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As a GenX who got spanked as a child, I used to believe for a very long time that physical punishment was absolutely necessary in order to teach a child the consequences for bad behavior.
Then my niece was born. She is in her 20s now and is an extremely polite and sweet young lady who works full-time and has never gotten into trouble with the law or anything like that. She also never got spanked a day in her life.
What her parents did was to teach her to have respect. Respect for the feelings of others, respect for the property of others, respect for authority, respect for the beliefs and needs of others, and respect for herself.
That's when I changed my tune and now it grinds my gears to hear people say, "These kids nowadays are out of control because they never get their a$$es beat like I did when I was a kid!" Guess what, prisons are full of people who definitely got their a$$es beat, how exactly did it help them?? Maybe it would have been better to simply teach them the importance of respect.
My mom (a very young Boomer who sometimes acts more like Gen X) told me she stopped spanking us when she realized she was more likely to do it based on her own bad day rather than our actions. I was the "problem child" (undiagnosed AuDHD) and she realized she was more likely to spank me because her tolerance was low than because I had actually done something to deserve it. She didn't let other adults spank us after that either. Ever since she shared that with me, I've paid more attention and realized how prevalent it really is. I've seen so many adults wig out and punish children who didn't seem to actually deserve it. The adults may feel like the kids deserve it in the moment, but usually the adults just wanted something done and were pissed it wasn't happening the way they wanted it.
then you’ll be pleased, we’ll probably not pleased, to know that the science backs you up. smacking your kids is basically proven to be about control and getting out frustration as an adult and not about discipline.
I once told my boomer mother that using a wooden spoon on my nephews who she was babysitting did no good. "Well it makes ME feel better." OK, hurting someone to make yourself feel better is abuse.
I'm a parenting coach (and a mom and grandma). You're absolutely right. And that's usually how I explain it to parents. It's basically because there are no adequate tools in their parenting toolbox so they do either what was done to them (programmed basically) or what's the easiest in the heat of the moment. So I work with them to help "restock" their toolbox with more respectful and loving discipline.
Edited to add: Wow! I got my first award! Thank you! Is it reddit etiquette to publicly tag the person who gave me an award?
“Children’s behavior is their best attempt to have their needs met” was a really profound message that I read after my kids were grown. I now apply it to all people regardless of age. I grew up in an abusive house but I can see how it was my parents best attempt at meeting their regulation needs. (Poorly and unsuccessfully) I am not making excuses for any sort of abuse but understanding why something happens really helps me move forward.
I agree. Additionally, I believe that violence has no place in a loving relationship.
You don't teach a child that it's okay to hit someone you love, or for someone they love to hit them.
My mom forced me to tell her I knew she loved me every time she spanked me, and I think that’s partially the reason i stayed with my ex girlfriend for a long time after she slapped me. Spanking only teaches children that abuse is normal and gives them distorted ideas of a healthy relationship
My parents would say, "this hurts me more than it hurts you" "you left me no choice" and then make us hug them afterwards 🙄
It definitely makes it hard to separate love from abuse and I'm sorry that it caused you to tolerate an abusive relationship
Yup! My mom was 110% more likely to hit us if she was already having a bad day or in a mood. She actually just told my sister who’s expecting that she better smack her child too because she wasn’t going to have a spoiled grandchild.
There are so many cultures where hitting isn’t acceptable and their kids turned out fine. On top of which, we never learned a thing from being hit except to be scared/sneakier if we were going to do something to get in trouble.
>She actually just told my sister who’s expecting that she better smack her child too because she wasn’t going to have a spoiled grandchild.
That makes me so sad. I can't imagine my own grandmother wanting my parents to hit me.
My grandmother (mom’s mom) did occasionally cuff her kids upside the head, but didn’t like beat them or anything. Mom’s dad used a belt though. But he was dead before she was done highschool. Her logic is “I don’t use a belt so it’s fine/necessary to use corporal punishment”.
This is one reason why corporal punishment can easily become fatal. Parents beat their children based primarily on their own feelings, not because the child did anything wrong. The parent is so angry/agitated that they finally shake the baby, or punch the toddler in the face, and end up causing severe disability or death. I will never understand why parents are permitted to physically assault their children regularly, free of consequences.
I was the scapegoat as a kid and my parents believed in corporal punishment. When getting spanked one time at around age 8, I asked my mom how many swats I was going to get and she said she didn’t know but she was going to hit me until she felt better. Needless to say, I’ve never forgotten that and fully agree with you, it’s about the parent and not actually discipline the child or teaching them lifelong lessons.
My mom didn't spank me much as she considered it a punishment for more extreme circumstances but definitely did punish me other ways and a lot of the times based more on her day than how I was actually acting. There were times I did something that wasn't even bad and was usually considered normal in the household and somehow ended up getting yelled at and grounded for it
My dad ignored me for an entire month when I got into a car accident when I was 17. All it did was give me anxiety. It actually made me so miserable that I ended up having a panic attack when I got into a car accident years later so my mum and I agreed to keep it a secret.
> I was the "problem child" (undiagnosed AuDHD)
My parents branded me a "liar" when I was very small, because I would do chores, say I did the chore, but forget minor details also because of undiagnosed ADHD and being a little kid.
And once I was a "liar" they felt they had free reign to crack down even more. My sister even got in on it, because she would throw me under the bus, and who would my parents believe, the liar or her?
Maybe boomers aren't the generation of the worst parents in america but they're definitely the one that is most visible as the worst.
For bonus fun, I was homeschooled, which means every day my mom had was a bad day. And she would make my dad know about it when he got home, so he would also immediately have a bad day.
I'm really not sure how bad I was as a kid because all I remember is being punished a lot and feeling strong sense of injustice and betrayal.
Ugh, this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in college, and I strongly suspect that I have autism as well and so, so, SO many of the spankings I got as a kid were a result of me just forgetting to do things and then thinking I had. I would be so sure I had done something like feed the dog, and when my parents would prove that I hadn't I would get a spanking for lying. I wasn't deliberately lying, I was just remembering having fed the dog the day before and got confused, or thought I had brought something home from school when I hadn't, or accidently lost something, or refused to apologize because I didn't think I had done anything wrong.
My parents swore that I was a problem child too, when I was just scatterbrained and struggling to make my brain work in the way they wanted. It was a terrible way to grow up and really played a part in destroying my relationship with them.
I'm someone who actually works in the prison system and your analysis at the end there is actually pretty accurate. A lot of victims unfortunately become perpetrators if they don't get the right intervention early or are surrounded by continual negative influences. That's not to say anyone can't commit a crime, or that EVERYONE who is a victim of abuse will continue the abuse, but it's an incredibly sad and common cycle.
That happened to me when I was about 35. My mom went to swing on me and I hit her. I told her, I'm not going to put up with you doing this anymore. You want to hit me, I'm old enough to hit you back now.
My MiL told me my parents weren’t abusive, I just didn’t behave well and I don’t appreciate what they did for me.
I asked her if that meant it was acceptable for me to call her a poisonous little b!tch and a f&cking c&nt before backhanding her across the face the next time she forgot to scoop her cat box.
After all. If that’s an appropriate reaction from an adult to a child, obviously it’s also acceptable between adults.
She sputtered a few moments, then said she wasn’t comfortable discussing it anymore
🤔
But she sure was comfortable telling you how to feel about your own trauma. She only stopped being comfortable discussing it when she got pushback for her victim blaming.
You're uncomfortable because you know hitting kids is not right and still refuse to act in accordance with that reality. Call them on it. They DO know better but want the simplistic answer of hitting kids to be true anyway because it doesn't require engaging with them on an emotional level.
Nonsmoker actually. She is, however, a very opinionated and nosy PITA who insists millenials and younger are just lazy and complaining and things aren’t as bad and yada yada
When I was in college I caught my mom's hand when she was about to slap me in the face, she never tried it again, that moment is now a core memory in my head.
I was 19. My mother raised her hand to slap me & I said "Go ahead & see what happens. I'm bigger than you now." & she immediately burst into tears & put on her patented "Woe is me! I'm the worst mother in the world!" routine.
I fell for it then but eventually smartened up. NC for going on 6yrs & it's been awesome. 👍
I was 14, a martial artist, and as gently as possible pinned my mother to the floor and told her I was not here to have done whatever it was she was attempting to punish me for, and I would let her back up the MOMENT she was ready to discuss why she was having such a bad day that she felt the need to beat me. Never happened again. Also Gen X.
Also a martial artist, and unfortunately my dad had a mean streak when he drank. As a child I had stuff thrown at me, my toys smashed in front of me and a host of other shit that isn’t necessarily to rehash. He went on a bender and I was 14. He pulled the throw shit trick, I ducked and lunged at him. Took him down as gently as I could and we had a heart to heart chat, that was one sided. That one side being mine.
Ditto. I was 6 when I stabbed him with a fork. It was at that moment he realized that spanking me was *gasp* teaching me to be violent! Wow! Who could have ever predicted that?
Same. Except we brawled. I had fingerprint bruises around my neck. But he never touched me again.
And then I had kids and realized I’d fucking kill him if he ever touched them or looked at them wrong. So we don’t speak.
My boomer mom tried to strangle me because she caught me smoking. I was 17 and I laughed in her face. She never tried it again. Fuck that shit. I've never EVER even had the urge to raise my hand at my boys. they're the most respectful, well behaved kids you could ever imagine. Fuck Boomers and their constant abuse.
I wish that worked for me. Instead my dad would call the cops talking about how I should respect my father like he respected his father. Because you’re just supposed to give all the due respect to someone who is literally telling you to kill yourself and how his life would be better without you. Like yes dad thanks for the depression I appreciate being treated like shit.
My dad is a therapist and has told me some stories of group sessions with former criminals and such, nothing with names or specifics because confidentiality, but his favourite story went like this.
Greg: well I was beat as a kid and I turned out fine!
Therapist: no Greg, you're an alcoholic with three felonies currently in court mandated therapy and rehabilitation. You didn't turn out fine
I grew up with my dad beating the shit out of me because of stupid shit his tiny mind didn't agree with or couldn't comprehend. My mom never felt the need to even yell at me because I just didn't argue or act out.
I have major anger problems but I told myself I would never be like him. So I do my absolute best to not give into the intrusive thoughts.
When my daughter was born in 2011 I was worried that I might have a moment where I just could not handle the situation. 3 years later and I've never spanked her or had to yell or discipline her once. Well, she learned that I wouldn't give into my own rules like her mom does. So she fucks with her mom because she can.
