenting tactic and I would say it is a weak one - using the threat of someone external and not your own caring confident authoritative parenting.

My eldest was born in 1993 and no, this was absolutely not the recommended way to behave. In fact, I seem to remember that the child-rearing book handed out by the NHS specifically warned against that kind of silly threat. 1990s isn't really that long ago, parenting hasn't changed that much.

My dd was also an anxious child who struggled to sleep at night. We sat with her and if she woke up in the night we let her come into our bed. The latter was perhaps not mainstream in the UK in the 1990s, but less out there than threats about weird men.

Having said this, it does sound as if your parents sat with you most of the time. Could it be that you remember a few occasions when they weren't really up to their usual standards? I didn't do anything like this, I knew you weren't' supposed to, but there were certainly evenings when I was very close to breaking point.

I also wonder why you would assume you have a trauma because you don't have that many memories and were anxious? But at the same time, you clearly do have childhood memories, which does not suggest amnesia?

Crossed posts with Anna!

I just got a good beating when I was being annoying

We are going to have 45 year olds talking about the horror of the naughty step and the stress of the sticker charts?

Yes, I think we will. Because they won't see things in exactly the same ways as their parents. Or they won't talk about sticker charts, but will talk about how they never developed resilience, etc. I don't know what issues my own DC will have - obviously I'm trying to parent in a way that aims not to cause any, but realistically they will have issues that stem because literally every human alive does and so I'm not going to produce the first psychologically flawless people.

I don't think you can ever 'tell' how your parenting worked out until your children are well into adulthood, and maybe not then. My views on how I was parented have changed since I had my own DC. I think an alarming thing about how a lot of attachment/gentle parenting is marketed is that parents are told that it might be harder work when their DC are tiny but then they'll never have any problems again because their DC will be so secure, confident, well-adjusted, etc. I think that's setting up a lot of false hope and that some parents will be very bewildered when that doesn't happen - in the worst cases I think 'but we co-slept!' might become the new 'but we took you to stately homes!'