Never physically abusive, but I came to the realization as an adult that my mom never gave me advice about anything, ever.
When I would ask her for advice, her answer was always, “Hmm…I dunno. (changing the subject) Anyway, I went shopping today and blah blah blah…”
I asked my brother and sister and after thinking about it for a long while, they were both surprised that they’d couldn’t think of one word of advice from our mom either.
My father, on the other hand only gave guidance (more like lectures) when it came to saving money or calling us kids “stupid” or my favorite “numbskulls” because he felt we wouldn’t make anything of ourselves.
Also, when I was a pre-teen my dad used to “play” with me and my sister and there was a certain thing he’d do that some people might consider sexual molestation. He would do this type of “play” in front of my mom and brother and everyone would laugh and I’d hate it. It was all done in a jokey way and I always felt really uncomfortable.
The only way he’d finally stop is if I’d start crying. Then they’d make me feel like a party pooper, ruining all the fun.
Of course, as me and my sister developed, he stopped that particular type of “play”, so there you go.
He just did a number on my self esteem and insecurities that no wonder my sister and I made bad choices when it came to our sexuality and relationships with men.
Once I became an adult there was no back and forth dialogue with my dad, it was just him lecturing while I grudingly listened, waiting for it to be over. Then he’d wonder why none of his kids came over very often.
I realized later in my life that both of my parents were unhappy as children and as teenagers, and they carried that into their adult lives and into our family. My father was insecure and defensive, with a tendency to lash out with an acid tongue; my mother was somewhat better overall, but she didn’t know how to handle stress very well, and sometimes took it out on us kids. Neither of them knew how to be nurturing to children.
So there were some important things missing from my childhood, such as warmth, but nothing like abuse happened. I have understood and forgiven them for their shortcomings, although my father was difficult to be with right to the end. I managed him by not taking it personally. Generally, I consider myself lucky that it wasn’t any worse.
Yes, I’ve come to realize that. I don’t really have the time or inclination to do the whole laundry list here, but there was absolutely emotional abuse. Whether there was physical abuse kind of depends on where you draw the line on spanking, but when he broke all the spoons, he built himself a paddle out of wood. Bruises could last a couple of weeks. It didn’t happen very often, but it did happen more than once. 100 years ago, this would probably not have raised any eyebrows, but I’m pretty sure it meets the modern definition.
But as I get older, I’m also realizing a lot of other little things. Individually, they’re not a big deal, but taken together, I’m left really wondering what was going through my parents heads. Two quick examples:
My father has wide feet. He has to special order his shoes. But as a kid, I spent hours shoe shopping without finding anything that fit right, and was then pressured to just pick something and move on. I didn’t know I had wide feet; I just knew they didn’t fit. You can tell that I spent my whole childhood wearing shoes that are too narrow just by looking at my toes. I was in my early 20’s before I figured out that I need not just a wide shoe, but extra-wide. WTF is up with a parent who can’t say “Hmmm… if I have to order shoes and my son can’t find any that fit…” (Furthermore, I did a lot of that shopping with my grandparents - his parents - and surely the same thought should have occurred to them.)
Another example was learning to shave. Most men have this touching father-son story about learning to shave. Not me. When I realized that I should probably start, I went and found his old electric razor and taught myself. Now part of that might have been the fact that I tried to avoid him on general principles, but surely that’s another area where you’d think “Hmmm… maybe I should teach my son how to shave.”
My mother died when I was 14 so much of my childhood was spent with no other parent, but at the same time, there was no real change in my father’s behavior when she died. The shoe situation, for example, goes back to my earliest memories of shopping for shoes.
Yeah, I think it’s a complete untruth to say that all parents are abusive.
My mom was one of those monkey dolls that gave the baby monkey electric shocks. But we looked very normal.
I love this analogy.
My parents weren’t so much abusive as incompetent - I see them giving advise to my sister and it’s often totally different than what they actually did. They did try their best though, and for that I love them.
