Did your parents hit you? And how did you turn out?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Another one who didn’t answer because I didn’t like the lack of distinction between a few open-hand-on-bottom smacks and beating with fists, etc.

As a parent I thought a UN analogy was best:
First we tell you you did wrong (and not to do it again), next we try sanctions (time out) then we send in the troops (spanking).

A viable system of discipline has to be just that, a system. There has to be the reasonable expectation that worse punishments can come. If your first step is a fist to the face, what are you going to escalate to? On the other hand, if the worst thing that can ever happen is a five minute time-out, most kids over three can just shrug that off.

Knowing the worst, you rarely have to escalate beyond the mildest.

62

I voted, but I also think there should be more specific distinction in the answers.

For what it’s worth, I was probably spanked every two to three months, have always been on good terms with my parents and am a productive member of society. (Granted, I work for the government so your mileage may vary on that last one.)

Edit: To clarify “spanked”: It was always open hand, on bottom, through clothes.

63

My evil stepmother spanked me twice and slapped me once, for things I didn’t do. Gave me nightmares. Later my aunts and grandma beat her up and she didn’t do it again.

My Mom never hit me, but she was a yeller, which was only marginally better.

Even as a small child it was blindingly obvious to me that most adults at the time behaved towards their kids based on their own emotions and not any actual thought out system of moral training.

The real lesson boils down to “don’t piss off your adult, and don’t be anywhere on their radar when they are pissed off for some other reason”

64

I turned out generally OK, mostly unrelated to anything they did or didn’t do. Probably the biggest thing they did right was love reading, and encourage me to love reading, which exposed me to lots of ideas and taught me to think for myself. Really, being able to figure out something for yourself (especially in terms of morals and values) is much more valuable than being told any specific X or Y. And kids pick up much more from what their adults do than what they say.

65

I’m not answering the poll for the same reason. I was spanked a few times, up to maybe age 10. They were spankings, not abuse. They were not adminstered in anger. They weren’t even the “spanked until you hurt” level. They were a way to shock me into rethinking what I had done repeatedly.

I’d much rather be swatted on a clothed butt with an open hand, instead of being screamed at or verbally abused.

66

My dad hit us often with his hands, fly swatter whatever he could get a hold of. I tried to intervene when he beat the shit out of my sisters and would get even more. I turned out okay but I need years of therapy to get over it. It has changed who I am and how I relate to men. My husband doesn’t even know I was hit or abused as a child. I don’t talk that much to dad anymore but I’m nice to him when I visit. My mom was abused by him and after many years of various assaults she called 911 and he was charged. I think that has kept him in check from now on I hope. One of my last assaults was when I was in university I was at home and he was angry over something and broke a plastic chair over my head.

67

My father used a belt on me three times. Bad enough to leave welts, but it was on my butt. I think he got my leg once when I moved.

One time was for skipping school and the other two times were for behavior that he feared indicated I might be experimenting sexually with other girls. He was wrong. He didn’t yell or even speak while he hit me, that I recall. Then he would send my step mom in to put salve on me and make me come out to the family room to watch TV or listen to him play guitar and sing. He would sing funny songs trying to get me to laugh. That just made me more mad. Especially if he succeeded!

I think I turned out OK.

68

I was spanked a few times - I think with open hand, I don’t remember. PandaKid has been spanked a few times (open hand).

I think I turned out ok and so far she isn’t twitchy.

69

I’m not sure what the definition of ‘turned out well’ is. I chose that I did in the poll though, because I like who I am, and my mom spanked/hit/slapped/flicked my lip hard enough to make it swell, almost every day, usually multiple times per day, for as long as I can remember until my late teens.

I don’t have a relationship with my mother because her physical and emotional abuse combined with emotional distance (and the depression and anxiety that caused in me), killed all the love I might have had for her as a child. But ever since leaving her house, I’m generally ‘okay’ and have been supporting myself since age 18. However I’m an ambition-less person, and I wonder sometimes if I would have turned out differently/more motivated if I hadn’t been so miserable as a kid that I gave up on life enough to be diagnosed with ‘failure to thrive’ age 8…

I’ve sworn to myself since I was a child myself that I would never think it was okay to hit, scream at, or humiliate my own children, and I’ve always wanted a family. Unlike my mom, I don’t have a temper to speak of (my anger is certainly there, it’s just deliberate and cold), I’m very in touch with my emotions and am a source of emotional support for all my friends, and I get along very easily with my SO, so I’m not worried about perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

70

I remember running out into the street to avoid my dad hitting me, I must have been around nine or ten and that was the last time he tried it. It was always a slap to the upper thigh from either mum or dad - nothing like a beating, but I just decided enough was enough. There was other abuse from my dad that’s surely affected how I’ve turned out.

