Childhood Being hit with a hair brush-abuse?

[Muttly]

most of what my dad did to me was in the form of "punishment" or "Teaching". Honestly some of the worst moments were when he was calm. We were supposed to have perfect table manners. If not, we could get slapped, poked with a fork, or knocked on the hand with a butter knife. his favorite method was the fork. What made it feel so abusive, was he'd sit there just waiting for me (or my brother) to make a mistake. When he's sitting there watching you, it wasn't teaching. There was no way to do right. The punishment was inevitable.

My mom hit me with a hair brush at times. That felt less abusive. I've been pondering if I would call it abuse and I really don't know.

 

[Gs172003]

My Grandma slapped me for throwing up at the table. I do consider that abusive.

 

[Nessa7]

Going back and looking at one of your posts that outlined your trauma history, I think that your mother hitting you with a hair brush would be considered abuse. Putting it into the context of your mother placing blame on you for horrible things that were done to you and were in no way your fault, your family environment was not one that had any chance of corporal punishment being used in a healthy way. If your mother was constantly telling you that you were a bad kid and deserved abuse, any punishment that she gave you is not going to be constructive. Even if your mother was perfectly calm, you had reason to not trust her and to fear her.

 

[Marinna]

I personally don't see any reason to hit kids at all. That said, I am not a parent and I have been physically abused as a child so my perception is a little skewed.

I think intent and outcome are helpful in deciphering whether something like that is abusive. Firstly, is the intent to correct behaviour or hurt the child in frustration? I will go out on a limb and say that the latter is nealry always abusive, regardless of any implements used.

Secondly, the 'outcome'. Is the child injured (red marks), is the child frightened of the parent?.

As I said, I am against corporal punishment (except perhaps a panic smack to stop a child doing something dangerous).

The only reason I hesistate to call all physical punishment 'abuse' is because I would be labelling my grandparents, greatparents and nearly all my ancestors as abusers. Not to mention the countries where smacking is a cultural norm.

 

[blackemerald1]

I was brought up in the old school way and copped some outright thrashings - as did my siblings. There were days when I can honestly say we all deserved it and there were times when I think that my parents lost the plot completely. We were a very big family by today's standards and it's really difficult to put the lens of today and view whether corporal punishment was abuse way back then. It was everywhere, school, church, bus driver and all my peer group. I don't recall anyone not being metered out corporal punishment. Maybe I didn't know many ppl., it was a remote place with a sparce population.

When raising my children and still really still living in that era.. where to 'spare the rod..spoiled the child' was still thought to be proper parenting, I had serious misgivings about ever hitting my children. I was probably a little overwhelmed with how to parent bc I had been raised one way and I wanted to do it differently. There were lots of parents with my attitude around, I wasn't completely alone. We all were treated like neglectful parents.

So I didn't hit my children. I recall picking them up and putting them in their rooms fairly abruptly but they grew too quickly for that to last. Then they were sent to their rooms but I think after they trashed their bedrooms a few times and I had to stand and supervise them put everything back together again...that stopped too on most occasions.

I recall I got the belt from my motorcycle jacket out one day and hung it from a nail inside my bedroom door and made sure they saw me do it. The message I meant to convey was, I've had enough! Instead my belt disappeared forever. My adult children (the same kids) now tell me they threw it underneath the house and they know exactly where it still is. I haven't lived there for almost 30 years. I'm not going to see that belt again.

I've asked my children if they were troubled or felt threatened by me doing that or anything else and they laugh at me and tell me, no..they just wanted to out-smart me. So much for my parenting skills? :oops:

I think my children were pretty wild but normal? There were many moments when their complaining, objecting and verbal stuff etc tried me to the end of my patience and I thought I had got it all wrong and should have been raising them with a thrashing every other day - like I got. Those moments passed fortunately. Idk I was really serious about the word 'consequences'. It was my mantra...

I recall getting so angry with them. I implemented all manner of deprivations like... No television for the next X months and No this and No that, riding your bicycle etc., There was a list on the door of the fridge for who was being punished for what on any given day and when a deprivation actually ran out. I was reminded if I accidentally over-shot bc it was there in my writing. :speechless: I haven't even begun to describe the teenage years and the manipulations tried out. They could have thrashed me by then. They didn't.

