wow, this thread is so sad.
How anyone could be so cruel is beyond me.
Is there really a point to this thread other than to see who truly had it worst?
Reading it is really depressing. 
This thread made me cry.
My parents never indulged in cruel and unusual punishment. Nor did they play dirty pool. We were punished when we did wrong, of course – but fairly. They weren’t anti spanking, but we were only spanked very lightly (with a bare hand) and very rarely – and we were never spanked at all after age 10. Lectured, certainly and we occasionally lost privileges.
Here’s the only punishment I remember from my childhood that would even remotely qualify as “cruel and unusual” – and it was neither, really. Just a little comic relief for a rather grim thread. My mother was somewhat (although not pathologically) overprotective. My dad was in the navy and was often gone, and my mom took her solo responsibility for us very seriously. A major rule was that we weren’t to go off without letting her know exactly where we were. When I was 8 years old I broke this rule by going to a classmate’s house after school instead of going home. Shirley Barnett – unbelievable that I still remember her name. Anyway, by the time I headed home (an hour or 2 late), Mom was pretty freaked. She had walked back and forth between our house and the school several times and was literally minutes away from calling the police. I rounded the corner by the school and she caught sight of me and flew up to me, grabbed me up and hugged me, “Where have you been?”
“At Shirley’s.” Wrong answer.
She grabbed me by both hands and pulled them up over my head, and marched me home with a smack on my bottom for every step. When we got home, she explained to me why we had the rule about letting her know where we were at all times. She also told me that she had to punish me in such a way that I would remember the rule and never “forget” it again – my excuse for going to Shirley’s in the first place had been the classic, “I forgot.” Now, I suppose everyone over 35 or 40 remembers the good old days when Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s Cinderella was a yearly TV event? This was before cable TV or VCRs… if you missed it, that was it until the next showing a year later. Well, as it happened, I chose the day of the yearly showing to “forget” to come right home after school. In those days we had a gruesomely early bedtime – 8:00. The only exceptions were when Cinderella (or Wizard of Oz) was played. Then we got to eat TV dinners – in front of the TV! – and candy and snacks that Mom bought specially for the big occasion. That year, I went to bed at 8:00. No Cinderella, no snacks. Just crying in my bed as I listened to my (younger!) brother and sister yukking it up in the living room… Cruel and unusual, indeed.
Seriously, my mom has always maintained that that evening was harder on her than it was on me. She knew I loved the movie and she knew I’d lost my shot at it for one whole year. And, of course, she knew I was crying my eyes out… She says it damn near broke her heart, and I believe her. My parents are good people and good parents and they were just and loving guardians to us. My brother and sister and I were lucky.
Jess (off to hug her kids and telephone her mom and dad)
Not cruel, but definitely unusual.
I was 12 and I’d done “something.” For the life of me, I have no idea what I had done, but my father was pissed!
My punishment: I had to go downstairs to the workshop with him and had to learn how to make an extension chord. He had a toolbox full of electrical wires, sockets, outlets etc. So he gave me the necessary components and I stood, terrified, next to the work bench, carefully figuring out how to make a five foot extension chord while he stood over me and watched.
It was nerve wracking and kind of reminded me of the scenario in movies when someone with no skill in electronics is being talked through the defusing of a bomb over the phone.
I’ve never used the extension chord I put together for fear of burning down the house. I know it’s fine, I’ve had to rewire all the lights in a theatre since then. But that chord is still “scary” in my mind.
Dislocated fingers.
Beaten with a belt, belt buckle, pad lock and chain, wooden spoon, and a knife.
Had knife thrown at me. (By older bro says that’s where the scar in the middle of my back care from.)
Personal possessions destroyed.
Made to sleep in the garage in winter. (I’m in Canada remember.)
I have since made peace with my mum over all of these things. It is something that still haunts her to this day.
psycat90, my heart goes out to you. In fact it goes out to all of you.
Wow.
My sister and I got my Dad’s uniform belt (two inch wide, really stiff leather) across the butt six or seven times if we did something wrong, but that’s about it.
Mom was big on grounding and taking away privileges, but that was all she did. Guess I got off light.