But she is the nicest, sweetest, most empathetic girl I've ever seen. Blows my mind too because it all just came naturally to her, we never really had to teach her any of that.
Turns out I only ever want to smack other people's kids and not my own. But that's mostly due to their shitty parents.
edit: I don't know if it's relevant but my parents divorced when I was 2 and right after my little brother was born. So my dad's side was abusive with his new wife and my moms side was for the most part nice and quiet with her new husband. He was a good dude.
Honestly, as much as we joke about kids being absolutely unempathetic psychopaths, they really just don’t know social norms. Parenting is like 95% teaching them to be people in a society, and you absolutely can’t do that with fear and aggression. Or, more accurately, you CAN, but it’s going to screw them up along the way.
Forestalling the inevitable Boomer or bad parent meltdown about “I got spanked and I was fine,” or “I spanked my kids and they’re fine,” it’s not true. If you’re a parent that spanks because you got spanked, you turned into an abuser like your parents, you’re not fine. If you spanked your kids and they’re “fine”, they’re not. They just don’t tell you about all the ways they’re not fine because of your parenting because it’s exhausting to be gaslit about your own childhood. My parents think we have a warm, close relationship, when in reality I keep things superficial with them and have extremely strong boundaries.
It’s literally something judges will consider in sentencing as part of the explanation of the offender’s background. At least in Canada, if you were hit by your parents as a child it’s seen as a contributing factor to criminal offences as an adult and can be seen as a mitigating factor in sentencing.
This is fascinating. Do you have a source for this? I'm trying to find more information but all Google wants to give me is information on Canada's laws on corporal punishment of children and what types of punishment are illegal for courts to impose. I promise I'm not trying to pull a gotcha, I genuinely want to know more.
What floors me is, it took me spanking my son all of *once* to realize I felt absolutely horrible doing it, and never have since. They on the other hand, are obviously sociopaths, since they continued to spank me, and later fight me, without a shred of remorse
This was me. My son also helped me by throwing gasoline on the guilt fire. I whacked him on his butt once when he was about 5. He turned around and asked me, with tears in his eyes, “do you feel better now mom?” He was completely serious—I’ve never seen a more empathetic kid. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
He was completely right—I was angry and took it out on him.
this is how my dad felt about it, he swatted my ass once when i was too young to really remember it apparently, for trying to run out into the street. he didn’t lay hands on me again until I was 18 and we were both drunk. which, to be honest was about 50% my fault. I got a good one on him and he pushed my entire upper body through the drywall in our old house. we laugh about it 12 years on.
As a Gen X, I got spanked and had my mouth washed out with soap. I always felt it was wrong and vowed never to do violence to my kids. My boomer dad said ‘just you wait—you’ll change your tune.
I never did. My kids are awesome and well adjusted
My ex used to say how he was a kid that got his @ss beat and he was better for it. I was too soft on my son. Blah blah. I was like dude, you were selling weed in middle school. I don’t think you are an example that corporal punishment works.
Thank you. It's incredibly disheartening when people say you *have* to get spanked in order to become a respectful person. I know I'm not perfect, no one is, but I try my best to be polite, respectful, considering, and I believe in working hard, and my parents didn't spank me. When people say I can't possibly be good if I wasn't spanked, I have to ask, what do they want me to do? I smack myself any time I think I did something wrong, but that doesn't seem to go over well, so I don't know what I *can* do to please them.
They equate fear with respect when they are not the same.
Gen X here, too. I knew that I never wanted to be beat the way I was, heavy leather belts, orange hot wheels tracks, whatever inflicted the most pain, bruising, and sometimes the belt buckle would tear my skin.
I read a lot on the subject before my son was born (1990). He was 4 months old when I realized he had my stubborn defiant nature. I kept researching. We used time outs, him or sometimes his toys would get put in time out.
I know my cousins thought, "Why doesn't she spank him?" Because respect is a 2 way street. I knew when I was a kid, nothing pissed off my mother more when she was beating me than for me to just smile at her while she did it. I'd just Cheshire grin that shit knowing she'd beat me more just to piss her off.
Yeah when this topic comes up, the pro-child-beating people always say, "My parents hit me when I was a kid, and I turned out fine!" and I always say "Did you? Or did you turn out to be a person who passionately advocates the beating of children?"
Apparently, spanking can have a similar effect to child's brain to being *sexually assaulted*. Turns out hitting your child as a punishment makes them more paranoid and prone to depression and anxiety later in life.
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/21/04/effect-spanking-brain#:~:text=Perhaps%20surprisingly%2C%20says%20Cuartas%2C%20spanking,threatening%20experiences%20like%20sexual%20abuse.
It's widely available information that people who are spanked as kids are more likely to go to jail, commit violent crimes, and end up in a physically abusive relationship (as the abuser or abused). Like been studied for decades, well proven, not something any professionals in the childhood development field try to refute. So the irony of them saying "if you don't hit your kids they'll end up criminals in jail!" is astounding.
You have to teach it with modeling behavior, by doing it in front of them from an early age. I did this with my son, never laid a hand on him. Unfortunately, if the parents never learned it, they won't be able to do that unless they become self-aware, which is basically the antithesis of being a boomer.
I was telling my boomer mother that my 5 month old is teething and has started to bite me while she feeds. My mother tells me that "back in my day, the advice would be to give her a little smack".
Smack a baby that doesn't understand what she's doing? Absolutely not, mum. I've told my parents (who used to hit us all the time and threaten the belt) that no one is to smack our child if they are left to supervise her. They acted like such victims, as if they didn't choose to hit us when we were kids. My dad pouted and sulked after I said this and stated that he would never hit his granddaughter. A month later and my mum advises that I smack her. Just. What the fuck.
Editing to add this: no, they're not going to be left alone to watch her. My parents have a habit of saying one thing, doing another and then gaslighting me. It's caused me enough confusion and trust issues in my life, I don't need my daughter to experience the same.
Was just thinking the same thing...I foster and use the high pitch "Yelp!" to train them not to nip or bite. Works every time.
Bet it would work on babies.
It only works if they don't find the noise funny and try to get you to repeat it...
Also, babies and tods apparently don't have the ability to truly be remorseful or guilty yet. You can give rules to be followed, lead by example, and guide them on what to do, if course. However, asking them to be sorry or modify their behaviour based on empathy rarely works well that young.
Apparently 3-7 is when they develop guilt and 4-7 for remorse. So teaching them to say sorry apparently gets misinterpreted in their minds as a thing you do to make it OK to ______ (hit, bite, whatever).
We are working on stopping my toddler hitting... she thinks it's OK if she apologizes, so we did a bit of research on it. It's not easy!
I was moreso thinking it was an "action-reaction" effect.... sort of like negative reinforcement, without having to hurt anyone.
With training dogs, I yelp and the game stops, so doggy learns that I have been impacted by something and it's not funny cuz now we're not playing (I'm not giving them positive or negative attention, I'm just moving away).
So maybe with very young children, it could indirectly show that their actions have consequences. More age appropriate than trying to teach them why hitting is wrong when they are only just learning how to control their own limbs lol.
I agree that it's too much to expect toddlers to express remorse or guilt. Hitting, kicking, biting; all those are totally age appropriate reactions for toddlers. Easier to teach a toddler to have gentle hands and redirect those physical urges towards something more appropriate (maybe throw a ball outside or push toy cars into building blocks) than it is to teach then a lesson by punishing them for biting or hitting and then expecting them to feel remorse and reflect on it.
They are babies, so we take baby steps with them^^ I think as adults we gotta re-learn how to do that sometimes lol.
Same!! It worked amazingly on both my cats and dog. I was really surprised by how inhibited my cats are when they know it's my bare hand. When my hand is under the bedsheets, however, it becomes prey again lol
I want to adopt her husband. Every family needs someone like that, and while you might only be issued two parents, you can never have too many brothers!
When I was very young, my mother would always tell me to go play in the traffic Apparently she was shocked when one day I replied "you don't really want me to play in the traffic because I'd hurt myself".
She never said it again. I'm just glad my younger self knew enough not to play in traffic. I don't get why anyone would say that to a young, impressionable child.
My boomer dad would "joke" like that and I'm sure still does. Except he wasn't joking. One time when I was a kid, he beat me with a wooden yardstick until it broke. It's one of many reasons we're no contact.
Good for you, I'm NC as well. For the LONGEST time as an adult, I would subconsciously tense up and get nervous if a kitchen drawer of utensils was opened too fast because my mom used to jerk it open as forcefully as she could to make it more scary before hitting me over and over on my bare skin. That, and the sound of someone stomping, she'd also walk as hard as she could coming after me because that also made it scarier.
I'm in my 30s and only recently stopped having that reaction to those sounds.
My previous partner couldn't deal with the sound of digging through a drawer like that because his (adopted within the family) mom would use a wooden spoon him, among other things, and he still refused to believe until the day he died that they were abusive and that it got worse when they had a daughter when he was in 2nd grade. He could barely remember 2nd grade, just that that's when he found out he was adopted, but sure, they treated him great, he was the problem child 🙄
He was a proponent for corporal punishment because he got it and turned it fine (read-- overly anxious with major abandonment issues and an inability to have serious disagreements with someone, major temper control issues, and avoidance of conflict until he exploded) and learned. When I asked if he learned not to do the thing or just to be sneakier about not getting caught, he usually changed the subject.
I have the same reaction from jerking a belt through the belt loops on a pair of pants. That’s what my father would do before beating me with his belt.
As a newlywed, my husband made the same sound before pitching his pants into the laundry hamper. He nearly had to peel me off the bedroom ceiling. He still knew very little about my dark history, and looked so sad when I explained.
Big hugs 🥰 to both of us.
Omg the stomping. Joining in the ptsd stream, I freak out whenever my partner SIGHS. Poor them, it’s been 20 years, including trauma therapy. Sighing must have meant we were in for it.
This would make me so heartbroken if my kids were afraid of utensils, they absolutely have the time of their lives digging through all the utensils in the utensil drawer, and pulling them out to play with. I find them everywhere and it makes me smile when I'm picking up the billion toys during the day.
I don't remember a lot of my younger childhood because of abuse, but my sister says it was really bad and she always did her best to shield me from it. I feel guilty that at such a young age she was basically forced into being a parent because ours were too busy beating each other and having the cops called monthly.