I’m presently helping a friend with her kids, a sort of intervention thing on a small scale. They are lovely lovely kids, but do absolutely nothing around the house willingly. Their father says he’s taken enough blows for his children and grandchildren and to his immense credit has never lifted a finger to any of them. I really admire him, it’s a loving gesture and he’s broken the mold. However he has no frame of reference for getting them to do anything, it would be either what he knew … tied to a tree and whipped with electrical wire or … what? Like he has a void there of how to treat them. And so it’s nothing. :smiley: The kids are so infuriatingly lazy that I’ve wanted to slap them upside the head a few times.

They do what he asks them, but ignore their mother, so now I come in on a Saturday and they bloody well listen to me because I just keep droning on and on and on :smiley:

71

One time my mother, younger brother and I were going into town. My brother had been mouthing off all day. We walked out the driveway and got into the truck, Momma at the wheel, then me, then little bro next to the window, him still compaining and carping. After a few miles Momma suddenly reached around and slapped me right square across the face. “What’d you do that for?” I asked, rubbing my jaw. She said, “I couldn’t reach him.”
That was Momma; mean…and funny.

72

This thread has dredged up a long-forgotten memory. I think I was spanked on occasion when I was very young, but I don’t have any specific recollections.

The dredged memory is what I think was the last time I was spanked. I couldn’t have been more than five, maybe six. I had done something wrong (and I knew it), and was sent to my room to await punishment. After what seemed an excruciatingly long time, my dad came up to my room. My memory tells me that he sat and spoke with me about my transgression, taking time to explain the reasoning behind the rule and the punishment I was going to receive. Then he had me assume the position, and gave me some number of swats between one and five. I really have no idea.

You know the cliche “this hurts me more than it hurts you”? I’ve always believed it, because I can remember how sad my dad was when this happened. I had a sting that lasted a few seconds, while he looked like he’d–well, like he’d just hurt his child.

FWIW, my dad may be the gentlest man I’ve ever known. I’ve seen his temper explode once, maybe twice in my life–and only under extreme provocation. And when I say “his temper explode”, I mean red-faced, angry, and shouting. Never hitting.

That was the last spanking I received, and I remember feeling so bad that I had put my dad in the position where he’d had to do that.

So I don’t know where that puts me in the poll. I was spanked when very young. I’ve turned out very well, thank you. My dad was and is one of the sweetest and kindest men I’ve ever known. I’ve never doubted once his absolute and total love and devotion to me.

And to close the circle, I’ve spanked both my daughters. The criteria were absolute–the only transgression meriting spanking was lying. Correction was only administered with a cool head, and never in anger. Swats were equal to the offenders age. Swats were not administered past age 6–logic, discussion, timeout, and grounding were used after that age.

73

Apparently I got a swat on the hand once for willfully and gleefully up-rooting a houseplant out of its container after being told to let it alone. This would have been pre-kindergarten and I don’t remember it at all.

Otherwise I was never physically disciplined in any fashion ( nor was I ever threatened with it ) and within reasonable definitions of “fine”, I think I turned out fine ;).

74

My brothers and I got spanked every once in a while, when we deserved it, by a calm parent after they made sure we were clear on we’d done wrong. It hardly hurt, the embarrassment of being punished was far worse. (Yeah, we were easy kids.) I seem to recall being given the choice between a spanking or a time out and choosing the spanking just to get it over with. I don’t think we were ever spanked after age six or seven.

My little brother once came up to me after a spanking with a big grin on his face and announced that he’d gotten his spanking with a BELT. He’d apparently learned that some parents administer spankings with a belt rather than with a hand (our parents never had) and specifically requested it that time. I in my infinite wisdom of being two years older informed him that he was missing the point.

What actually hurt was Dad’s bullying later on. He thought it was funny to order us to bend over (when we’d done nothing wrong), with a big grin on his face, implying that he was going to spank us. When we eventually complied, he’d smack his hand to make us jump, or just let us back up and inform us how glad he was that we were such compliant children. I still hate him for that, along with many other things. (He was an addict. You fill in the rest of the story.) We’ve all turned out okay anyway, with some work.