Oh man. Some of the stuff in this thread just makes me see red. Talk about a reason to sue someone till their eyes bleed…
Whipping? Threatening with a heated fork? “Dirty Pool”? This behaviour isn’t parenting; at a minimum, it’s blind egotistical bullying, pure and simple… and beyond that, words like “torture” and “assault” come to mind.
auntie em, psycat90, hillbilly queen, bloom, Opal Cat, everyone, I wish there was something I caould say.
Kwyjibo, I’m so glad that you’ve made peace with your mom over this. That must have been difficult.
There are few things worse than undisciplined “discipline”.
Thanks Sunspace.
It honestly wasn’t that hard. For me, this sort of thing was normal and I have always had a good relationship with my folks.
When I grew up and had kids of my own, I could at least understand what would drive her over the edge and with them now being grand parents, I am sure that they were reflecting on the past.
It was then that I bought it up with them and forgave them, as it were.
But at around Christmas, my mum ‘lost it’ on my son, (Just some slaps and some harsh words.) and it’s just today that I actually emailed her.
Sometimes, you just have to put yourself in someones shoes and understand what is going on in their head. (Even if you don’t agree with their actions.)
That’s the only way I would have been able to deal with this without loosing my own head…
I know…sounds messed up…it’s hard to explain.
Thanks, Sunspace, for your sympathy (and for making me feel validated–after some of those posts, I felt like mine was… well… child’s play, since I never even got spanked as a kid).
However I, like Kwyjibo, have always had a good relationship with my parents, and feel like they would do anything in the world for me. Sure, I was the typical resentful kid, because my parents were quite over-protective and I was hardly ever allowed to do stuff that other kids my age got to do.
But, I was a “SURPRISE!” kid, and by the time I came along, my parents not only thought they were done having kids, but were “old”, tired, and quite shockable by then, too.
And, to make up for the fact that they weren’t letting me go out with my friends, they’d drag their tired asses up to take me out (to a movie of my choice, or to dinner, or to the Dairy Queen) themselves.
Wasn’t as much fun, of course, but the gesture was nice.
And in my mother’s defense, her mother was the Dirty Pool Goddess (I’ve heard stories, man), so she came by it honestly.
It made me sad to read some of these posts, especially those from Pyscat90, HillBilly Queen, Cougarfang, and Kwyjibo. I know how you feel, and I am so sorry for what happened to you.
I can count every spanking my father ever gave me on one hand, but my mother is a different story. I can’t remember a week going by without getting hit, slapped or yelled at.
She hit me with wooden spoons, metal flyswatters, dinner forks, spatulas, shoes, yard-sticks, belts, extension cords, and with switches from a peach tree. She would pull me by the hair, and she also hit me once with a frying pan and once with a lawn rake. She would slap me in the face or on the head, or anywhere if a head shot was out of reach.
She was a master at verbal abuse as well. I was a God damned: bastard, monster, idiot, brat, devil, or son-of-a-bitch. When I was about 4 yrs old, I broke a porcelain doll and during the beating, she told me what a rotten little bastard I was, and how much she hated me and how she wished that I had never been born. She also said she would never forgive me. She never did. Late in her life, more than once, she made the remark, “Oh how I hated you for breaking that doll.”
A few times, until I was about 7, she humiliated me by putting make-up on me, lipstick, eyeliner etc., and then made me wear one of my older sister’s dresses.
Once, I went to a friends house three doors down the street. She came and got me and, using a peach tree switch, beat me with it all the way home.
DT gets some revenge:
I was a pretty big kid, and when I was about twelve I put my hands up and stopped her from slapping me. She hurt her arm, and never attempted to hit me bare-handed again. The last she hit me I went into my room and closed the door. She tried to barge in without knocking, or saying anything. I was sitting on the floor and she pushed the door into my back. I put my feet against the bed and pushed myself back as hard as I could. She had opened the door just enough to stick her head inside and I almost crushed her skull. After that, she left me alone.
Wow…
I didn’t realise how cruel and unusual my punishment was. Of course I would never consider doing the same with my child, but I thought it was common for that time (60’s & 70’s).
I’m sorry if my post was disturbing. If it makes anybody feel better, after I turned 14, I put my parents thru living HELL. 