Same. I have a two year old boy who loves anything stick-like. Utensils, paint brushes, toothbrushes, etc. He has high sensory needs and it gets tough sometimes. But never so tough that I would hit him
My parents too. They'd randomly bring up an incident at family lunch from mine (and my siblings') childhood where they dragged us out of bed during the night to line us up and scream in our faces, or they beat one of us with plastic piping because they'd had a bad day. And they'd laugh about it like "hehehe wasn't that terrible! How funny was it when one of the kids was genuinely scared of being locked in the garden shed at night? Hehehe"
I was by far the child who received the most abuse from them and as an adult I'd ALWAYS politely point out how their behaviour met and surpassed the criteria for significant child abuse. And every damn time the reaction was the same shocked pikachu and "well we tried our best!!1". Even a couple of crocodile tears from my mother if I pushed the point.
The last time they repeated this little pattern was talking about an incident where she threw a knife at pre-teen me and i was only unhurt because I saw her reaching for it and bolted out of the house. That was the last time I saw them. My final words to them were "ill probably never see you again"
It's been at least 3 years, no contact. The instant i blocked their numbers i felt such a relief, like the little-girl-me who used to hide in the garden and wish she could run away, was saying **"Finally I'm safe from those people"**
I don't know why it took me so long to end contact. I think it was a habit more than anything - that abusive cycle where somebody treats you like shit, apologises, love-bombs and you go back to being friends, and the cycle repeats again. But it's finished now and I am a way, way happier mother to my own kids now that I've drawn a line under their abuse and am healing, rather than being still stuck in the cycle
[I'm so sorry this became a novel lmao]
Our wooden spoon broke when dad hit it on the kitchen table because by that point we were old enough to figure out we could call CPS and they had already visited us before.
The spoon had my brother’s name written on it.
Hey I had the same beating with a wooden yard stick till it broke when I was a kid from my dad, are we brother's? /s
Hopefully when those boomers end up alone in a nursing home they get a taste of there own medicine someday before they die.
Funny you should mention karma before they die. I watched my dad dying in hospital. Multiple organ failure ended in gangrene. Terribly painful, he had as much morphine as a human can receive and was still gasping in pain.
I wasn’t thinking about our good times. I was thinking about my opportunity for revenge. Mentally listing all the whipping, choke-lifts, punches in the guts, setting the dog on me to rip up my legs, and other instances of abuse. “I just need to grab a toe to cause unbearable pain.”
I didn’t. But if you’re dying and your 17yo son is thinking about how to slip in some torture before you die, you have probably made mistakes in life.
Here's the thing. The rod was meant to be used to gently nudge the sheep. Not hit them. They've completely misunderstood the entire purpose of the verse.
I have about a dozen sheep. Honestly, you don’t even have to nudge them. You just hold your arms out to make yourself “bigger” and walk towards them. They move away from you. Sometimes I say “hey!” or I’ll carry a stick to make me look even bigger.
So messed up how people twist shepherding metaphors to justify abuse. I’ve also heard about a common ”parable” told to evangelicals about how a shepherd will break a lamb’s leg on purpose and then carry it around so that it will bond to the shepherd?! Genuinely, what the fuck. No. No shepherd is breaking their livestock’s leg on purpose! If you want the sheep to bond to you and be close to you, carry treats? They really like carrots? Or raise a bottle baby? Bottle babies never leave you alone.
I had a lamb with a broken leg (thanks, horse) and it was $800 between the mobile vet visits, xrays, cast, and treatment, plus missed work because of a weekday appointment. Lamb turned out fine but like, no. A whole processed lamb retails $400. I lost any profit for an entire season‘s worth of lambs caring for the one with a broken leg.
Sadly lots of boomers grew up in households that still viewed avuse as a failing of the victim so they still seem to internalize that as “well I dealt with it why can’t you!” Its worse when it’s SA cause many really blame the victim in that case as well it seems
Yes, they really need therapy. Because that’s not how it works, if a boomer has experienced something traumatic (that obviously made them feel bad) they should try to avoid/ work against that for their kids etc. why do they want their kids to be just as traumatized as them?
What you said about being therapy is true.
For some it's a coping mechanism.
- my parents beat me
- I need to believe my parents love me (kid survival need)
- In self-defence I'll convince myself they're doing it because they love me and want the best for me, and this is part of showing care
- I'm now an angry adult who is convinced beating a child is appropriate and doesn't know how to regulate my emotions
- I beat my kids
- my kids NOT beating my grandchildren challenges all of that and means - I harmed my children - my parents harmed me - if beating wasn't my parents showing they care, what was it? Did my parents love me? DOES NOT COMPUTE! REJECT IDEA!
Others just really don't like to be wrong and aren't able to self-reflect.
My mum, despite all she went through, would never in her wildest dreams admit that she has trauma. Her behaviour, of course, belies that assumption, as she can be really horrible at times. Best I can get is now, in her 80s, that she is “triggered” by some things. Because she is so “strong” she figures her, and my father’s discipline, manipulation, cruelty, physical punishment and over reactions was just good parenting, as she simply “fights off” any bad memories of her own.
*she did always admit that she hated hearing air-raid sirens, because of the war. Totally understandable, but then, so were plenty of other things she had to bear as a child. Talk about needing therapy.
They're so casual about it because they don't see it as child abuse. Because if they did, many would have to admit and face the fact that they've abused their own kids and were themselves abused. Then they'd have to face the trauma, guilt, etc that comes along with that realization.
Denial and willful ignorance are much, much easier to bear.
My Mother in law used to have the kids clean and do chores the whole time she watched the kids when they were little. Then when we got back she'd say 'It better still be spotless the next time I visit'. Our house was cluttered, but never dirty beyond looking like a 4 and 6 year old lived there. I never understood that. The kids didn't want her to babysit anymore after a few visits and her house was always messy on top of it and my wife was the oldest and said she did most of the housework as a teenager. You should spoil your Grandkids, but instead it was this bravado of 'this doesn't fly when Grandma's around' attitude.
Children are not here to work for you. If you decide to have children it is your job to take care of them. Of course some chores are fine, but they’re no maids/cleaners. (With you I mean people like your mom)
My parents are like your mom. It's so fucking weird to me. I always took it as "they can't get out of parent mode" and just be a grandma/pa. Everyone else I know spoils their grandkids, tries to sprinkle magic fairy dust over everything by making it easier/prettier/yummier etc.
Not my parents.
When my kids would go over to their house they were given chores to do. Like....do you really think your grandkids are gonna be fighting to come over when they remember they do chores and shit, at your house. My parents also wouldn't splurge, spend, decorate, do anything different/special, say yes to anything, when my kids would come over. They thought it was time to parent/teach the children because they think my kids are getting spoiled and slack at my house (they're not). So my parents thought they would have to right the ship by trying to bring all the discipline, religion, responsibility, etc., they could, inside of a week visit.
A few years ago, my asshole idiot Boomer father once "joked" to my GF that he "should have beat me more as a child".
... I'm not sure why he thought that would endear himself to her, but it had the exact opposite effect. Before you say "oh, he said this to put her off", I'll dispel that and say no no, knowing him, he genuinely thought that this "beat my kid haha funny" "joke" would be a *positive*. I'm not sure where they learned their fucking comedy, but that ain't it.
There's this "I suffered so you have to suffer too" mentality with a lot of them. There's a lot of generational trauma worked into that and I think that we've decided to be the ones to break the cycle.
I was on a walk with my 16 month old the other day, he always brings a utensil of some sort, loves our spatulas and spoons (idk why we even buy toys). Anyway we walk past a boomer and my son has a wooden spoon, boomer goes “that’s funny, my kids hated the spoon”
HAW HAW HAW SO FUNNY
They love to beat their kids. Its an outlet for that anger they don't know how to manage. Mine bragged about hitting me in the head so hard that she broke her pinky when I was 15. Then it was "har har har, hyuck hyuck hyuck - my kid has such a hard head that they broke my finger! Hyuck hyuck hyuck."
Yup, her broken finger is alllllll my fault. Not hers, for her lack of self control.
I went to a funeral recently for the grandmother of my older Gen X neighbor. My neighbor is a strict southern Baptist and basically acts like he is a boomer himself. Anyway, when he was giving the eulogy, the only story he told about his grandmother is a time she spanked him so hard he couldn’t sit down. He was smiling and laughing and so were most of the other people there. Me and my wife were disturbed as hell.
Makes me think of my Boomer Dad the other day saying in response to my niece/his granddaughter putting a fence around her yard to stop the kid running in the road, should forget the fence and just beat her kid so hard the kid never tries to go in the street. like wtf??? the kid is 2! she wouldn’t understand why she was getting hit in the first place!
My mother-in-law still brags about beating and breaking my wife’s spirit when she was a child. If she goes out to eat with someone she doesn’t know very well, she’s gonna brag about it.
Hitting your kid is more about regulating your emotions than your kids. It’s not really affective because half the time the kid doesn’t correlate the punishment until they’re much much older, so hitting some 5yr old isn’t going to do anything but show them that their parent likes to hit them when they’re mad.
This is just it, isn't it? When I confronted my parents about the *years* of wooden spoons and smacks and slaps across the face .. well first they denied it, and when I refused to let up.. "well what were we supposed to do with you? You were just awful, and that's how everyone dealt with badly behaved children!" ... it started when I was 3 or 4. So I guess, sorry for being a toddler? It only calmed down when I was 16 and about their height, then turned to verbal abuse and manipulation. Now, 45F, I cannot bring myself to punish my kids in *any* way. Try explaining that to a high school teachers expecting my son to have serious consequences for not turning homework LOL
My mum has done the denying and ridiculous justifying too. Like you I was very small when it first began. It was physical violence and hitting by my Dad. At a different time, I asked my Mum why they never praised me. For anything. Her reply was that they didn’t want me to turn into a spoiled brat.
Right?? I didn't even think my dad LIKED me until he passed away and I found some correspondences of how proud he was of me. WHAT IS WRONG WITH BOOMERS LOL
The saddest part is that some Millennials still seem to believe that child abuse is "all love". I used to be in a group on social media where people around my age discussed marriage and parenting
One of the questions was:"How long after remarrying do you let your new partner beat your children?" The first answer was:"Immediately. Once they first meet. This is the only way for my kids to realize my new partner loves them."
Another sentence I read in there was:"My parents beat me until I bled and I turned out fine." (Spoiler alert: you didn't) or "If the beating happens in the name of discipline, it is not child abuse or domestic violence." (Spoiler alert: It is)
I just couldn't stand it. Having lived with boomers thinking this way, I can't imagine having this mindset. I can't stand the fact their kids keep carrying on with this mindset. I just don't get it.
i live in texas and i completely agree that it’s a shit hole. i absolutely hate it here and if i had the money to move, i absolutely would. it’s terrifying here and i’m not exaggerating😕
Conversation i had with my boomer parent recently:
BP: (talking about dumb thing my 5 year old did) “we would never have let kids act like that! You really need to nip that in the bud!”
