In my mother’s eyes, I failed to see how fortunate I was, which contributed to her justification for abusing me. For example, my mother loved to cook what she called “salmon patties and I could not stand the smell or taste them. (I get nauseated at the smell to this day) I would sit and dawdle at the table for hours, every once in a while, trying to get a bite down my throat without gaging. I knew what awaited me if I didn’t finish.
Somewhere around midnight, I would be grabbed up by my arm, my legs flailing for the floor in an attempt to get away from her other hand with the paddle. As I squirmed to get away, it didn’t matter to her where the paddle landed, my head, knee, hand, etc., just as long as it landed. I was ungrateful. There were starving kids around the world who would love to have my salmon. I didn’t understand why she didn’t send it to them. All I could do was cry and beg, “Please Momma, please don’t!” as each blow landed. It was only when she was exhausted that it stopped.
I try to understand her life. Growing up in an orphanage, her point of reference was vastly different. I’m not sure what kind of food or the amounts that were served. I know that compared to her life, mine was one of privilege. To her, it must have seemed as if I were turning my nose up at that privilege.
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Why do you use the all-enveloping term ‘child abuse’ to describe your experiences?
Let me ask you, suppose you had a child and you loved him more than life itself but did not know how to show that love. Suppose you saw a danger to your child. But if you saved him from that danger, you’d do it unknown to him and in the process you knew you’d loose some of his love. Or you could choose to let fate take it’s course and keep all of his love. Would you sacrifice the only true love you’d ever known for the chance of protecting your child – even though he might hate you for it?
If you think that question’s strange, then you’re not a parent. Let me explain: It appears that you were hit, while struggling, with a paddle. Because you were struggling, I would expect the results, at most, to be in the form of a few slight bruises or a flushed derma (you don’t say so we don’t know). To be honest, you probably suffered a lot less injury than the average schoolboy used to suffer when being caned. I remember a caned boy at school would boast of his experience. That dosn’t make caning right in today’s terms, but it does place the physical side of your ‘abuse’ in perspective.
As for the mental side: the circumstances would have made you very upset. I would expect that the way it was done: at night, with you struggling and the event so full of emotion, may well have caused you to lose some of the natural security that you should have been able to feel with your mother. But to be honest: who didn’t? Very young children get very upset every day: because their milk is late, because they can’t see their parents for a moment, because their loving parent told them off, because they get stuck under the table. They bawl and bawl and bawl. And it doesn’t traumatise them because they don’t remember it. Remembering and the way you choose to remember it is everything. Everything.
Loss of security is part of growing up. So is child discipline. It’s very difficult for children to later remember what they might have been doing to warrent the discipline parents impose, but in general, parents still need to impose it. Children have no natural ability to avoid damaging themselves: babies will happily try to fall off beds and eat their own waste and toddlers will jump out of windows, and eat insects and rancid food if they can. And children run and move all the time: parents have to impose mental control because children move too fast to stop them physically. They’re too young to understand the dangers of killer deseases like meningitis, which you can get from dirt. So making children afraid of certain actions (like eating the scum from the vacuum cleaner, running fast near glass, hitting their baby sister) is what a good parent does. A child forgets all this by the time he’s an adult and often comes to believe that his goodness and general amiability is a wholly natural thing!
Mothers are different to fathers. The child was part of the mother and the mother is at her most effective as a mother when she feels her whole being: mind, emotions and body linked to the safety of that infant. And a brain suffused with oestrogen works best when it is wholly engaged upon any thought. Men compartmentalise their thoughts. Women bring in different areas of the brain when they think. So yes, mothers take things personally because you don’t do your best for your child by treating him at arm’s length. And therefore mothers often discipline differently to fathers, who perhaps have the luxury of viewing indiscipline dispassionately and can therefore appear more consistant, less emotional but sometimes colder.
You were beaten. So were thousands of children down the centuries: it was normal in a world with many dangers. Because children viewed it as normal they accepted it. We can say that it was ‘wrong’, but who are we to impose the values of a century when infant mortality in the US is about 0.7%, to a time in, say, the 1960s, when it was over four times that? Or to when your mother was growing up, when it was probably eight times that? Parents are ALWAYS scared that their child will die.