Among the things dear old dad hit me with included 2x4’s, brooms, rakes, tree branches, belts, razor strap, and a tennis racket. He hit me with a closed fist when I was 8 for order vanilla ice cream at a Baskin & Robbins. He stole $3000 of mine when I was 16. I spent the summer working on a charter fishing boat. He would collect my paychecks for me and deposit them in his account. At the end of the summer he gave me $500 and told me that is what I earned that summer. When I got my W-2 the following January, it said I made over $3500 after taxes. When I asked him about it he said the W-2 was wrong. I believed him.
The topper for him happened when my mother died. My parents divorced in 1972 and my mother was given the house. She made all the payments and paid the house off in 1984. When she died in 1989, her will stated to sell the house and split the money 6 ways between me and my siblings. When we obtained a copy of the deed for the estate division, it was in my fathers name, not my mother. He had drawn up a contract that gave him the house and told my mother it was the contract giving her the house. She signed it not knowing what it really was. He settled for a 50-50 split after the threats of a long drawn out court fight. I haven’t seen or talked to him in 13 years because of it. What he did hurt worse than any of the beatings he gave me.
Some of the stuff in this thread crosses over the line into child abuse, methinks.
Indeed, rjung, I would not hesitate to classify my father as abusive.
Mostly, he would just hit us: whipped with belt until bloody, tae-kwon-do kick to the chest, and so on. Sometimes he would be feeling creative, and he’d do something that wasn’t physically painful but was emotional agony. Example: stapling my brother to the wall of the garage. Seriously – he pushed my brother against the wall and used a staple gun to fasten his shirt to the wood, a staple every two or three inches all the way around, leaving him helpless, and laughing at his distress.
And sometimes he’d torture us just for the hell of it. One time, he promised my brother and me he’d take us downtown to see a nature documentary. Disney’s “Arctic Fox,” if memory serves; I’ve never bothered to look it up and verify. Anyway, he said to us, take a shower, get cleaned up, and we’ll go see the movie. He then went outside and washed all of the cars. Because he had the hose on, we were unable to shower; the water was scalding hot. I tried to go out to tell him, but he just pointed back inside and said, “You’re supposed to be showering.” After half an hour, he comes in, says, “No shower, huh? No movie, then.” And leaves us crying.
This history is one of the reasons I’ve delayed having kids myself. I didn’t trust that I’d be able to break the cycle, that all of the crap I put up with wouldn’t come out in my own behavior somehow. I’m mostly past that, but I’m still sort of afraid.
I feel the same way, Cervaise. Especially when I remember how frighteningly angry I would get sometimes when by older nephew wouldn’t stop crying when he was a baby.
OMFG LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!! HAHAHAHA
Thats wonderful.
ive lived a sheltered life never beat or nothing. just get yelled at sometimes. my life is easy 
Some of these are truly HORRIFIC. Why would people have children and then turn around and treat them like this? The mind reels…
My two stories actually make my sister and me laugh about them now. My mom’s worst would have to be: making me brush my teeth with my toothbrush covered in Dawn dishwashing liquid. Afterwards, I didn’t get a new toothbrush, had to keep using the one that had just been Dawn-i-fied. Man, that stuff NEVER goes away. My dad’s story is this: I’d gone many moons without cleaning my room and it was baaaaaad. My dad (probably drunk) decides to throw all of my possessions out the window in the backyard. What the heck?! Where this idea came from, I have no idea. Anyway, we lived in an old house with storm and regular windows. Dad get the storm window up and then gets the outside window up but it wasn’t even so it was jammed all cock-eyed (can you see where this is going?). While he’s trying to get the screen off, the outside window comes loose, falls and crushes his hand, pinning it to the sill. I was laughing so hard, I could ( wouldn’t?) help him get the window off his hand. My mom had to come from the other end of the house and take him to the hospital. His hand was broken in three places.
Some of the other stories remind me of a German’s children’s book about a boy named Struyvelpeter. Man! Those are some freaky stories. Some of the others sound like they’re straight out of the DHS files. My heart goes out to all of you who had it bad. Some of the rest of your stories tickled me: the water-treatment plant and the extension cord. Too funny.
mmm…
(who has always pledged "I will never do xyz to MY children!)