I muddled through this raising children time with a lot of condemnation & confusion by some, a shed-load of embarrassment and awkward silences with other parents, adults, teachers etc., etc. At times I thought I was actually just extending the punishment over too long bc I had to keep thinking up new & worse things I knew they really liked or didn't like doing, to stop them in their tracks. The problem was they were in my face all the more bc I had just about banned everything. And supervising your child not washing the dishes properly but letting them do it in total silence and then requiring them to re-do them again or face further consequences...was mindless...for me - but apparently a well thought out plot by them to drive me up the wall:banghead:

Also though, by the name of 'all things mother' if any other adult ever touched a hair on my children they were staring into the face of the angriest mother on earth and there were consequences!

I know this all sounds like my children got the better of me and were actually in charge. I think there were days where that could have been successfully debated but overall I think I had them reasonably in order. I did my best w/o abuse, violence etc. We were not always happy with each other on numerous occasions but that isn't real life is it?

Now..it's all over and I am watching them raise their children and they do not thrash their kids. I have these aah! moments. Yes they are getting tested by their own children and they have a list of deprivations.. eg No computer for a week or whatever. I think I inadvertently broke a cycle with my children. But not bc of any noble cause.

Returning to my parents, I know they did not think they were being abusive. I am not making excuses for them however we lived in a dangerous place and that was the way proper parenting was done then. More importantly, that was how my parents had been raised by their parents, so that was the only way they knew how. It was harsh compared to society today. It was too harsh on me.

I have spoken to one of my siblings about the way we were raised and she has also taken the route I did with her children. She is still 'enforcing' the consequences and I can only mumur comforting words such as, don't blink it will be over so soon. It isn't that helpful I know. Idk but when she's run out of ideas and rung me..things have got bad! :(

Other siblings of mine went down the corporal punishment route with their children and I hated watching them do that to their children. Their adult children are not impressed either apparently.

Ironically and with a fair load of hindsight added in by them now, my own parents disapprove of corporal punishment. Well that's what they say.... The law certainly lagged behind society for a very long time for my generation.

 

[Cactus Bloom]

What may be traumatic for one child may not even phase another child. Each of us are born with a certain temperament and I think that predisposes the child to possibly becoming easily traumatized throughout childhood and adulthood or able to be more resilient through the same circumstances and environment. That’s what’s so exciting about all the research being done about our brains and child development and what happens when we are abused. Now, again, what is considered abuse? I would rather ask what is trauma because that is what it boils down to. What caused you pain? How did it manifest itself throughout your life? Pain is pain and it’s not fair or right to compare anyone else’s reality with another persons because we’re each different. It’s becoming increasingly more obvious in today’s world of how trauma is manifesting itself through so many symptoms that is so vast that it’s impossible to ignore.

 

[Scarlet13]

So my mother was definately abusive outside of the hair brush.
I think the point is that we got the brush because of a tone of voice or a mess or a complaint.
I would sometimes complain.
I developped PTSD early on due to mollestation and my mother punished me for expressing emotion.
She told me I was inherently bad, I was born bad.
She came from a farm life and that was what they did on the farm, but she made it into something abusive and this is what I am trying to get at.
I dont agree with this type of punishment at all, but it is not necc abusive in every case, but in my case I think it was and in a lot of cases.

 

[shimmerz]

You say you need to get it clear in your head but from your posts in this thread, it seems you are quite committed to it having been abusive. No judgement there. Just wondering what answer you are really looking for because I am not certain this is actually the question you are grappling with. Something deeper down maybe? Just an impression, so by all means just bypass if it doesn't resonate.

 

[Sideways]

I think there’s a pretty fine line between many forms of discipline and abuse, not just with corporal punishment. So, it’s incredibly important that any form of discipline meets some basic standards of reasonableness.

Discipline is essentially a guardian’s way of enforcing boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. So, for discipline to be reasonable, it has to be very clear to the child what is, and isn’t, acceptable. And the behaviour being required by the guardian must be reasonable in and of themselves: it’s reasonable to require children to not yell at the dinner table, but it’s not reasonable to require complete silence in the house at all times. Any discipline for failure to meet standards that are unclear or unreasonable? In my mind that would be abuse.

There’s also an element of proportion between the unacceptable behaviour and the consequential discipline, and the need for rules to be applied consistently, rather than randomly.

Then finally, there’s forms of discipline that are so extreme as to be abusive regardlessless of what the unacceptable behaviour was.

All of those are grey areas where social standards change over time. But if you were being ‘disciplined’ and want to seek clarity about whether it was abusive? There’s all those contextual issues to consider. What were my mum’s standards? Were they clear? Were they reasonable? Did she apply the rules consistently and use discipline proportional to the behaviour?

I’m personally glad that corporal punishment is becoming unacceptable as a form of discipline for children. But answering the question of whether a particular form of discipline was acceptable or abusive? There’s a whole lot of context to consider. Where (as in your case) it occurred in the context of other forms of abuse, it seems like it really was an extension of that abuse.