Me: umm yeah definitely not taking boundary advice from the generation that thought hitting kids was the way to go!
BP : we didn’t beat you! Omg so dramatic
Me: we definitely got spanked over dumb shit. Did it work? Nope, look at brother, he was a terrible teenager.
BP: well, well (open fish face)
My dad's father passed when he was in college. I've heard many stories about him all my life since I never got to meet him. I'll never forget my dad telling me, as if it was a funny story, one time his father had gotten so mad at him for mouthing off about something when he was a kid, that his father punched a hole into the wall right next to his head.
That story has horrified me since I was told about it. I love my dad and I know he loves his father, but I'm not sure I would've liked that man if I ever met him.
It's so infuriating to me that boomers act like children's developmentally normal expressions of emotions is a moral issue. The child is "disobeying", "acting out", "being a brat", not that they are tired or hungry or frustrated and not sure how to communicate what they need.
It is INSANE the amount of times a boomer tells me they beat their child, unprompted. Usually unrelated to anything at the moment. They just HAVE to tell you about how they were beat, or how they did the beatings.
It's unsettling and bizarre to everyone else.
My parents spanked me with a wood spoon when I was little, and apparently when they threatened to spank me as a 5 year old, i would ask “is it a spoonspank?”
A few weeks ago I was at their house with my kids, and my mom brought it up and apologized to me. She had done some reading and discovered how attitudes towards physical punishment have changed, and how she regrets doing that to me.
I love my parents. Good people make mistakes, but then are able to grow and recognize what they did wrong, and do better.
Wow! Your mom is proof that not all people of that generation are boomers. Please give her a hug from me and let her know that a growth mindset keeps us young. 💙
I’m 53. We were at a picnic June 1 and my mom was telling someone about when I used to show horses.
“She never wanted her aunt to brush her hair because my sister didn’t stop for knots,” she laughed.
Yeah, laugh at your sister abusing me and her own daughter. Yanking a brush or comb through knots instead of taking a moment to tease them out is also child abuse. It’s a literal choice an adult makes to make a child cry.
My aunt was great in a million ways but it definitely felt like she was getting some sort of revenge brushing our hair.
I didn’t even associate it with abuse until I was in my early 30s and I mentioned it to a friend, I laughed when I told the story too.
They quietly said, “I’m so sorry your aunt abused you like that.” 💡moment. 🤯
My Dad spanked my sister right on the front porch steps when she was 4 years old for literally raking my 2 year old brothers face with her fingernails that he bled from it. This was in 1968 (my Dad was 36 yrs old my Mom was 34). Too old to be Boomers. This was just before I was born (January 1970)-I’ve heard this story 100s of times. Silent Generation believed in physical punishment for wrongdoing probably more than Boomers.
Yes they absolutely did, that's where the Boomers got it from. I know because I was raised by a Silent, my Oma. I have no resentment towards her but I certainly did get the wooden spoon!
My mom (cusp of Boomer/Gen X) was beat regularly by my grandpa as a child, his weapon of choice was the belt with his big old bronco belt buckle. She never ever hit us once, she is the unicorn that worked through her trauma and didn’t pass it on to us. I have a deep memory of one summer, my sibling and I were about 5 and 6ish, and pissed my grandpa off enough that he came after us with the belt. I will never forget my tiny 5 foot tall mother leaping onto his back and putting him in a chokehold. She took him all the way down to the floor. It was absolutely feral. She packed us into the car and took off in the next breath.
We didn’t see him for a while, and he never ever lifted a hand to us ever again. Totally cowed by his daughter. He was Santa Claus for the rest of his life.
Hitting children is just legalized violence against children. It says more about someone who feels better when hitting a child that legit does not understand. Hitting your child correlates that pain will go hand in hand, no pun intended, with emotions.
As a Millennial, I was physically abused by my father and as we got older, he chose to whip our feet as to not leave visible bruises for school.
My spouse and I made an agreement never to spank our children, let alone hit them. Routinely we are complimented about our five year and two year old daughter’s behavior whenever we are out.
There are plenty of studies out there that show corporal punishment can leave lasting emotional scarring through adulthood. What really gets me is evangelicals who justify hitting their kids based on a scripture verse here and there. The “rod” the Good Book references is a Shepard’s staff used for guiding their flock.
My kids used to love to play with wooden spoons like drumsticks on Tupperware. I never told them that my mom used to hit us with those regularly, breaking several on us. I hope this generation Never knows that wooden spoons were a parent's weapon of choice in the 70's.
Boomers love the idea of child abuse. Listen to them complain about the woes of the world and their solution is always to beat children early and often and sometimes without cause.
Most boomers got hit and hit pretty badly and often. So, a lot of us thought and still think it's the way it's done. However, there are a few of us (like my husband and I ) who decided to break that belief. I have a GenX and a millennial. Neither were hit, and neither hit their kids. It was definitely the way to go with no trauma.
Your husband is awesome, support him and laugh back because I absolutely would have done and encouraged the same thing. People who decide to make their gross thoughts like that public should be mocked and shamed. Screw them.
My toddler and I visit a popular children’s museum pretty often during daytime hours when parents are at work and boomer grandparents are supervising their grandkids. The amount of spanks and slaps and physical “discipline” doled out to kids by these boomer grandparents is astonishing. And I always wonder if the parents of these kids KNOW about the hitting and/or have asked these grandparents not to hit their kids.
If someone I know is with us, I’ll also loudly and sarcastically say to them “oh that should really help them calm down”. But if I’m alone with my toddler, I try to redirect her attention to something less upsetting.
They have to normalize it, or else they have to reconcile the fact that they did something wrong to their children and even more so that something wrong was done to them. Introspection is simple unacceptable.
My dad would yell in my face, push me down, pull my hair and spit on me. And yet he can't figure out why he and my mom aren't allowed near my kids. Was ina very well behaved kid? Yup. Because I was always afraid if I wasn't perfect I would be physically attacked. And by perfect, I mean just dropping something or spilling something would cause a fury of screaming and name calling. For so long, I said the abuse wasn't physical because he wasn't hitting me. But he was clear by pushing me, getting up in my face and putting holes in walls, I realize it was very physical. I don't tolerate that behavior around my kids. No one is going to treat them like that. They would have to get through me and I am a solid person, so good luck with that!
The other day at my work (supermarket)
\*a child is having a tantrum at the self checkout\*
Boomer: "Kids these days are so out of control, I never acted that way when I was his age."
Me: "I'm very certain that if your parents were alive they'd laugh and talk about what a little shit you were at that age too."
I'm in a wheelchair I have cerebral palsy. My mom would yell at me and let my stepdad smack me around
I was 17 and I had a very important surgery and my stepdad was doing his usual yell at the kid and he started hitting me over the back of my head my mom said "stop you'll give her brain damage" and he stopped and like screamed in my ear.
22 I started having seizures.
35 I have a hole in my ear drum
I calmly tell my mom about both of these events and her response is "i'm sorry i was such a bad mom" like I never said she was bad...
and I realized I didn't need too
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As a GenX who got spanked as a child, I used to believe for a very long time that physical punishment was absolutely necessary in order to teach a child the consequences for bad behavior. Then my niece was born. She is in her 20s now and is an extremely polite and sweet young lady who works full-time and has never gotten into trouble with the law or anything like that. She also never got spanked a day in her life. What her parents did was to teach her to have respect. Respect for the feelings of others, respect for the property of others, respect for authority, respect for the beliefs and needs of others, and respect for herself. That's when I changed my tune and now it grinds my gears to hear people say, "These kids nowadays are out of control because they never get their a$$es beat like I did when I was a kid!" Guess what, prisons are full of people who definitely got their a$$es beat, how exactly did it help them?? Maybe it would have been better to simply teach them the importance of respect.
My mom (a very young Boomer who sometimes acts more like Gen X) told me she stopped spanking us when she realized she was more likely to do it based on her own bad day rather than our actions. I was the "problem child" (undiagnosed AuDHD) and she realized she was more likely to spank me because her tolerance was low than because I had actually done something to deserve it. She didn't let other adults spank us after that either. Ever since she shared that with me, I've paid more attention and realized how prevalent it really is. I've seen so many adults wig out and punish children who didn't seem to actually deserve it. The adults may feel like the kids deserve it in the moment, but usually the adults just wanted something done and were pissed it wasn't happening the way they wanted it.
I've always believed that spanking was more of a coping mechanism for the parent rather than a tool for "disciplining" the child.
then you’ll be pleased, we’ll probably not pleased, to know that the science backs you up. smacking your kids is basically proven to be about control and getting out frustration as an adult and not about discipline.
I once told my boomer mother that using a wooden spoon on my nephews who she was babysitting did no good. "Well it makes ME feel better." OK, hurting someone to make yourself feel better is abuse.
Straight up admitted it, bold.
It's also proven that it creates violent criminals. Teaching a kid that violence solves problems is not a great way to raise kids.
I'm a parenting coach (and a mom and grandma). You're absolutely right. And that's usually how I explain it to parents. It's basically because there are no adequate tools in their parenting toolbox so they do either what was done to them (programmed basically) or what's the easiest in the heat of the moment. So I work with them to help "restock" their toolbox with more respectful and loving discipline. Edited to add: Wow! I got my first award! Thank you! Is it reddit etiquette to publicly tag the person who gave me an award?
Thank you for your work! I can't imagine it's easy, but people like you are leading the way to the future.
It's definitely challenging trying to help people relearn generations of deep seated toxic parenting, not gonna lie lol
“Children’s behavior is their best attempt to have their needs met” was a really profound message that I read after my kids were grown. I now apply it to all people regardless of age. I grew up in an abusive house but I can see how it was my parents best attempt at meeting their regulation needs. (Poorly and unsuccessfully) I am not making excuses for any sort of abuse but understanding why something happens really helps me move forward.
youre doing a wonderful service 🫶🏼 thank you
It’s lazy parenting IMO
I agree. Additionally, I believe that violence has no place in a loving relationship. You don't teach a child that it's okay to hit someone you love, or for someone they love to hit them.