And I think my parents are bad… I feel kind of ill after reading some of those.
My mom can be a real bitch to deal with and perhaps even a bit verbally abusive but nothing like this.
Jesus wept!
Let’s see, I remember having my mouth washed out with soap twice-the 2nd time was when I went with my dad to work and swore in front of his boss.
Oh, and once when I was about four years old, I was sitting down to dinner and started whining because my dad had hard boiled eggs in his salad-and I HATE the way they smell. I was really being obnoxious. My father got so fed up he stood up and knocked my plate of stroganoff onto my lap and stormed out.
Most of what I can think of would be my parents and their family members. My aunt once had to kneel on uncooked rice.
And this isn’t really a punishment-but when my grandfather’s brother, my Uncle Paul, was about four years old, he would constantly run out of the yard, climb the fence, go into the street, etc. My great-gramma was tired of running after him (she had my grandfather, my Aunt Lu and probably Uncle Franny as a baby to look after as well).
So, she put him in one of Aunt Lu’s old dresses. It worked. He was too ashamed to leave the yard. It wasn’t a punishment so much as she just wanted to keep him safe.
This thread just brought back some bad memories for me. It also is making me very depressed and sad. Granted, my parents didn’t treat me as badly as some of yours did, but it was still pretty bad. Guilt trips, punishments, insults, all of that stuff…
My parents were very good at emotional and verbal abuse. There was more than one time that my mother told me that she didn’t love me anymore, that she wouldn’t speak to me anymore, and that she wished she had never had me. My father would tell me that I was no good at anything, and wouldn’t amount to much. I believe there was at least one time that my mom told me that she’d much rather have the two babies she lost to miscarriages instead of me. (I was born first, then she had the miscarriages, then she had my brother, and finally, my sister) There were many other examples, but I remember those as being very stark. Who wouldn’t? I mean, telling your own child that you wished they had never existed? That’s not exactly going to bring about a change for the better, you know.
My mother would also make me kneel on the floor, put my hands over my ears, and pull at my earlobes. Talk about losing your dignity, especially given she was still punishing me like this when I was over 18! She once made me do that for an entire night on the kitchen floor (for forgetting to tell her to bring something important on a family outing; I think the item in question was her camera or something), and warned me that she’d be checking on me to make sure I didn’t fall asleep. If I did, she warned that the punishment would be even more severe: she’d make me do that for the entire next day. Needless to say, I made damn sure I didn’t fall asleep. Did I mention that the next day was a school day? I probably went around like a zombie.
My father was also never afraid to swear and curse at us; what made this sort of unusual was that he was a respected deacon and/or chair of our church at that time. Maybe what we did was enough to make a saint swear when provoked to the extreme limits of his patience, but what we did wasn’t that bad (not showing a report card to them because it contained bad grades), and nor is my father a saint by any stretch of the imagination. (I’m not, either, but seriously… that was enough to shock us!
The swear words didn’t necessarily shock us, as we probably heard them every day at school, but the fact that our respected churchman father was doing what we were strictly warned against was probably what did it. We didn’t expect our parents to have unlimited reserves of patience, of course, but did he have to do THAT? Definitely shocked our little brains!
There were times when my parents would go through my stuff, and randomly destroy things they felt were dear to me. They’d also read my diary, and use what I had said in there against me. Stuff that I thought was private would invariably come back to haunt me when I least expected it. I made damn sure to get diaries with locks on them when I got old enough!
As I’ve mentioned in other threads, my mother would use the wooden end of a feather duster to spank us if she thought we were being naughty. It was referred to as the “gy-mo-so” (approximate phonetic pronunciation), and she never used it for its intended purpose, either. Didn’t matter if it was trivial or not, we got the non-business end of the feather duster. (and got it pretty hard, too… made us cry, usually) There were also the times that she’d use a wooden spoon to accomplish the same purpose. (to spank us for something we’d done wrong) Yes, there were the spankings with their bare hands, but the feather duster was the usual around the house.
