Was this abuse by my parents?

[redsequins]

I am trying to unpick what may or may not have been abusive in my childhood, I now have dc and some things from my childhood seem unimaginably cruel but I know that times have changed.
I was born late 80's. Until the age of 12 my parents made me fill a small basin of water and use that to wash with. Was this normal?! I don't think it was. I had to beg to use the shower at 12 because I was so sick of squatting in the bath with a tiny basin of water and bar of soap.

If I had a bath as a young dc my mum used to fill it with a kettle boiling the water then filling the bath, I don't know why we didn't have running hot water or maybe we did but they'd do very strange things like this.

I remember one day asking for something as a dc in the bath and my mum hitting me over and over with the empty kettle. I was raised that if I'd upset my mum to that extent I deserved it. I don't know what was the norm in the late 80's/early 90's. I never talked about any of this.
My dad used to cane me for being disobedient. One day he took me to a hardware store to pick out a particular cane saying we would build something nice with it. In reality he got me to pick the thickness of the cane I'd be hit with. I didn't know.

There were other incidents but these ones I am trying to work out what level of parental 'discipline' would have been ignored back then. I lived in a poor area. Other dc had parents arrive with broken arms and other such things at school through DV. My 'norm' I feel was very skewed. It's having dc that's made me think wow I could never do that.

I don't understand your posts.

Abuse can be defined. I don't know how you can say it can't.

@Nanny0gg I didn't realise girls weren't caned. That's one thing my dad used to say. 'Back in my day you'd be caned' And then he'd get the cane?! Worst bit is because I thought we were making something nice on the occasion in my OP, I picked the thickest cane I could. I felt really stupid when I realised what it was actually going to be used for.

I went to school right next to a rough council estate and unfortunately there was a lot of things going on. It was actually a very happy school despite this.
I think maybe because school was literally the only respite we all had from whatever was going on at home.
Outwardly, my parents acted like model citizens. It's made it harder to speak about because everyone thinks they are just that.

I didn't realise girls weren't caned.

As I mentioned, at my school the cane was always threatened, never used. I think it actually became illegal around the time I started.

But now that this has been raised; yes I do think even when it was used previously, it was not used on girls.

Which makes you Dad's attitude/claims even more BS. Cause you wouldn't have gotten caned even in his generation.

And surely he would have been aware that it was put out of use/made illegal between those generations (?)
Surely he would have been aware that previous (crazy) "discipline" methods did not necessarily get continued to the next generation.

Even if not (unlikely) what teachers did at school, parents didnt have.to copy at home. It was up to parents to decide on appropriate discipline.

It's all excuses.

The cane choosing thing with the lies..... Sick.

No wonder your mother walked out of the room when her behaviour was raised. She knows she has zero excuse.

If she's pushed to the max I'll predict she'll say you were difficult/pushed her to the max.

Or she'll say 'it was different times" or "I did what I thought was right at the time".

My parent used to say the latter. Even before I had kids, I thought "no, you fucking didn't, you lost your temper and/or you enjoyed dominating & indulging your anger".
The other main incident in my childhood was my Dad hitting and kicking one of my sisters for breaking her curfew (far from the first time) on holiday. It's laughable to describe him kicking a young teenage girl on the floor as "doing what I thought was right at the time" .... No, that's just an absolute loss of temper and self indulgence/self permission for violence".

I feel your Mum hitting you with the kettle repeatedly was similar. But her provocation (you being alive, needing looked after and dating to ask for something) was in a different league from my sister - a teenager who was dobbing school, drinking, having sex without contraception, staying out all night, breaking curfews, are king our home with parties etc. etc.

Like most people, you'll never get acknowledgement or apologies for this.

*daring to ask for something

@Nanny0gg

Abuse cannot conclusively be defined. Nobody can say whether something is not abusive to you. You are the only one who can say that. There are certain things that would be classed as abusive to everybody (which is what you'll get if you Google it), but the puppy example I gave below wouldn't be included, along with a million and one other things. Abusers don't refer to the list on Google. They do anything that will hurt, and different things can hurt different people, and that's why the list can't be conclusive.

I was born in the 1950's there was corporal punishment at school (both primary and secondary) I went to pretty ordinary London schools and you had to something pretty dreadful to deserve the punishment. I remember having my legs slapped by a teacher when I was 5 for something I hadn't actually done.
At home we would get a smack from our parents only for rudeness to them.
We had to wait for the water heater to heat up in the summer for a bath, but hot water was aplenty in the winter as we had a solid fuel boiler that was going all the time.
My own Dc's were born in the 80's. 4 boys always in the bath, no smaking, but we did threaten them🙄with all sorts of dire punishments. To this day my two youngest refer to a local block of flats as "the school for bad boys" where they would be sent to if they didn't behave!
I don't think we were dreadful as parents our Ds's seem to still like us!

You can define most of it.

Stop trying to be a smart arse.

Your username is recognisable from you pulling this shit in every thread.

When I was at Junior School, corporal punishment was still allowed, but only the boys were ever caned, and it was a rare thing. Even though I was on the right side of that deal, I still thought it unfair. I was occasionally slapped on the back of my legs; it never occurred to me to complain at home, as it wasn't considered unusual in those days.
Then I went to a girls' grammar school, and discipline was upheld without any use of physical force, so this was my role model. I went into teacher training knowing that corporal punishment was not the way to go.
When I started teaching in the late 60's, corporal punishment still went on.
However, in the early 70's, it was banned by ILEA (Inner London Education Authority).
So, by the time you were born, it had fallen out of use in some education authorities.
Then in 1986, Sarah Ferguson did the children of the UK a great favour; she married Prince Andrew in Westminster Abbey! This snarled up the traffic around the Houses of Parliament to the extent that the House of Lords could not muster enough of the "hang 'em and flog 'em" aristocratic backwoodsmen to block the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools. Independent schools had to follow suit when Human Rights legislation came into play. However, by the time the ban came in, it was pretty much just catching up with received opinion; I was teaching at an independent school by then, and one of my older colleagues told me that they had long since decided that it was counter-productive and wrong in principle, and had abandoned its use many years ago.
When your Dad mentioned the cane, perhaps it was a feeble attempt to justify his brutal behaviour; your parents must have been aware, even then, that they were in the wrong.

Then in 1986, Sarah Ferguson did the children of the UK a great favour; she married Prince Andrew in Westminster Abbey! This snarled up the traffic around the Houses of Parliament to the extent that the House of Lords could not muster enough of the "hang 'em and flog 'em" aristocratic backwoodsmen to block the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools.

I had no idea.

Possibly the only useful thing she's done.

Backwoodsmen lol

@TicketBoo23

You don't have to agree with me. Nobody cares really. I think we're all just trying to help op with the information we've learned over the years. There's really no need to be rude. We've all given advice that's been welcomed many times by many people, and we're all allowed to say what we want within the guidelines. You're not the authority here and neither am I, so there's little point taking petty little stands like yours.

Op, I hope my advice was helpful to you, and if not, I'm sure you'll disregard it and take someone else's instead. Sorry for the derail.