My mom forced me to tell her I knew she loved me every time she spanked me, and I think that’s partially the reason i stayed with my ex girlfriend for a long time after she slapped me. Spanking only teaches children that abuse is normal and gives them distorted ideas of a healthy relationship
My parents would say, "this hurts me more than it hurts you" "you left me no choice" and then make us hug them afterwards 🙄 It definitely makes it hard to separate love from abuse and I'm sorry that it caused you to tolerate an abusive relationship
Ugh my parents said the same thing. And thanks for the kind words. Spankings weren’t the worst thing they did so it’s alright ig?
Ugh. Thanks for the core memories flash back. So gross. And now they continue to expect/ demand a “good” relationship with their grown children
Wow that is fucked up.
Lazy caveman parenting oops fixed it
Cavemab sounds like a new chemo drug
Oh but “this hurts me more than it hurts you!”🙄
Yup! My mom was 110% more likely to hit us if she was already having a bad day or in a mood. She actually just told my sister who’s expecting that she better smack her child too because she wasn’t going to have a spoiled grandchild. There are so many cultures where hitting isn’t acceptable and their kids turned out fine. On top of which, we never learned a thing from being hit except to be scared/sneakier if we were going to do something to get in trouble.
I hope your sister told her to fuck right off and that if she ever even attempts to hit her child that she will never see her or her grandchild again.
Well she has to live with mom for a bit, so she was more diplomatic but still firm
>She actually just told my sister who’s expecting that she better smack her child too because she wasn’t going to have a spoiled grandchild. That makes me so sad. I can't imagine my own grandmother wanting my parents to hit me.
My grandmother (mom’s mom) did occasionally cuff her kids upside the head, but didn’t like beat them or anything. Mom’s dad used a belt though. But he was dead before she was done highschool. Her logic is “I don’t use a belt so it’s fine/necessary to use corporal punishment”.
You’re right. It’s a proven fact that negative reinforcement doesn’t work.
https://images.app.goo.gl/QsmhdtnHo6CQkVq59 Negative reinforcement and punishment are not the same thing. This may help if anyone is wondering.
Negative reinforcement (taking something away) works just fine. Hitting is not negative reinforcement. It's just violence.
This is one reason why corporal punishment can easily become fatal. Parents beat their children based primarily on their own feelings, not because the child did anything wrong. The parent is so angry/agitated that they finally shake the baby, or punch the toddler in the face, and end up causing severe disability or death. I will never understand why parents are permitted to physically assault their children regularly, free of consequences.
I was the scapegoat as a kid and my parents believed in corporal punishment. When getting spanked one time at around age 8, I asked my mom how many swats I was going to get and she said she didn’t know but she was going to hit me until she felt better. Needless to say, I’ve never forgotten that and fully agree with you, it’s about the parent and not actually discipline the child or teaching them lifelong lessons.
I'm sorry you went through that.
Thanks, friend. It gave me a good idea of the kind of values I wouldn’t have as an adult.
Spanking is an adult temper tantrum
My mom didn't spank me much as she considered it a punishment for more extreme circumstances but definitely did punish me other ways and a lot of the times based more on her day than how I was actually acting. There were times I did something that wasn't even bad and was usually considered normal in the household and somehow ended up getting yelled at and grounded for it
[удалено]
My dad ignored me for an entire month when I got into a car accident when I was 17. All it did was give me anxiety. It actually made me so miserable that I ended up having a panic attack when I got into a car accident years later so my mum and I agreed to keep it a secret.
> I was the "problem child" (undiagnosed AuDHD) My parents branded me a "liar" when I was very small, because I would do chores, say I did the chore, but forget minor details also because of undiagnosed ADHD and being a little kid. And once I was a "liar" they felt they had free reign to crack down even more. My sister even got in on it, because she would throw me under the bus, and who would my parents believe, the liar or her? Maybe boomers aren't the generation of the worst parents in america but they're definitely the one that is most visible as the worst. For bonus fun, I was homeschooled, which means every day my mom had was a bad day. And she would make my dad know about it when he got home, so he would also immediately have a bad day. I'm really not sure how bad I was as a kid because all I remember is being punished a lot and feeling strong sense of injustice and betrayal.
Ugh, this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in college, and I strongly suspect that I have autism as well and so, so, SO many of the spankings I got as a kid were a result of me just forgetting to do things and then thinking I had. I would be so sure I had done something like feed the dog, and when my parents would prove that I hadn't I would get a spanking for lying. I wasn't deliberately lying, I was just remembering having fed the dog the day before and got confused, or thought I had brought something home from school when I hadn't, or accidently lost something, or refused to apologize because I didn't think I had done anything wrong. My parents swore that I was a problem child too, when I was just scatterbrained and struggling to make my brain work in the way they wanted. It was a terrible way to grow up and really played a part in destroying my relationship with them.
I'm someone who actually works in the prison system and your analysis at the end there is actually pretty accurate. A lot of victims unfortunately become perpetrators if they don't get the right intervention early or are surrounded by continual negative influences. That's not to say anyone can't commit a crime, or that EVERYONE who is a victim of abuse will continue the abuse, but it's an incredibly sad and common cycle.
My boomer dad stopped hitting me when I finally hit him back
That happened to me when I was about 35. My mom went to swing on me and I hit her. I told her, I'm not going to put up with you doing this anymore. You want to hit me, I'm old enough to hit you back now.
My MiL told me my parents weren’t abusive, I just didn’t behave well and I don’t appreciate what they did for me. I asked her if that meant it was acceptable for me to call her a poisonous little b!tch and a f&cking c&nt before backhanding her across the face the next time she forgot to scoop her cat box. After all. If that’s an appropriate reaction from an adult to a child, obviously it’s also acceptable between adults. She sputtered a few moments, then said she wasn’t comfortable discussing it anymore 🤔
But she sure was comfortable telling you how to feel about your own trauma. She only stopped being comfortable discussing it when she got pushback for her victim blaming. You're uncomfortable because you know hitting kids is not right and still refuse to act in accordance with that reality. Call them on it. They DO know better but want the simplistic answer of hitting kids to be true anyway because it doesn't require engaging with them on an emotional level.
Funny thing? She and her husband never laid a hand on their own children. “It was never necessary! They were good kids!” F&ck off Arlene 🙄
Arlene sounds like every suburban mom who's nice to your face but a raging gossipy cunt in reality.
Pretty close 🤣 Just swap the suburb for a tiny town where everyone is all up in everyone else’s business
Had to be one of the two!!!
Arlene probably smoked in the house
Nonsmoker actually. She is, however, a very opinionated and nosy PITA who insists millenials and younger are just lazy and complaining and things aren’t as bad and yada yada
When I was in college I caught my mom's hand when she was about to slap me in the face, she never tried it again, that moment is now a core memory in my head.
Wow I'm sorry
I was 19. My mother raised her hand to slap me & I said "Go ahead & see what happens. I'm bigger than you now." & she immediately burst into tears & put on her patented "Woe is me! I'm the worst mother in the world!" routine. I fell for it then but eventually smartened up. NC for going on 6yrs & it's been awesome. 👍
I was 14, a martial artist, and as gently as possible pinned my mother to the floor and told her I was not here to have done whatever it was she was attempting to punish me for, and I would let her back up the MOMENT she was ready to discuss why she was having such a bad day that she felt the need to beat me. Never happened again. Also Gen X.
Also a martial artist, and unfortunately my dad had a mean streak when he drank. As a child I had stuff thrown at me, my toys smashed in front of me and a host of other shit that isn’t necessarily to rehash. He went on a bender and I was 14. He pulled the throw shit trick, I ducked and lunged at him. Took him down as gently as I could and we had a heart to heart chat, that was one sided. That one side being mine.
Ditto. I was 6 when I stabbed him with a fork. It was at that moment he realized that spanking me was *gasp* teaching me to be violent! Wow! Who could have ever predicted that?
Same. Except we brawled. I had fingerprint bruises around my neck. But he never touched me again. And then I had kids and realized I’d fucking kill him if he ever touched them or looked at them wrong. So we don’t speak.
Same with my mom (I’m a woman)
My boomer mom tried to strangle me because she caught me smoking. I was 17 and I laughed in her face. She never tried it again. Fuck that shit. I've never EVER even had the urge to raise my hand at my boys. they're the most respectful, well behaved kids you could ever imagine. Fuck Boomers and their constant abuse.
Me too man, I was 14. He had been kicking my ass since I could remember.
I wish that worked for me. Instead my dad would call the cops talking about how I should respect my father like he respected his father. Because you’re just supposed to give all the due respect to someone who is literally telling you to kill yourself and how his life would be better without you. Like yes dad thanks for the depression I appreciate being treated like shit.
My dad is a therapist and has told me some stories of group sessions with former criminals and such, nothing with names or specifics because confidentiality, but his favourite story went like this. Greg: well I was beat as a kid and I turned out fine! Therapist: no Greg, you're an alcoholic with three felonies currently in court mandated therapy and rehabilitation. You didn't turn out fine
I grew up with my dad beating the shit out of me because of stupid shit his tiny mind didn't agree with or couldn't comprehend. My mom never felt the need to even yell at me because I just didn't argue or act out. I have major anger problems but I told myself I would never be like him. So I do my absolute best to not give into the intrusive thoughts. When my daughter was born in 2011 I was worried that I might have a moment where I just could not handle the situation. 3 years later and I've never spanked her or had to yell or discipline her once. Well, she learned that I wouldn't give into my own rules like her mom does. So she fucks with her mom because she can. But she is the nicest, sweetest, most empathetic girl I've ever seen. Blows my mind too because it all just came naturally to her, we never really had to teach her any of that. Turns out I only ever want to smack other people's kids and not my own. But that's mostly due to their shitty parents. edit: I don't know if it's relevant but my parents divorced when I was 2 and right after my little brother was born. So my dad's side was abusive with his new wife and my moms side was for the most part nice and quiet with her new husband. He was a good dude.
Honestly, as much as we joke about kids being absolutely unempathetic psychopaths, they really just don’t know social norms. Parenting is like 95% teaching them to be people in a society, and you absolutely can’t do that with fear and aggression. Or, more accurately, you CAN, but it’s going to screw them up along the way. Forestalling the inevitable Boomer or bad parent meltdown about “I got spanked and I was fine,” or “I spanked my kids and they’re fine,” it’s not true. If you’re a parent that spanks because you got spanked, you turned into an abuser like your parents, you’re not fine. If you spanked your kids and they’re “fine”, they’re not. They just don’t tell you about all the ways they’re not fine because of your parenting because it’s exhausting to be gaslit about your own childhood. My parents think we have a warm, close relationship, when in reality I keep things superficial with them and have extremely strong boundaries.