75

I don’t remember getting whupped. I know that I did get whupped on at least one occasion, but I don’t remember the actual punishment. Just the lead-up to it.

But I saw it happening to my siblings. And the threat was ever-present.

Did I turn out alright? Well, I am functional. So are all my siblings. We are all employed and have never gotten in trouble with the law. We’re all upstanding citizens, and we still respect our parents and visit them. Are we all pitchers of mental health? Well, no. My older sister and I have some issues, and my brother has dealt with his demons too. I do not think the beatings caused them, though. For my sister and me, I think we’ve got a genetic legacy that would have been expressed regardless of how our parents had raised us.

I don’t think the beatings helped, though. When I look back on my childhood, I remember happy times, of course. But I also remember a curtain of fear dropping on me whenever my father would come home from work, because it often meant being dealing with a scary grizzly bear with an unpredictable temper. So in a sense, it was the anger that was more problematic than any resulting violence–the anger was much more frequent, for one thing. Spending your formative years being afraid of eliciting an emotional reaction from your father is simply not good.

76

Often/turned out badly.

Legacy of bad relationships in adulthood. My wife beat on our daughter when I wasn’t around to run interfence. One night after the cops took her mom away for beating her with a belt, Angela was sitting in the living room crying, saying “I don’t have a very nice life.”

The part of me that won reacted to this by thinking “Jesus Christ, to be talking like that at six years old!” and doing my best to get her to bed knowing that somebody loved her. But God help me, another part of me, from how I had be treated, had the impulse to yell at her to stop feeling sorry for herself and quit begging for attention, and get the fuck to bed. Scares the shit out of me how easy it would have been to go that way.

77

Please please please tell me you meant to type “ex-wife”.

78

I just wanted to point out this is very true for me as well. I did have severe PTSD as a result of how I was raised, but I was probably more susceptible to it than the average person, having a pretty screwy genetic inheritance. After successful treatment of the trauma I still suffer severe chronic depression and anxiety - and my psychiatrist and psychologist are both in general agreement that baby, I was born that way.

Bless you, Slithy Tove.

79

I was spanked. My mother - the spoon. My dad - a paddle just like this one. My stepmom also used the paddle. We called it “Woody”.

Once I got the Woody because I left a comb on the floor when my room was supposed to be spotless. It was stick between the carpet and the wall and it was a small black comb. Barely visible. I got whacked for that. Another time I got it because I was apparently being immature at a restaurant (news to me) and my stepmom lost it, calling me all kinds of names. I was black and blue from the small of my back down my rear to the back of my knees. I thought for sure she’d get arrested, but nope. My mom didn’t call the police; she had a mutual friend mediate.

They stopped hitting me after that, for the most part. The stepmom got mad and threatened to hit me once during a family vacation and I told her I’d hit her back. My dad freaked out and tried to hit me when I was sixteen, but my stepmom…in a weird rush of something…intervened and screamed at him to stop.

I was also forced to wear dresses, couldn’t talk on the phone, couldn’t go outside, didn’t have TV for years, couldn’t read books unless it was a Bible (because books are all about sex, you know) and was once subjected to a Baptist-style prayer fest by his church because I took up recycling at twelve. Apparently that is the stuff of the devil (eg, liberals). Time with my mother was all I could look forward to so I didn’t jump out of the window.

Oh, and they didn’t feed me. They were rich but there was rarely food in the house and my stepmom wouldn’t give me lunch money (“go pack a lunch”), so my teacher had to share hers on the weeks I was at “Dad’s house”.

I (am) turned (-ing) out OK, but it was a long friggin journey. I spent the most of my adult life hating myself for a variety of reasons. I’m 26 now. I have a gorgeous son and great students and I’m not too shabby looking. I try to spoil the little guy within reason, but I am short-tempered sometimes. I yell. I don’t want to, I don’t mean to, but I get extremely frustrated when he’s not paying attention or does something dumb for the 2408028420th time. I always feel bad afterwards and I’m sure he’ll be on the Internet some day talking about his mom with the mouth.

Oh, and if you were wondering (though doubt you were), my dad and I are now (relatively, considering his personality) close.

My brother is not so great and he hates me. I think he thinks me to be the favorite child or something. I don’t know. He hates that I talk to our dad and that I’m not mean to him. He never finished college or anything. He’s kind of stuck working at a car dealership.

I do know that I took many a ‘whuppin’ for him and I’d do it again.

80

I put “never” because I don’t count being very rarely and very mildly (practically painlessly) smacked as really consistent corporal punishment.