 

[CdnCopper]

I came from a "Leave it to Beaver" type of childhood with good hard working loving parents. I never felt neglected or threatened but I also learned {albeit sometimes the hard way} that there were lines in the sand that should be respected and not crossed.

Having said that I can only recall perhaps a hand full of times when I got a rap on my rear end. Never anything resembling what I would consider a beating.

Grade School. Never got the strap but ohhh my when the class got out of control the teacher would simply go to her desk, get the strap out of the locked drawer, pull up two chairs in front of the class, sit down in one and place the strap on the seat of the empty chair and look at us with a dead pan stare.

That was enough to catch our attention. Can't recall anyone ever testing the waters after that threshold was reached.

 

[MoonCat]

Hi.

It's not difficult at all. Any corporal punishment is abuse, no matter the intention of tone of voice.

No one has a right to hit or beat another person.

Shockingly, even if you´re someone´s parent doesn´t give you ownership over their bodies.

Would you apply the "ìntentions" logic to a relationship between a man and a woman? "Well, Bill hit his wife with a hairbrush because she can't seem to learn to be quite when he's back from work, all stressed and tired. He told her once, told her twice, she didn't change her ways. He warned her he would do it. It wasn't abuse, his intentions were pure, besides, he was calm when he did it."

Why is it ok to do something to a child that you wouldn't do to a (vulnerable) adult?

A child is even less adapt at dealing with own emotional regulation than Bill's proverbial wife. How his hitting a kid would help him do it?

Yes, a child will misbehave and have tantrums and what not, that's part of being a child. That's what you sign up for when you are deciding to become a parent.

Honestly, even aversive dog training (basically hitting a dog when it does something wrong) is generally frowned upon, as it seldom leads to the desired results.

Human children have much more fragile and sophisticanet neural systems than dogs. Hitting, yelling, beating, screaming and violence will create anger, damage a child's self-esteem, stump learning, teach unhealthy response to emotion and damage the relationship between a parent and child. And of course hitting children will usually make them hitters themselves. There've been numerous studies linking corporal punishment and aggression and anxiety disorders, but somehow it's a debate even here. On a forum for people with PTSD and their partners.

So what if the practice was once acceptable? So was child labour, arranged marriages, honour killings, female circumsion, slavery. Are you implying they were ever right, in any time period and circumstance?

Also, this:

As a parent you’ve really only got 2 good choices in disciplining children / eaching empathy & understanding; hurt them physically or hurt them mentally/emotionally.

Too much? Abuse.
Too little? Neglect.

Both of which have very predictable results.

Oh please. I am not buying that for a second. How is hurting someone physically or emotionally is searching for empathy and understanding? Are you kidding me? Really, you only know of two ways of interacting with children which are both teetering on the edge of either abuse or neglect? There's no other way, it's a binary option?

We are ready to research and invest time in our own mental health, we question the malignant beliefs and self-image we developed as a result of abuse, we go to therapy, take pills, viratiously read one book after another to get rid of the pain...but we can't research better ways to parent and spare our children some pain?

NVC parenting is a good non-violent one off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more.


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Anyway, Scarlet13, I validate you. She broke that brush against your sister's back, for god's sake.

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Also, to people asking if the OP was looking for validation - aren't we all? Aren't you? That's pretty much what happens to adult surviviours of child abuse - looking for the validation, the "I'm not crazy, am I? This was wrong, wasn't it?" reassurance is a part of recovering from it and re-programming your beliefs. Probably in any topic any of you started you too were looking for validation and support, maybe had a comment or two you didn't completely agree with and you felt you needed to clarify it, it's a human thing to do - why is it such a surprise here?

 

[Marinna]

Hi.

It's not difficult at all. Any corporal punishment is abuse, no matter the intention of tone of vo...

I agree. I disagree with corpororal punishment. I was physically abused. I get it.

The problem is that smacking is not a
Some big evil that has been abolished in society. I gaurantee that nearly everyone on knows or is closely related to people who got hit as kids.

All my friends got smacked as kids at least once. The truth is 12 years olds could marry old men 300 years ago in my country. Those grown men were not sex offendors. They would be today. Still shocking in both time frames, but of course a thread like this would spark debate.

If every smack was traumatising this forum would be completely overwhelmed.

The poster was abused, but in this day and age we can only establish that by contextualising what she went through.

Smacking is wrong. That isn't universally recognised yet. Why is it so hard to see why this would spark debate?