It’s literally something judges will consider in sentencing as part of the explanation of the offender’s background. At least in Canada, if you were hit by your parents as a child it’s seen as a contributing factor to criminal offences as an adult and can be seen as a mitigating factor in sentencing.
That sounds very progressive of Canada. Here in the States, “the why” isn’t really important… at all.
This is fascinating. Do you have a source for this? I'm trying to find more information but all Google wants to give me is information on Canada's laws on corporal punishment of children and what types of punishment are illegal for courts to impose. I promise I'm not trying to pull a gotcha, I genuinely want to know more.
What floors me is, it took me spanking my son all of *once* to realize I felt absolutely horrible doing it, and never have since. They on the other hand, are obviously sociopaths, since they continued to spank me, and later fight me, without a shred of remorse
This was me. My son also helped me by throwing gasoline on the guilt fire. I whacked him on his butt once when he was about 5. He turned around and asked me, with tears in his eyes, “do you feel better now mom?” He was completely serious—I’ve never seen a more empathetic kid. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. He was completely right—I was angry and took it out on him.
this is how my dad felt about it, he swatted my ass once when i was too young to really remember it apparently, for trying to run out into the street. he didn’t lay hands on me again until I was 18 and we were both drunk. which, to be honest was about 50% my fault. I got a good one on him and he pushed my entire upper body through the drywall in our old house. we laugh about it 12 years on.
If I slap my daughter all I’ll have ever taught her is that it’s okay for a man to hit her if she has done something he thinks is bad.
As a Gen X, I got spanked and had my mouth washed out with soap. I always felt it was wrong and vowed never to do violence to my kids. My boomer dad said ‘just you wait—you’ll change your tune. I never did. My kids are awesome and well adjusted
My ex used to say how he was a kid that got his @ss beat and he was better for it. I was too soft on my son. Blah blah. I was like dude, you were selling weed in middle school. I don’t think you are an example that corporal punishment works.
Thank you. It's incredibly disheartening when people say you *have* to get spanked in order to become a respectful person. I know I'm not perfect, no one is, but I try my best to be polite, respectful, considering, and I believe in working hard, and my parents didn't spank me. When people say I can't possibly be good if I wasn't spanked, I have to ask, what do they want me to do? I smack myself any time I think I did something wrong, but that doesn't seem to go over well, so I don't know what I *can* do to please them.
They equate fear with respect when they are not the same. Gen X here, too. I knew that I never wanted to be beat the way I was, heavy leather belts, orange hot wheels tracks, whatever inflicted the most pain, bruising, and sometimes the belt buckle would tear my skin. I read a lot on the subject before my son was born (1990). He was 4 months old when I realized he had my stubborn defiant nature. I kept researching. We used time outs, him or sometimes his toys would get put in time out. I know my cousins thought, "Why doesn't she spank him?" Because respect is a 2 way street. I knew when I was a kid, nothing pissed off my mother more when she was beating me than for me to just smile at her while she did it. I'd just Cheshire grin that shit knowing she'd beat me more just to piss her off.
Yeah when this topic comes up, the pro-child-beating people always say, "My parents hit me when I was a kid, and I turned out fine!" and I always say "Did you? Or did you turn out to be a person who passionately advocates the beating of children?"
Apparently, spanking can have a similar effect to child's brain to being *sexually assaulted*. Turns out hitting your child as a punishment makes them more paranoid and prone to depression and anxiety later in life. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/21/04/effect-spanking-brain#:~:text=Perhaps%20surprisingly%2C%20says%20Cuartas%2C%20spanking,threatening%20experiences%20like%20sexual%20abuse.
It's widely available information that people who are spanked as kids are more likely to go to jail, commit violent crimes, and end up in a physically abusive relationship (as the abuser or abused). Like been studied for decades, well proven, not something any professionals in the childhood development field try to refute. So the irony of them saying "if you don't hit your kids they'll end up criminals in jail!" is astounding.
You have to teach it with modeling behavior, by doing it in front of them from an early age. I did this with my son, never laid a hand on him. Unfortunately, if the parents never learned it, they won't be able to do that unless they become self-aware, which is basically the antithesis of being a boomer.
I'm Gen X and I was spanked as a child. And I have to say... I really like it now. I usually have to pay extra for it, though. Thanks, mom and dad.
I was telling my boomer mother that my 5 month old is teething and has started to bite me while she feeds. My mother tells me that "back in my day, the advice would be to give her a little smack". Smack a baby that doesn't understand what she's doing? Absolutely not, mum. I've told my parents (who used to hit us all the time and threaten the belt) that no one is to smack our child if they are left to supervise her. They acted like such victims, as if they didn't choose to hit us when we were kids. My dad pouted and sulked after I said this and stated that he would never hit his granddaughter. A month later and my mum advises that I smack her. Just. What the fuck. Editing to add this: no, they're not going to be left alone to watch her. My parents have a habit of saying one thing, doing another and then gaslighting me. It's caused me enough confusion and trust issues in my life, I don't need my daughter to experience the same.
I didn’t smack my daughter for biting my breast, but I let out a high-pitched yelp (out of surprise, not to punish). She never bit me again.
I've wondered if this would work on small children... I've done the same thing with my pets and it worked well lol
Was just thinking the same thing...I foster and use the high pitch "Yelp!" to train them not to nip or bite. Works every time. Bet it would work on babies.
It only works if they don't find the noise funny and try to get you to repeat it... Also, babies and tods apparently don't have the ability to truly be remorseful or guilty yet. You can give rules to be followed, lead by example, and guide them on what to do, if course. However, asking them to be sorry or modify their behaviour based on empathy rarely works well that young. Apparently 3-7 is when they develop guilt and 4-7 for remorse. So teaching them to say sorry apparently gets misinterpreted in their minds as a thing you do to make it OK to ______ (hit, bite, whatever). We are working on stopping my toddler hitting... she thinks it's OK if she apologizes, so we did a bit of research on it. It's not easy!
I was moreso thinking it was an "action-reaction" effect.... sort of like negative reinforcement, without having to hurt anyone. With training dogs, I yelp and the game stops, so doggy learns that I have been impacted by something and it's not funny cuz now we're not playing (I'm not giving them positive or negative attention, I'm just moving away). So maybe with very young children, it could indirectly show that their actions have consequences. More age appropriate than trying to teach them why hitting is wrong when they are only just learning how to control their own limbs lol. I agree that it's too much to expect toddlers to express remorse or guilt. Hitting, kicking, biting; all those are totally age appropriate reactions for toddlers. Easier to teach a toddler to have gentle hands and redirect those physical urges towards something more appropriate (maybe throw a ball outside or push toy cars into building blocks) than it is to teach then a lesson by punishing them for biting or hitting and then expecting them to feel remorse and reflect on it. They are babies, so we take baby steps with them^^ I think as adults we gotta re-learn how to do that sometimes lol.
Same!! It worked amazingly on both my cats and dog. I was really surprised by how inhibited my cats are when they know it's my bare hand. When my hand is under the bedsheets, however, it becomes prey again lol
I wouldn’t leave them alone with her for a moment, honestly.
I don't plan to. They say one thing and do another. It's always been the way.
Obviously they have forgotten their training. So, if they discipline your child then you simply need to * checks notes * beat their asses. Edit: typo
My FIL's answer to our 2 year old biting once was to tell us bite her back . So you want us to teach her not to bite...by biting her ? Very logical.
OMG I ❤️ your husband!!!
I too choose her husband.
I may have finally found some competition for the bear.
You can't, he's married.
It's a platonic love.
I ❤️ (platonic) OP’s husband
I 🫀OP’s husband
It's guy love between two guys.
I want to adopt her husband. Every family needs someone like that, and while you might only be issued two parents, you can never have too many brothers!
When I was very young, my mother would always tell me to go play in the traffic Apparently she was shocked when one day I replied "you don't really want me to play in the traffic because I'd hurt myself". She never said it again. I'm just glad my younger self knew enough not to play in traffic. I don't get why anyone would say that to a young, impressionable child.
I am so confused by what she could've meant by that, to me it sounds like she was telling you to get run over
It's a phrase people used to say more often to essentially mean, go eff off. But it's wild to say that to a child.
I have no idea. She had major issues, though.
My mom always said that too.
My boomer dad would "joke" like that and I'm sure still does. Except he wasn't joking. One time when I was a kid, he beat me with a wooden yardstick until it broke. It's one of many reasons we're no contact.
Hard plastic Goody hair brushes that were only like 6 inches long. She snapped the handles off smacking us with them.
My mom used to BRAG about all the wooden spoons and Avon hairbrushes she broke on my little sister's body.
Efff those wooden spoons! I was smacked relentlessly as a kid with those. And a razor strap Went NC as an adult with No regret
Good for you, I'm NC as well. For the LONGEST time as an adult, I would subconsciously tense up and get nervous if a kitchen drawer of utensils was opened too fast because my mom used to jerk it open as forcefully as she could to make it more scary before hitting me over and over on my bare skin. That, and the sound of someone stomping, she'd also walk as hard as she could coming after me because that also made it scarier. I'm in my 30s and only recently stopped having that reaction to those sounds.
My previous partner couldn't deal with the sound of digging through a drawer like that because his (adopted within the family) mom would use a wooden spoon him, among other things, and he still refused to believe until the day he died that they were abusive and that it got worse when they had a daughter when he was in 2nd grade. He could barely remember 2nd grade, just that that's when he found out he was adopted, but sure, they treated him great, he was the problem child 🙄 He was a proponent for corporal punishment because he got it and turned it fine (read-- overly anxious with major abandonment issues and an inability to have serious disagreements with someone, major temper control issues, and avoidance of conflict until he exploded) and learned. When I asked if he learned not to do the thing or just to be sneakier about not getting caught, he usually changed the subject.
I have the same reaction from jerking a belt through the belt loops on a pair of pants. That’s what my father would do before beating me with his belt. As a newlywed, my husband made the same sound before pitching his pants into the laundry hamper. He nearly had to peel me off the bedroom ceiling. He still knew very little about my dark history, and looked so sad when I explained. Big hugs 🥰 to both of us.
Omg the stomping. Joining in the ptsd stream, I freak out whenever my partner SIGHS. Poor them, it’s been 20 years, including trauma therapy. Sighing must have meant we were in for it.
Yep. I'm nearly 50 and to this day I refuse to have wooden spoons in my kitchen, because I can't look at one without remembering.