I don’t think that my mother was very amused when I told the elementary school counsellor about it; in fact, she tried to downplay it when the counsellor mentioned it to her. And you better believe that I got it pretty bad when I got home! Seems my mom thought that such punishments should stay en famille, and that “outsiders” should never know about it. I got lots of dirty looks from my parents when that happened, believe me. They were also very good at getting my siblings to believe that I was the one who had done wrong, and not them.
Then there was the time that I used my parents’ facecloths to wipe the toilet after I’d finished washing it… they went absolutely ballistic! My father actually tried to strangle me over it, and only stopped when my mother told him to. Then they tried to kick me out of the house, when I was wearing only my pajamas! Needless to say, I was quite distraught, and went right to the high school counsellor the next day (I was in Gr. 12 at the time) and told the whole story. My mom didn’t think it was very funny when social services called her at home a few days after!
The day after that, I tried to get away from them (my mother had screamed at me, telling me that I wasn’t worthy to call her Mom, and so should only call her Mrs. LastName). When family friends finally persuaded me to at least call and say I was all right, my family wanted me to come home. Yeah right! I spent the night at my friend’s house and went to school the next day, only to discover that my mom had opened my locker (she had to know all our locker combos) and put a note inside that said that they were going to Dairy Queen afterwards. So I had to go there, but typical of my family, nothing was said about what had happened. Apparently, after that, they thought things would be all smooth once again, and we were all happy together… NOT!
Actually, that’s just like my mom: to compenstate for something unpleasant, she’ll offer me what she thinks to be adequate remuneration. The compensation for Dad almost strangling me? A trip to Dairy Queen for ice cream the next night! That’s GOT TO BE enough to make me forget about it, right? I mean, they’re spending their money on ice cream for me, so it must be satisfactory! :rolleyes: Hmm… I don’t think so!
For not telling them about my high school graduation ceremonies, I was almost made not to go. Thank goodness I had called a friend of mine earlier and made other plans… my parents couldn’t refuse when my friend’s parents showed up at the door and announced that they were going to take me. Yes, I probably hurt my parents by doing so (which they mentioned years after the fact), but I had reached such a low emotional point in my life by then (almost all caused by my parents… seriously) that I didn’t feel like inviting them to the ceremony! (I might have invited my siblings or something, but they weren’t of age to drive or anything)
There was an insane amount of yelling and screaming in our house; most of it (as I remember) directed at me. For example, there was the time I got two or three F’s on one of my Gr. 8 report card. Understandably, they weren’t very pleased, but did they have to yell at me all night for it? They told me that I wasn’t a very good daughter and had brought shame on the family name. (which I might have understood if I had come home and announced that I was pregnant, or something… but not over that!)
There were the times that they’d make me take a walk when they were angry with me. (like the time when my Gr. 8 marks weren’t as good as expected; it was dark at night) Once, the police found me and wondered what I was doing. Staying away from my parents, I told them. The only thing my parents wished to know when I got home was where my socks were. No concern about where I had been, only an inquiry about my socks! As if the material posseions (a pair of socks) were more important than my emotional well-being… I don’t think so! That’s also how they sometimes think nowadays… sigh.
My parents would also not allow me to go out with my friends if I had done something wrong. “But that’s surely normal,” I can hear you saying. Yes, but they refused to let me go to church because I’d see my friends there! Maybe they thought that if I saw my friends, I’d be tempted to do badly in school, or something. I have NO idea what that was all about.
I remember this time in college that my grades weren’t the best. My parents decided that an appropriate punishment for me was grounding. And when I say “grounding”, I mean grounding! They didn’t let me go to Fellowship or choir, presumably because that if I saw my friends, I’d actually have fun, and we all know that having fun is not permissible when your grades are not at your best. :rolleyes: Going to church was a must, though (of course), and they monitored me throughout all those Sundays. Ten weeks of hell… at least my friends stuck up for me!
There was the time that my family came to pick me up after the school band had been somewhere. Since I didn’t come to the car when they called (it was embarassing to my teenage self at the time to have your parents call out your name from the parking lot; besides, I had to go into the school and get some things from my locker), I got excluded from the meal the family was going to have at a local restaurant. Instead, they drove me home, set me to work weeding the garden, then they all went out to eat.
