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

[TokyoBayer]

“Hit” does not do justice to what was done in our house.

Tiny children don’t learn the meaning of terror by a chance encounter in a dictionary. But the meaning, if not the word, can be learned by being picked up by the hair, shaken with such violence that the scalp rips and leaves scabs and scars. Not reaching the ground, limbs fly, but not under their accord. Only the fatigue of arms tired of swinging children by their hair would still the blinding fury and quiet the burning rage possessing the man. Anger sated, one last fling discards the child against the nearest hard object – a desk or the wall.

Then there was the sexual abuse, the rapes, the emotional abuse. And having to be told, as a 12 or 13 year-old, by my father about the sexual abuse he did to my sisters. In detail. For some reason, that was harder to deal with then when I was raped.

It wasn’t just the physical abuse. It was the blind fury as my father would completely lose it and would be completely out of control.

One of the hardest things to deal with it was the entire randomness of it. This poor girl got that beating for a defined activity, we would abused to a level where just a tiny bit more could have killed one of us and for stupid things, like giving my father the wrong spoon as a six-year-old.

I’ve gotten lucky and found a specialist on trauma recovery, and she said there is a word which describes what I endured starting as a toddler and not finishing until high school; “torture.” And she had dealt with people who were tortured as adults.

As others say, though, the emotional abuse also causes a life-time of hurt. The brainwashing, the humiliations, the deliberate traps to catch and destroy your soul.

And my mother checking out of life. Her suicide attempts, being spaced out on Valium from when I was 9 or so, being so emotional fragile that we, as small children had to protect her emotional state by not telling her any of our problems.

In an act of faith, and after a good decade of working on things, I’ve got a two of most wonderful kids in the world. For some reason, I exist on a different plane when I deal with them. Now when my toddler accidentally knocks of her glass of milk, not only do I not kick her hard enough to cause bloody stools (as reported from my mom said, I would have been the same age, 3, so I don’t remember), but clumsiness in the Tokyo household is not a punishable offense.

I work with my daughter on understanding her emotions and being comfortable with them. I wonder if she will ever understand how many years of therapy it took for me to even begin to feel emotions as expressing any, from happiness to sadness, let alone fear or anger would have exposed oneself to that demon who terrorized the family.

Did I turn out OK or not? I donno. Some days I think so, others not.

My kids love with me, and are doing really, really well, so that part I’m doing OK, I think. I’ve studying scores of books on what parenting should be to make up for a lack of a role model.

I hold down a job, so I’m going better than 40% of the siblings. I graduated from a university, so that’s further than 60%. I save money so that’s better than 80%.

But I still struggle with depression at times. The debilitating anxiety attacks are now a thing of the past and medication helps control the insomnia.

My therapist thinks I’m doing fantastic, but I don’t know if I will ever feel it. It may be possible to become truly happy at some point, but my more practical goal is to create the healthiest environment I can for my children.

[FlyByNight512]

@CanvasShoes

My parents were big on {{{{shudder}}}}} the (gasp!) lecture instead. […] My dad was a great orator, he could go on for HOURS and have you confessing to the Kennedy assassination, who ate the last banana, where Hoffa is buried…etc. […] We used to tease him “no daddy no, please just beat us like other dads”.

That made me giggle a bit. I think I remember being given a choice between a time out and a spanking, and choosing the spanking. I much preferred to get the punishment over with and go back to playing. I would have chosen a spanking over a lecture far into my teens if I’d been given a choice!

TokyoPlayer, I’m so sorry to hear what you went through. I’m glad you’re living a normal life and raising your kids well, that is a tremendous act of courage. I hope you find peace.

[ProbablyProcrastinating]

@CanvasShoes

We used to tease him “no daddy no, please just beat us like other dads”.

We used to beg my mom for a slap across the face and get it over with. I think that’s when she realized passive-aggressive guilt tripping lectures were working.

[not_what_you_d_expect]

@TokyoPlayer

“Hit” does not do justice to what was done in our house.Then there was the sexual abuse, the rapes, the emotional abuse. And having to be told, as a 12 or 13 year-old, by my father about the sexual abuse he did to my sisters. In detail. For some reason, that was harder to deal with then when I was raped.