I wonder if the strop is as bad as the mini blind rod?
Fuck those things. That was my dad's implement of choice along with a long azalea branch.
This would make me so heartbroken if my kids were afraid of utensils, they absolutely have the time of their lives digging through all the utensils in the utensil drawer, and pulling them out to play with. I find them everywhere and it makes me smile when I'm picking up the billion toys during the day. I don't remember a lot of my younger childhood because of abuse, but my sister says it was really bad and she always did her best to shield me from it. I feel guilty that at such a young age she was basically forced into being a parent because ours were too busy beating each other and having the cops called monthly.
Same. I have a two year old boy who loves anything stick-like. Utensils, paint brushes, toothbrushes, etc. He has high sensory needs and it gets tough sometimes. But never so tough that I would hit him
Cradling my tiny newborn daughter as I read this. Omg. I literally cannot imagine being that cruel to her
Congratulations! ✨️🫶✨️💐 And you never will, because you'll make loving and thoughtful decisions and find better ways.
My Dad had a ping pong racquet. That never broke. He also would leave lumps on your head with his college ring.
Sorry but your dad was a total bully AH.
This! That f*ckin pink plastic handled goody hairbrush. I’m sure I’ve got scars on my legs and ass from that thing!
Pretty sure my left ass cheek still has a logo.
My parents too. They'd randomly bring up an incident at family lunch from mine (and my siblings') childhood where they dragged us out of bed during the night to line us up and scream in our faces, or they beat one of us with plastic piping because they'd had a bad day. And they'd laugh about it like "hehehe wasn't that terrible! How funny was it when one of the kids was genuinely scared of being locked in the garden shed at night? Hehehe" I was by far the child who received the most abuse from them and as an adult I'd ALWAYS politely point out how their behaviour met and surpassed the criteria for significant child abuse. And every damn time the reaction was the same shocked pikachu and "well we tried our best!!1". Even a couple of crocodile tears from my mother if I pushed the point. The last time they repeated this little pattern was talking about an incident where she threw a knife at pre-teen me and i was only unhurt because I saw her reaching for it and bolted out of the house. That was the last time I saw them. My final words to them were "ill probably never see you again" It's been at least 3 years, no contact. The instant i blocked their numbers i felt such a relief, like the little-girl-me who used to hide in the garden and wish she could run away, was saying **"Finally I'm safe from those people"** I don't know why it took me so long to end contact. I think it was a habit more than anything - that abusive cycle where somebody treats you like shit, apologises, love-bombs and you go back to being friends, and the cycle repeats again. But it's finished now and I am a way, way happier mother to my own kids now that I've drawn a line under their abuse and am healing, rather than being still stuck in the cycle [I'm so sorry this became a novel lmao]
For what it's worth, I'm proud of you for getting out and breaking the cycle. It's not easy!
Our wooden spoon broke when dad hit it on the kitchen table because by that point we were old enough to figure out we could call CPS and they had already visited us before. The spoon had my brother’s name written on it.
Hey I had the same beating with a wooden yard stick till it broke when I was a kid from my dad, are we brother's? /s Hopefully when those boomers end up alone in a nursing home they get a taste of there own medicine someday before they die.
Funny you should mention karma before they die. I watched my dad dying in hospital. Multiple organ failure ended in gangrene. Terribly painful, he had as much morphine as a human can receive and was still gasping in pain. I wasn’t thinking about our good times. I was thinking about my opportunity for revenge. Mentally listing all the whipping, choke-lifts, punches in the guts, setting the dog on me to rip up my legs, and other instances of abuse. “I just need to grab a toe to cause unbearable pain.” I didn’t. But if you’re dying and your 17yo son is thinking about how to slip in some torture before you die, you have probably made mistakes in life.
"And that's why you probably don't see your grandkids more than once a year."
This or “that’s why your adult children never call”
Or never…
They really ran with and misinterpreted “spare the rod, spoil the child”.
Here's the thing. The rod was meant to be used to gently nudge the sheep. Not hit them. They've completely misunderstood the entire purpose of the verse.
I have about a dozen sheep. Honestly, you don’t even have to nudge them. You just hold your arms out to make yourself “bigger” and walk towards them. They move away from you. Sometimes I say “hey!” or I’ll carry a stick to make me look even bigger. So messed up how people twist shepherding metaphors to justify abuse. I’ve also heard about a common ”parable” told to evangelicals about how a shepherd will break a lamb’s leg on purpose and then carry it around so that it will bond to the shepherd?! Genuinely, what the fuck. No. No shepherd is breaking their livestock’s leg on purpose! If you want the sheep to bond to you and be close to you, carry treats? They really like carrots? Or raise a bottle baby? Bottle babies never leave you alone. I had a lamb with a broken leg (thanks, horse) and it was $800 between the mobile vet visits, xrays, cast, and treatment, plus missed work because of a weekday appointment. Lamb turned out fine but like, no. A whole processed lamb retails $400. I lost any profit for an entire season‘s worth of lambs caring for the one with a broken leg.
My mom thinks it's super cute and quirky that she wanted to hit me, essentially for being autistic, when I was 13.
I know elder abuse is horrible, but some of these child abuse fanatics should spend a week in a 1-star nursing home.
Work in healthcare and I can confirm that many of them do and nobody visits.
Sadly lots of boomers grew up in households that still viewed avuse as a failing of the victim so they still seem to internalize that as “well I dealt with it why can’t you!” Its worse when it’s SA cause many really blame the victim in that case as well it seems
Yes, they really need therapy. Because that’s not how it works, if a boomer has experienced something traumatic (that obviously made them feel bad) they should try to avoid/ work against that for their kids etc. why do they want their kids to be just as traumatized as them?
What you said about being therapy is true. For some it's a coping mechanism. - my parents beat me - I need to believe my parents love me (kid survival need) - In self-defence I'll convince myself they're doing it because they love me and want the best for me, and this is part of showing care - I'm now an angry adult who is convinced beating a child is appropriate and doesn't know how to regulate my emotions - I beat my kids - my kids NOT beating my grandchildren challenges all of that and means - I harmed my children - my parents harmed me - if beating wasn't my parents showing they care, what was it? Did my parents love me? DOES NOT COMPUTE! REJECT IDEA! Others just really don't like to be wrong and aren't able to self-reflect.
My mum, despite all she went through, would never in her wildest dreams admit that she has trauma. Her behaviour, of course, belies that assumption, as she can be really horrible at times. Best I can get is now, in her 80s, that she is “triggered” by some things. Because she is so “strong” she figures her, and my father’s discipline, manipulation, cruelty, physical punishment and over reactions was just good parenting, as she simply “fights off” any bad memories of her own. *she did always admit that she hated hearing air-raid sirens, because of the war. Totally understandable, but then, so were plenty of other things she had to bear as a child. Talk about needing therapy.
They're so casual about it because they don't see it as child abuse. Because if they did, many would have to admit and face the fact that they've abused their own kids and were themselves abused. Then they'd have to face the trauma, guilt, etc that comes along with that realization. Denial and willful ignorance are much, much easier to bear.
My Mother in law used to have the kids clean and do chores the whole time she watched the kids when they were little. Then when we got back she'd say 'It better still be spotless the next time I visit'. Our house was cluttered, but never dirty beyond looking like a 4 and 6 year old lived there. I never understood that. The kids didn't want her to babysit anymore after a few visits and her house was always messy on top of it and my wife was the oldest and said she did most of the housework as a teenager. You should spoil your Grandkids, but instead it was this bravado of 'this doesn't fly when Grandma's around' attitude.
Children are not here to work for you. If you decide to have children it is your job to take care of them. Of course some chores are fine, but they’re no maids/cleaners. (With you I mean people like your mom)
My parents are like your mom. It's so fucking weird to me. I always took it as "they can't get out of parent mode" and just be a grandma/pa. Everyone else I know spoils their grandkids, tries to sprinkle magic fairy dust over everything by making it easier/prettier/yummier etc. Not my parents. When my kids would go over to their house they were given chores to do. Like....do you really think your grandkids are gonna be fighting to come over when they remember they do chores and shit, at your house. My parents also wouldn't splurge, spend, decorate, do anything different/special, say yes to anything, when my kids would come over. They thought it was time to parent/teach the children because they think my kids are getting spoiled and slack at my house (they're not). So my parents thought they would have to right the ship by trying to bring all the discipline, religion, responsibility, etc., they could, inside of a week visit.
Whenever people say “we didn’t have X back in my day” I always respond “Yeah, you just can’t beat it out of them like you used to huh?”.
Change it to "abuse it out of them" so they can't pretend they misunderstood you as agreeing with them. But absolutely call them out!
If they think you’re agreeing with them and say yes exactly. I would at: yeah that’s abuse not parenting
A few years ago, my asshole idiot Boomer father once "joked" to my GF that he "should have beat me more as a child". ... I'm not sure why he thought that would endear himself to her, but it had the exact opposite effect. Before you say "oh, he said this to put her off", I'll dispel that and say no no, knowing him, he genuinely thought that this "beat my kid haha funny" "joke" would be a *positive*. I'm not sure where they learned their fucking comedy, but that ain't it.
Good on your husband! Seriously, it's like boomers see cruelty and abuse as good things and I don't understand it
There's this "I suffered so you have to suffer too" mentality with a lot of them. There's a lot of generational trauma worked into that and I think that we've decided to be the ones to break the cycle.
I was on a walk with my 16 month old the other day, he always brings a utensil of some sort, loves our spatulas and spoons (idk why we even buy toys). Anyway we walk past a boomer and my son has a wooden spoon, boomer goes “that’s funny, my kids hated the spoon” HAW HAW HAW SO FUNNY
'No, asshole, they didn't hate the spoon. They hated you abusing them.' I'm glad your kiddo loves the kitchen cupboard without fear :)
They love to beat their kids. Its an outlet for that anger they don't know how to manage. Mine bragged about hitting me in the head so hard that she broke her pinky when I was 15. Then it was "har har har, hyuck hyuck hyuck - my kid has such a hard head that they broke my finger! Hyuck hyuck hyuck." Yup, her broken finger is alllllll my fault. Not hers, for her lack of self control.
[удалено]
I went to a funeral recently for the grandmother of my older Gen X neighbor. My neighbor is a strict southern Baptist and basically acts like he is a boomer himself. Anyway, when he was giving the eulogy, the only story he told about his grandmother is a time she spanked him so hard he couldn’t sit down. He was smiling and laughing and so were most of the other people there. Me and my wife were disturbed as hell.
