Child abuse?

[Neonatal RRT]

I grew up with parents who spanked,...and I wouldn't call it "abuse" or "beating" the way they did it. Small children, and especially boys (delays in development of the frontal cortex),...the population that really cannot be reasoned with until they are more mature,...sometimes a bit of physical punishment is necessary. All things in moderation, and as a parent,...never do this out of your frustration and anger,...because these are situations where emotions are high and it burns into their memory as a "traumatic event". My spankings were typically from my father, after he came home from work,...and mom put the task to him. He never hit us out of anger. "Go upstairs to your room, grab your belt, and wait for me."

No discipline is bad. Abuse and beatings are bad. Mental abuse is bad. Sometimes talking things through makes the parent appear soft and weak,...and are often disrespected by their children. To me,...nothing is more hilarious than watching a parent trying to discuss something with a misbehaving child,...that kid is paying zero attention to the parent. When we were kids,...parents would swat their kids on the behind right in the checkout isle at the market,...and they would get approving nods of respect from the other adults. Things have changed,...and I am not sure for the better, overall. There are reasons why children should stop in their tracks when a parent barks at them,...its for their survival and well-being,...but if a parent is not respected (with a bit of fear) then the child simply ignores them like a feral animal.

I know everyone is an expert in parenting (sarcasm),...the bottom line is your children are not my children and vice-versa,...and if you have more than one child, you have to learn new rules for each child. We all learn as we go through life. Every child is not "special", but they are unique. Every child is not intelligent overall,...but may still have aptitudes in certain areas. Every child is not going to have their hopes and dreams come true. Sometimes they are nasty little gremlins,...naturally,...or because of their parents way of dealing with them. Sometimes the lack of discipline creates self-important brats and horrible adults. I don't have the answers,...just a lot of observations and experience.

 

[Kevin L.]

All I know is that I never had children because I'm terrified of being an abusive parent.

Before you condemn my parents on my skewed perspective, keep in mind that I have autistic sensory issues, so yelling, hitting, and so forth were ten times more painful to me than they might be to a neurotypical child.

So . . . if I wasn't autistic, then I might not have perceived them as being abusive.

In any case, they were abused by their parents, and mu grand parents were abused by my great-grand parents . . . and the common denominator to each generation is that they think and believe that they're the greatest parents in the world while they're being abusive.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I think that child abuse is a bit more common than people realize and it’s not always physical. Sometimes it’s verbal, emotional, and making kids so afraid of being punished in cruel and excessive ways that don’t involve hitting the child. The woman that helped raise me punished me in these excessively cruel and mean spirited ways that didn’t hurt me but did leave some traumatic memories especially since what I was being punished for wasn’t all that bad. She forced me to eat chicken feet as a punishment several times because I had a habit of biting my fingernails until they bled and kept picking at them. I was just a kid and didn’t fully understand the function or importance of what nails were for the body and no one explained it to me. I also would bite off my toenails (yes that is possible and a small percentage of nail biters actually do this) and so she justified forcing me to eat chicken feet as being perfectly okay because I liked to bite my nails. I’d be sitting there in tears and she never once looked remorseful or as if she was thinking that maybe she was going a bit too far. My sister told me that she thought that was way out of line but she couldn’t really do anything to stop it as she was still a teenager and also had to listen to this woman. I was eleven and I didn’t even know about puberty yet or even know how to cook an egg. This woman overreacted to so many things and would also punish me by making me write over 100 times that I shouldn’t do certain things and never explain to me what exactly I did wrong which just led to a lot of confusion for me. She also punished me by forcing me to quit the school band and the saxophone just because I didn’t practice one weekend even though I kept practicing every single day until then nonstop even when I had a really bad sore throat that made eating difficult because I would start to gag. That was one of my dreams as a kid and she crushed it claiming that by not practicing for just one weekend proved that I didn’t want it bad enough. The school concert was over and I just wanted a tiny break from practicing to just be a kid. My sister played the piano and practiced several times a week but she would take a couple days off for years and never was forced to stop playing. So yeah, this was just another example of the woman punishing me excessively for something minor I did as a kid.

 

[Kevin L.]

I think that child abuse is a bit more common than people realize and it’s not always physical. Sometimes it’s verbal, emotional, and making kids so afraid of being punished in cruel and excessive ways that don’t involve hitting the child. The woman that helped raise me punished me in these excessively cruel and mean spirited ways that didn’t hurt me but did leave some traumatic memories especially since what I was being punished for wasn’t all that bad. She forced me to eat chicken feet as a punishment several times because I had a habit of biting my fingernails until they bled and kept picking at them. I was just a kid and didn’t fully understand the function or importance of what nails were for the body and no one explained it to me. I also would bite off my toenails (yes that is possible and a small percentage of nail biters actually do this) and so she justified forcing me to eat chicken feet as being perfectly okay because I liked to bite my nails. I’d be sitting there in tears and she never once looked remorseful or as if she was thinking that maybe she was going a bit too far. My sister told me that she thought that was way out of line but she couldn’t really do anything to stop it as she was still a teenager and also had to listen to this woman. I was eleven and I didn’t even know about puberty yet or even know how to cook an egg. This woman overreacted to so many things and would also punish me by making me write over 100 times that I shouldn’t do certain things and never explain to me what exactly I did wrong which just led to a lot of confusion for me. She also punished me by forcing me to quit the school band and the saxophone just because I didn’t practice one weekend even though I kept practicing every single day until then nonstop even when I had a really bad sore throat that made eating difficult because I would start to gag. That was one of my dreams as a kid and she crushed it claiming that by not practicing for just one weekend proved that I didn’t want it bad enough. The school concert was over and I just wanted a tiny break from practicing to just be a kid. My sister played the piano and practiced several times a week but she would take a couple days off for years and never was forced to stop playing. So yeah, this was just another example of the woman punishing me excessively for something minor I did as a kid.

I am very, very sorry this happened to you.

Haven't spoken to my sister in years over things like this.

My parent's stock answer when I called out their emotional abuse was "If we beat you the way our parents beat us . . . well . . . you'd beg to be emotionally abused then. Everything is just in your mind . . ."

 

[Fino]

The answer "it depends" is the same as answering "yes." The question is, is it sometimes necessary. If it depends on the situation and child where it's possible you would physically punish them in certain scenarios, depending on various factors, then that is an answer of "yes." Basically, if you're open to the possibility of physical punishment, that's "yes."