It wasn’t just the physical abuse. It was the blind fury as my father would completely lose it and would be completely out of control.

One of the hardest things to deal with it was the entire randomness of it. This poor girl got that beating for a defined activity, we would abused to a level where just a tiny bit more could have killed one of us and for stupid things, like giving my father the wrong spoon as a six-year-old.

I’ve gotten lucky and found a specialist on trauma recovery, and she said there is a word which describes what I endured starting as a toddler and not finishing until high school; “torture.” And she had dealt with people who were tortured as adults.

As others say, though, the emotional abuse also causes a life-time of hurt. The brainwashing, the humiliations, the deliberate traps to catch and destroy your soul.

And my mother checking out of life. Her suicide attempts, being spaced out on Valium from when I was 9 or so, being so emotional fragile that we, as small children had to protect her emotional state by not telling her any of our problems.

In an act of faith, and after a good decade of working on things, I’ve got a two of most wonderful kids in the world. For some reason, I exist on a different plane when I deal with them. Now when my toddler accidentally knocks of her glass of milk, not only do I not kick her hard enough to cause bloody stools (as reported from my mom said, I would have been the same age, 3, so I don’t remember), but clumsiness in the Tokyo household is not a punishable offense.

I work with my daughter on understanding her emotions and being comfortable with them. I wonder if she will ever understand how many years of therapy it took for me to even begin to feel emotions as expressing any, from happiness to sadness, let alone fear or anger would have exposed oneself to that demon who terrorized the family.

Did I turn out OK or not? I donno. Some days I think so, others not.

My kids love with me, and are doing really, really well, so that part I’m doing OK, I think. I’ve studying scores of books on what parenting should be to make up for a lack of a role model.

I hold down a job, so I’m going better than 40% of the siblings. I graduated from a university, so that’s further than 60%. I save money so that’s better than 80%.

But I still struggle with depression at times. The debilitating anxiety attacks are now a thing of the past and medication helps control the insomnia.

My therapist thinks I’m doing fantastic, but I don’t know if I will ever feel it. It may be possible to become truly happy at some point, but my more practical goal is to create the healthiest environment I can for my children.

This is awful. I’m so glad you are doing well.

[kushiel]

Voted never and turned out okay.

I don’t know how my parents did it, but The Look or Saying of the Name instantly turned us into little angels. I think my brother and I still have a hangup about disappointing our authority figures.

[gwendee]

@tdn

There needs to be an option between rarely and often, but I chose the latter. And yes, spanking, not beating.

I’d say “regularly” rather than rarely or often.

Spanked, not hit.

As far as how I turned out? I’m well behaved.

[TruCelt]

Yes. By “Turned out badly” (very poor choice of words BTW) I mean "Required therapy and many years of healing to reach what I consider a “normal” level of confidence and self-esteem. I ahve always had very high ethical and honesty standards. Much higher than those of my parents.

[ProbablyProcrastinating]

@MeanOldLady

Yup. I got spanked sometimes, but neither “rarely” nor “often” would describe the frequency. My parents are old school. They spanked as punishment, and everyone’s fine. I’m not like a lot of folks here, and don’t think all hitting = abuse. I was never pinched, slapped, cursed at, belittled, or hit with any object besides my mother’s belt. We all were spanked when we misbehaved, then were sent to our rooms without further chit chat.

I don’t think anyone in this thread has actually suggested that simple spanking is abuse. When done by a parent who is in control (angry, sure, but not raging), over clothes, with a hand or very small item like a wooden spoon, a limited number of times, it is still hitting but few would say it’s abuse.

It’s just that most people on here seem to have experienced something quite different to that.

Funny how the spanked is “MeanOldLady” and the unspanked is “ProbablyProcrastinating”. We are probably both in the middle somewhere but if you look at some of the user names, it speaks to how they perceive / portray themselves (even in jest… I’m assuming yours is mostly in jest, mine less so, but still).