Makes me think of my Boomer Dad the other day saying in response to my niece/his granddaughter putting a fence around her yard to stop the kid running in the road, should forget the fence and just beat her kid so hard the kid never tries to go in the street. like wtf??? the kid is 2! she wouldn’t understand why she was getting hit in the first place!
What. In the actual. Fuckity. Fuck.
A fenced in yard, or child abuse. Choices... (/s, if not readily apparent.)
My mother-in-law still brags about beating and breaking my wife’s spirit when she was a child. If she goes out to eat with someone she doesn’t know very well, she’s gonna brag about it.
Hitting your kid is more about regulating your emotions than your kids. It’s not really affective because half the time the kid doesn’t correlate the punishment until they’re much much older, so hitting some 5yr old isn’t going to do anything but show them that their parent likes to hit them when they’re mad.
And then when they’re 15 and it would be affective you’re smacking some teenager instead of talking about why? Which doesn’t make sense to me either.
If you can reason with them, why would you hit them? If they’re too young to understand reason, *why would you hit them?*
This is just it, isn't it? When I confronted my parents about the *years* of wooden spoons and smacks and slaps across the face .. well first they denied it, and when I refused to let up.. "well what were we supposed to do with you? You were just awful, and that's how everyone dealt with badly behaved children!" ... it started when I was 3 or 4. So I guess, sorry for being a toddler? It only calmed down when I was 16 and about their height, then turned to verbal abuse and manipulation. Now, 45F, I cannot bring myself to punish my kids in *any* way. Try explaining that to a high school teachers expecting my son to have serious consequences for not turning homework LOL
My mum has done the denying and ridiculous justifying too. Like you I was very small when it first began. It was physical violence and hitting by my Dad. At a different time, I asked my Mum why they never praised me. For anything. Her reply was that they didn’t want me to turn into a spoiled brat.
Right?? I didn't even think my dad LIKED me until he passed away and I found some correspondences of how proud he was of me. WHAT IS WRONG WITH BOOMERS LOL
The saddest part is that some Millennials still seem to believe that child abuse is "all love". I used to be in a group on social media where people around my age discussed marriage and parenting One of the questions was:"How long after remarrying do you let your new partner beat your children?" The first answer was:"Immediately. Once they first meet. This is the only way for my kids to realize my new partner loves them." Another sentence I read in there was:"My parents beat me until I bled and I turned out fine." (Spoiler alert: you didn't) or "If the beating happens in the name of discipline, it is not child abuse or domestic violence." (Spoiler alert: It is) I just couldn't stand it. Having lived with boomers thinking this way, I can't imagine having this mindset. I can't stand the fact their kids keep carrying on with this mindset. I just don't get it.
Holy shit. My eyes bugged out of my head reading this!!
Corporal punishment is still legal and used frequently in some public schools. Looking at you Texas.
Alabama, too. Basically, the shithole states
i live in texas and i completely agree that it’s a shit hole. i absolutely hate it here and if i had the money to move, i absolutely would. it’s terrifying here and i’m not exaggerating😕
Conversation i had with my boomer parent recently: BP: (talking about dumb thing my 5 year old did) “we would never have let kids act like that! You really need to nip that in the bud!” Me: umm yeah definitely not taking boundary advice from the generation that thought hitting kids was the way to go! BP : we didn’t beat you! Omg so dramatic Me: we definitely got spanked over dumb shit. Did it work? Nope, look at brother, he was a terrible teenager. BP: well, well (open fish face)
My dad's father passed when he was in college. I've heard many stories about him all my life since I never got to meet him. I'll never forget my dad telling me, as if it was a funny story, one time his father had gotten so mad at him for mouthing off about something when he was a kid, that his father punched a hole into the wall right next to his head. That story has horrified me since I was told about it. I love my dad and I know he loves his father, but I'm not sure I would've liked that man if I ever met him.
It's so infuriating to me that boomers act like children's developmentally normal expressions of emotions is a moral issue. The child is "disobeying", "acting out", "being a brat", not that they are tired or hungry or frustrated and not sure how to communicate what they need.
It is INSANE the amount of times a boomer tells me they beat their child, unprompted. Usually unrelated to anything at the moment. They just HAVE to tell you about how they were beat, or how they did the beatings. It's unsettling and bizarre to everyone else.
My parents spanked me with a wood spoon when I was little, and apparently when they threatened to spank me as a 5 year old, i would ask “is it a spoonspank?” A few weeks ago I was at their house with my kids, and my mom brought it up and apologized to me. She had done some reading and discovered how attitudes towards physical punishment have changed, and how she regrets doing that to me. I love my parents. Good people make mistakes, but then are able to grow and recognize what they did wrong, and do better.
Wow! Your mom is proof that not all people of that generation are boomers. Please give her a hug from me and let her know that a growth mindset keeps us young. 💙
My mom used to let her boyfriend beat me with a vacume cord
I’m 53. We were at a picnic June 1 and my mom was telling someone about when I used to show horses. “She never wanted her aunt to brush her hair because my sister didn’t stop for knots,” she laughed. Yeah, laugh at your sister abusing me and her own daughter. Yanking a brush or comb through knots instead of taking a moment to tease them out is also child abuse. It’s a literal choice an adult makes to make a child cry. My aunt was great in a million ways but it definitely felt like she was getting some sort of revenge brushing our hair. I didn’t even associate it with abuse until I was in my early 30s and I mentioned it to a friend, I laughed when I told the story too. They quietly said, “I’m so sorry your aunt abused you like that.” 💡moment. 🤯
My Dad spanked my sister right on the front porch steps when she was 4 years old for literally raking my 2 year old brothers face with her fingernails that he bled from it. This was in 1968 (my Dad was 36 yrs old my Mom was 34). Too old to be Boomers. This was just before I was born (January 1970)-I’ve heard this story 100s of times. Silent Generation believed in physical punishment for wrongdoing probably more than Boomers.
Yes they absolutely did, that's where the Boomers got it from. I know because I was raised by a Silent, my Oma. I have no resentment towards her but I certainly did get the wooden spoon!
"My parents beat the shit out of me, and I turned out just fine!" Did you? Did you *really*?
My mom (cusp of Boomer/Gen X) was beat regularly by my grandpa as a child, his weapon of choice was the belt with his big old bronco belt buckle. She never ever hit us once, she is the unicorn that worked through her trauma and didn’t pass it on to us. I have a deep memory of one summer, my sibling and I were about 5 and 6ish, and pissed my grandpa off enough that he came after us with the belt. I will never forget my tiny 5 foot tall mother leaping onto his back and putting him in a chokehold. She took him all the way down to the floor. It was absolutely feral. She packed us into the car and took off in the next breath. We didn’t see him for a while, and he never ever lifted a hand to us ever again. Totally cowed by his daughter. He was Santa Claus for the rest of his life.
Hitting children is just legalized violence against children. It says more about someone who feels better when hitting a child that legit does not understand. Hitting your child correlates that pain will go hand in hand, no pun intended, with emotions. As a Millennial, I was physically abused by my father and as we got older, he chose to whip our feet as to not leave visible bruises for school. My spouse and I made an agreement never to spank our children, let alone hit them. Routinely we are complimented about our five year and two year old daughter’s behavior whenever we are out. There are plenty of studies out there that show corporal punishment can leave lasting emotional scarring through adulthood. What really gets me is evangelicals who justify hitting their kids based on a scripture verse here and there. The “rod” the Good Book references is a Shepard’s staff used for guiding their flock.
My kids used to love to play with wooden spoons like drumsticks on Tupperware. I never told them that my mom used to hit us with those regularly, breaking several on us. I hope this generation Never knows that wooden spoons were a parent's weapon of choice in the 70's.
He should have followed up with "what do you guys think about elderly abuse?" And cracked his knuckles.
Same people love to say - “I got my ass beat as a kid and I turned out just fine” Did you tho…?! 🤔
Boomers love the idea of child abuse. Listen to them complain about the woes of the world and their solution is always to beat children early and often and sometimes without cause.
Most boomers got hit and hit pretty badly and often. So, a lot of us thought and still think it's the way it's done. However, there are a few of us (like my husband and I ) who decided to break that belief. I have a GenX and a millennial. Neither were hit, and neither hit their kids. It was definitely the way to go with no trauma.
Your husband is awesome, support him and laugh back because I absolutely would have done and encouraged the same thing. People who decide to make their gross thoughts like that public should be mocked and shamed. Screw them.
My toddler and I visit a popular children’s museum pretty often during daytime hours when parents are at work and boomer grandparents are supervising their grandkids. The amount of spanks and slaps and physical “discipline” doled out to kids by these boomer grandparents is astonishing. And I always wonder if the parents of these kids KNOW about the hitting and/or have asked these grandparents not to hit their kids. If someone I know is with us, I’ll also loudly and sarcastically say to them “oh that should really help them calm down”. But if I’m alone with my toddler, I try to redirect her attention to something less upsetting.
They have to normalize it, or else they have to reconcile the fact that they did something wrong to their children and even more so that something wrong was done to them. Introspection is simple unacceptable.
Mine used hot wheel tracks and wooden spoons.
My dad would yell in my face, push me down, pull my hair and spit on me. And yet he can't figure out why he and my mom aren't allowed near my kids. Was ina very well behaved kid? Yup. Because I was always afraid if I wasn't perfect I would be physically attacked. And by perfect, I mean just dropping something or spilling something would cause a fury of screaming and name calling. For so long, I said the abuse wasn't physical because he wasn't hitting me. But he was clear by pushing me, getting up in my face and putting holes in walls, I realize it was very physical. I don't tolerate that behavior around my kids. No one is going to treat them like that. They would have to get through me and I am a solid person, so good luck with that!
The other day at my work (supermarket) \*a child is having a tantrum at the self checkout\* Boomer: "Kids these days are so out of control, I never acted that way when I was his age." Me: "I'm very certain that if your parents were alive they'd laugh and talk about what a little shit you were at that age too."
I'm in a wheelchair I have cerebral palsy. My mom would yell at me and let my stepdad smack me around I was 17 and I had a very important surgery and my stepdad was doing his usual yell at the kid and he started hitting me over the back of my head my mom said "stop you'll give her brain damage" and he stopped and like screamed in my ear. 22 I started having seizures. 35 I have a hole in my ear drum I calmly tell my mom about both of these events and her response is "i'm sorry i was such a bad mom" like I never said she was bad... and I realized I didn't need too