I guess I was lucky on the abuse front, I remember a few spankings with a belt and multi-hour lectures (one at 3:00 in the morning), but mostly I was just left to figure things out for myself. I wasn’t starving or dressed in rags, but I don’t really remember any awareness from either of my parents about what I might need to learn while growing up. My dad taught me how to recognize different tools, so he could send me to get the one he needed and make his life easier. My mom answered everything with “let me think about it”, “because I said so”, or “aren’t you old enough to work this out for yourself”. There was never anything about making friends, standing up for myself, dating, sex, selecting a college, any of that stuff. I had to make it all up as I went along, with varying degrees of success. I don’t know why they had kids; they didn’t seem to have any plans or ideas about what sort of person I would turn out to be.
Robot Arm, what you’ve described is a form of neglect.
Of a sort, maybe, but it’s nothing like some of the stories in this thread. And it wasn’t as bleak as my post may have made it sound. I remember dad taking me skiing, and mom taking my brother and I to the zoo and the science museum. It just seems like there were things I was supposed to learn at some point but nobody ever brought them up. I hear people talk about how their parents pressure them about when they’ll have grandkids, or gay people who have come out to their parents, and I can’t even imagine having those conversations. That just seems like a part of my life that may as well not even have existed.
And about your username, Doonesbury fan?
No. My real initials are BD, and I’m a Betty Boop fan. 
Y’know, most people in this world want to do good. Unless they are severely mentally ill, MOST people try the best they can to be the best people they can. Of course, some people have limited resources (whether by their own upbringing, or financial/social or emotional handicaps), but that’s all part of being a human being. We’re all frail, fallible and imperfect.
Threads like this really give me the fucking shits because ALL parents have been emotionally or psychologically ‘abusive’. It’s part of being a parent, and it’s all a part of growing up to be an adult.
Show me a child who hasn’t been fucked over by their parents in some way! Geez, even kids who had the perfect upbringing complain that their parents didn’t prepare them for the harsh realities of living in the ‘real world’.
You want to whinge about your parents? Go get a counsellor who’ll validate your experiences.
Here? Not so much.
No. It’s really not the same. Not at all. Both my parents were mentally ill. It’s quite different from having parents who are balanced the majority of the time.
And I AM here, and I AM validating.
OK…so your parents were mentally ill. Somehow, you managed to get to adulthood, and able to string some sentences together. They must have done something right, yes?
Just fucking thank them for keeping their shit together enough to get you through!
Is it your contention that there is no such thing as child abuse.
Is it abuse if it’s not sexual in nature?
Yes. In addition to sexual, there is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse.
Eventually we’ll get fetuses access to the internet, so they can become acclimated to our digital society with a head start. While they’re in there surfing the net, there will be all sorts of click bait to address the OP:
“10 things you need to know about these people who’ll be blaming you for ruining their lives, including how to make that all-important good first impression”
“Bawling skills that get you the 3AM bottle, not the 3AM Benadryl”:
"Playing with mommy keys while she gets her drink on: it’s OK to just be distracted by them, you don’t have to go all out and choke to death to please her "
“Interact online with Japanese fetuses: learn their secret to withstanding scalding bathwater”
It is not part of being a parent that you hit your daughter against a bedpost so hard she needs stitches. It is not part of being a parent that you yell at your daughter so loudly the neighbors call the cops on you. It is not part of being a parent that you yell at your at your daughter for three hours because she’s ten and she lost the keys to the apartment and you’re a bitch who violates child safety laws by leaving her alone to watch her little brother.
Please tell me you aren’t a parent if you don’t think that was abuse. Because I am a parent. I was horribly abused by my asshole mother. And the worst damned thing about it was not the fact that my mother turned my childhood into a living hell. The worst damned thing about it was almost no one believed me when I said anything. To this day my dad thinks I’m a big fat liar and my late mother was a saint for having to deal with me.
I have two daughters. I don’t spend hours yelling at them. I don’t tell them they should have been abortions. I don’t hit them all the time or hurt them so badly they wind up needing stitches. I don’t tell my eldest how she thinks she’s so smart because she reads but she’s really a moron who knows nothing about the real world.
Some people are just fucking evil, immature little shits who aren’t trying to be good and should have their poor kids taken away from them the moment the umbilical cord is cut. The only thing my mom ever did for me was teach me how not to be a parent.
You are not required to open threads you don’t like and furthermore it doesn’t allow someone to come in and call out everyone else posting in it who are getting something from it.
Let’s avoid this behavior.