Speaking of weeding the garden, there was this time that my parents got cheesed off at me for doing something wrong (I no longer remember what, thankfully) and made me weed the garden. They had said some pretty hurtful things to me during this latest round of conflict (probably about my grades), and so I found it deliciously bloody ironic that my mom told me, as she handed me a pair of gardening gloves: “Put these on… I don’t want you to be hurt.” So where was that concern during the round of yelling they’d just had with me? Maybe they thought physical hurt was more immediate than emotional hurt, I don’t know. But I don’t think one is necessarily more hurtful than the other. Physical pain may heal over time, but emotional pain leaves deep scars.
There were also the times that my parents refused to let me eat anything for dinner (except maybe rice, if they were feeling generous) because of something I’d done wrong. That might be a usual childhood punishment, but they were doing it when I was 14 and 15, for goodness’ sakes! Definitely not a child, anymore. There was this time that we were invited for dinner at a restaurant, and I couldn’t eat anything except rice. Then my cousin (who was living with us at the time) intervened and asked if I couldn’t have something more. Believe me, I was grateful to her. Of course, this got spun by my mother into: “If Yvonne hadn’t been so nice to you, you wouldn’t have gotten anything else to eat!” More like they couldn’t refuse my cousin at all. (or she’d think that they were being cruel, which they were)
There was also the time that I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone because I had managed to do something wrong… AGAIN. My parents went out for the night, and left a family friend in charge to look after the three of us. She must have thought it peculiar that I didn’t answer her when she spoke to me. (my parents probably didn’t tell her that I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone)
I remember when my parents made me write lines (yes, just like elementary school) detailing what I must never do again. “I will not plug the toilet again”, “I will not hurt my sister again”, etc. all written out at least 100 times on blank or lined paper. If I had missed one line, I had to redo them all over again.
There were the times that my parents forbade me to read anything because my grades were not that great. (no, I wasn’t that great a student, but I did try) Now this was a real punishment, since I love to read. Of course, I’d try to sneak in a bit of reading by claiming that it was necessary for school. (which was definitely not the case with my brother’s Asterix comics that he borrowed from his elementary school library)
My mother would also deny me TV privileges. But she would deny me those, plus reading and phone privileges, for at least a week or more. And she would continually tell me that I’d done wrong… so I don’t think her temper ever cooled down. For that matter, neither did my father’s.
Then there was the time that they discovered I’d been calling my mother a bitch. In retrospect, it was unwise of me to show the note to my sister (I’d been writing a note to my friend Nick), but they didn’t have to make me kneel on the floor all afternoon and evening as punishment! Of course, they kept the ripped-up note in their room for some time as a guilt trip punishment; evey time I went into their room for weeks afterwards, I couldn’t help but notice the remains of the note. (I had to go in their room to do various chores in there, like sweeping the floor and such)
I remember my mother slapping me in the face more than once; usually for lying or some offense like that. (or for going to visit my old elementary school when I should have gone straight home) When I talked to people who were a year behind me in school, and they told me that they could take the bus downtown all by themselves, I was jealous! I would never have been allowed to do that, you see.
I could probably think of more things to relate in this post, but I think this is more than enough for now. Suffice to say that there were many, many times when their punishments and such left me crying to myself, friends, counsellors, etc.
Of course, if I related all of my tales to my mom, she’d probably either deny it or brush it off with something along the lines of: “Well, we were your parents, so we had to punish you. I’m not sure it did any good, though. But all parents have to punish their kids when they do something wrong, and you were the worst out of the three of you, so it was justified.”
And my parents wonder why I seem never to tell my friends the good things about them! :rolleyes: Yes, they have their good qualities, but is it any wonder I’m hard-pressed to think about any right now? Besides, my friends are there for me if I need to vent, so that’s certainly justified.
I feel for all of you that posted in this thread that have related much worse tales than mine. Even the ones that don’t pale in comparison to mine make me really sad. I can’t say I know exactly how you all feel, but I know some of the emotions that must percolate within you. I am very sorry for what happened to you.
Good grief, F_X! I am so sorry for what you went through. Do you still talk to your parents? That’s very forgiving of you if you do. I couldn’t. I would’ve given them a great big ol’ “fuck off” the day I graduated, but then again, I’m not a terribly forgiving person.