[Inner_Stickler]

I have one vague memory of my mom making a swat at my butt as encouragement to head to my room for a timeout but that’s it. I was certainly never pulled across anyone’s knee or whacked with belts or wooden spoons. No one ever threw me against a wall or smacked my head. My parents never screamed obscenities at me or told me I was worthless. My sister did more physical damage to me than my parents ever did. She actually used to make me bleed. I think I was in high school before I learned that there are people today who use physical force to discipline their children. It still weirds me out.

[Becky2844]

My younger brother and I were so close in age that we thought we were Siamese twins or something, I think. (And were treated as such; “our” name was one long word made up of our combined names.)
We were never spanked. We were beaten. In many different ways, with many different things. We were “in trouble” every single day of our lives. When I think of our childhood—and I still cry about it sometimes—the main word I think of is despair. But in a way, it was so bad that I knew it couldn’t be “true.” It couldn’t be right. And that made me strong.
I’ve been parenting myself all these many years. Still learning. I say that we weren’t raised; we were allowed to live. Adulthood has been a struggle for us, tho my dear brother is now gone. We both married and had kids that we’ve loved with the joy of a survivor. I can’t say that we turned out well, but we refused to give up. And that’s something, isn’t it?

[Becky2844]

TokyoPlayer…I’m sorry…

[TokyoBayer]

@Becky2844

TokyoPlayer…I’m sorry…

Me too, and I’m so sorry that you lost your brother.

For anyone interested, I’ve started an Ask the father who was abused as a child. I’m just starting being a daddy and would welcome any insights for people who have been a parent for longer.

[nashiitashii]

@RealityChuck

A few times when I was little, but not enough to hurt: it was mostly to startle me. They stopped by the time I got into kindergarten.

@MeanOldLady

Yup. I got spanked sometimes, but neither “rarely” nor “often” would describe the frequency. My parents are old school. They spanked as punishment, and everyone’s fine. I’m not like a lot of folks here, and don’t think all hitting = abuse. I was never pinched, slapped, cursed at, belittled, or hit with any object besides my mother’s belt. We all were spanked when we misbehaved, then were sent to our rooms without further chit chat.

@kushiel

I don’t know how my parents did it, but The Look or Saying of the Name instantly turned us into little angels. I think my brother and I still have a hangup about disappointing our authority figures.

I can relate to all three of these. The only time I ever remember being hit was when I was in high school and couldn’t give an answer for why my teacher had to call home to inform my mom that I wasn’t doing my homework. I had no good excuse, but the teacher I had at the time considered it to be “homework not done” if I didn’t have one problem completed. :rolleyes: My dad mentioned that he had to lightly spank me a couple of times, but that it was a lot easier to embarrass me out of bad behavior (temper tantrums) than involve corporal punishment. Apparently when I was little (two or three years old), I decided to throw a temper tantrum while at home of the “laying on the floor and thrashing about” variety. My dad laid down on the floor next to me and imitated me exactly, and I turn in his direction and gave him the “are you fucking serious?!?” look. After a quick comment of “this is why we don’t tolerate that kind of behavior”, I more or less stopped having temper tantrums.

My mom was fond of The Look, and it was really effective because of her general serious looking demeanor; even when I was in college, I would have friends who, after meeting my mom for the first time, would comment that she was a little scary. Honestly, she was as goofy and fun as I was, but a combination of facial features and a cultural tendency toward formality with strangers was what caused that sort of reaction. Up until she died, I feared no entity the way I feared my mother’s disapproval, and these days, I am still working on not tiptoeing around my bosses in the same manner.

My dad, on the other hand, was the lecturer. It wasn’t a “you were bad, and this is why we don’t do this” method, but a “here’s the grand theory of the universe, and eventually we’ll talk about why we don’t do this” lecture. I’d get them sometimes even when I wasn’t misbehaving as a “heads up” way of talking about serious subjects… like the Monday morning drive to my high school after my first Real Date With a Boy, where he dropped me off at the mall, then came to get me three or four hours later. I think somewhere in there he managed to mention “being safe” and I got the hint that he wanted to make sure I was either using condoms or on the pill so I didn’t get pregnant. :o None of us kids were planned pregnancies, and he (and my mom) wanted to make sure that we didn’t end up in that situation before we were ready to be parents. Nonetheless, all of us kids were loved and treated pretty fairly by our parents, IMO.

[eclectic_wench]

Rarely - the occasional spanking, a few swats on the (clothed) arse with an open hand, always when we’d really been pushing it. I think I only remember it actually hurting once; usually, the force came from the realisation that ‘OMG, I’ve really crossed the line this time.’

I think we both turned out pretty well. I definitely don’t feel traumatised or anything.

We’ve never used any kind of physical punishment with Widget, so far, but my husband once gave his nephew a couple of swats on the arse, when the kid was about five and had run out into the road (after being specifically told not to, too). It was partly out of terror-adrenaline and partly out of the urge to show him that this was way, WAY worse than stuff like being cheeky or playing with food. I wouldn’t rule out spanking Widget in a similar situation, if she’d done something really dangerous.

TokyoPlayer, I’m so sorry, and I’m in awe of how far away from that you’ve come.

[Bam_Boo_Gut]

What I find so incredibly chilling is how social services, neighbours, friends, teachers … anyone … doesn’t get to find out and do something about abuse mentioned in this thread.

[Noodles_Fellicini]

Can’t pick a clear poll answer – the belt and paddle beatings caused welts but the long term damage was the inability to process the visceral fear reaction. I’m guessing some of my issues come from that, and some from being told repeatedly I wasn’t good enough. My answer is somewhere around “possibly beaten slightly more often than the majority but definitely not as bad as some and turned out okay but probably could have been happier” although I am quite functional, responsible and respectful.

I appreciate these threads and the honesty of the people sharing their experiences. My heart goes out to everyone who has had a tough time trusting the people who were supposed to care for them.

[flatlined]

I ran away and lived in a car for almost a year. It sucked. I thought that it was normal for my bosses to use me in the back room. The main thing that scared me was that my cat was hungry. Fred would snuggle next to me and purr. Fred didn’t care that I had to feed him bits of dollar menu food. Fred just loved me.

Now, Bill is worried about touching me. The first time he touched me with love I cried. Now he’s afraid to touch me unless we are in bed. Which has happened 4 times.

FML

[gonzomax]

My dad gave me a bad spanking once . it was because he had a bad sense of humor.
I was about 4 and my 5 year old brother had a great idea, according to him. It was April Fools day and my brother suggested he would go in and tell my dad I got hit by a car. I would hide in the bushes and when he came out the door, i would jump up and yell April Fool. So we did it.
My dad came running out the door and I yelled April Fool. The look on his face told me It was not such a good idea after all. He grabbed me and started spanking me. As he grabbed me I saw my brother run out the back door and head for a friends house. When he got home my dad had calmed down.
No sense of humor.

[rhubarbarin]

@Bam_Boo_Gut

What I find so incredibly chilling is how social services, neighbours, friends, teachers … anyone … doesn’t get to find out and do something about abuse mentioned in this thread.

If a child isn’t being starved, raped, beaten black and blue, or otherwise has concrete physical signs of abuses, there’s unfortunately little any outsider can do to protect them from emotionally or physically abusive parents. And even if the above is happening, it can be so well-hidden…

My neighbor who used to live next door was abusing her daughter from the time the girl wasn’t even walking until they moved away when she was two. This bitch would scream at her baby all day long, and throw/bang things around the apartment - I honestly don’t know if she was hitting her, but the baby never appeared to be injured. She would scream as if she was being hurt, and cry hysterically while her mom raged, though. This mostly happened during the day when her father (who clearly doted on his daughter - I never saw his wife touch the child when the father was around, she was always in his arms) was at work, but when he was home his wife was often screaming at him instead. I said something to him about it once, but he didn’t speak much English and I don’t know if he understood what I was trying to tell him.

Their apartment was immaculate, the baby was healthy and clean and well-dressed. Calling CPS in this case would have done little but disrupt their family (and I am not sure they were legal immigrants - what if the father got deported, for instance?). I still worry about what that little girl’s life is going to be like.

[Crowbar_of_Irony_3]

I define ‘hit’ as anything that causes physical pain, such as spanking with cane or pinching, plus any threat of bodily pain.

In fact, my mum’s nagging and paranoid ranting have a more of an effect on me than those things. I wish there is an option for “Rarely, but I still don’t turn out well due to other reasons”.