The reason why, in the past, you were expected to marry before you had sex, for example, was not because of some Victorian prudishness: it’s a kind of Cultural Marxism pushes that line. It was really because unwanted children died, sexual deseases killed horribly, teenage mothers died in childbirth and abortions can, even now, leave terrible mental scars. In the past these fears were even worse. So you know better than your mother, that not eating salmon was not going to kill you. But was she not right too: that a fussy child is a danger to himself? During the Great Depression in the U.S.A. for example, infant mortality was around 12% and three times that in some areas. Meaning everyone knew of children dying. Children starved and our mothers, in many cases, saw it happen. She had nightmares: what if food got scarce, what if she lost her income? What prospects could there be for a fussy eater? Perhaps you were well-off, but bankruptcy or loosing a job could end that in few days. Even if that’s unlikely, do you think a mother that’s scared and loves you can, or even should look at these things dispassionately? And I’m talking about an average mother. If your’s grew up in a regime where food was used as a method of control, then that fear may well have been exaggereated.
‘Child abuse?’ I’m sorry, but you abuse the term. ‘Child abuse’ brings to mind life-threatening injuries, paedophilia, children locked in cupbords, children who never learn to speak or laugh because they were neglected. ‘Abuse’ means the perpetrator used the victim for his or her own benefit, uncareing of the victim. Was that the case here?
Well, was it? Orphanage children don’t get normal love. But they often do know they miss it. They crave love but have no idea what to do with it when they get it. But you were her child and she could love you absolutely and as a baby and a young child, you would have loved her absolutely too. You were probably her life. She made something special for you: a dish she loved when she was young. When you rejected it, you unknowingly rejected her love too and thus threatened her existence. The only true love she had ever known.
If this is your only evidence, you were not ‘abused’. Perhaps her fears were overblown. Perhaps she had no one to turn to or ask for advice about bringing children up. Sounds like you were loved dearly and your mother tried to protect you from the dangers she feared. And by upsetting her with your rejection of a present given out of love, she saw that you could break both her and your hearts. It sounds like she disciplined you with little family support. She probably knew of no other strategies to deal with this fear for you. You were not ‘abused’. You were physically chastised in an upsetting, emotional way because your own mother’s existential survival was involved.
And now you are what you are – good and bad. Now you’re an adult and independant of her you can make your own choices and if you have children, bring them up better, if you think you can. Sympathy from strangers is nice to have. ‘Membership’ of a wider group of ‘sufferers’ is a nice thing to feel. The personal experience gives you more confidence to comment on other people. But please don’t blame your present condition on your mother. Honour her memory by passing on her love in a good way, to benefit others. If she’s alive, phone her. If she’s dead, put flowers on her grave or by her photograph. No man nor woman ever understands their mother. And being an adult is about taking responsibility for your own actions, not blaming them on someone who is not here to defend herself. A person who put what she perceived as your good first, even as she could see it was loosing her the one thing she craved: your love.
I wish you well. Good luck to you.
Wow. It seems like your point you make here is that what I experienced was not abuse. As far as my forgetting much of what I experienced, I assure you my treatment left it’s marks on my life, pieces of memories and flashbacks that I do remember. And that kind of treatment throughout a childhood has life long effects. I am trying to understand why you would try and diminish my treatment by telling me that what I experienced in these stories was not abuse. I have chosen not to publish the most egregious incidents. I publish child abuse stories that illustrate more common abuses children experience because I want to educate people about what abuse is. By accusing me of abusing the term “child abuse” shows your lack of knowledge of the human psyche.
Secondly, you attempt to diminish child abuse by linking it to infant mortality and comparing todays rates to the past. Infant mortality is caused by many health factors, child abuse being just one. The fact is that FIVE children die every single day in the United States at the hands of their parents or caretakers, no matter how small that is within the population, is FIVE too many.
I am not trying to gain sympathy from anyone. The last thing I want is pity. You accuse me of blaming my present condition on my mother. You obviously have not read the issues I blog about. My “present condition” is very good. That is not to say the child abuse did not affect every area of my life, which is more than half over as I am 58 years old, therefore I have perspective. Few have survived what I have in order to belong to what you refer to as a “membership of a wider group of sufferers.” And it is because I survived and been given the gifts I have, that I feel I have to obligation to speak out for all those who did not survive and all those who survived and are too damaged to tell what happened.
Your comments are quite insulting and why you feel the need to defend my mother is beyond explanation. Perhaps you relate to maltreating a child and are trying to justify that treatment? People who are quick to diminish other people’s experiences are why so many suffer in silence, knowing there is going to be someone out there that will try to tell them, “it wasn’t so bad,” “your exaggerating,” “it really didn’t happen like that,” “your making mountains out of molehills,” “your crazy,” “quit feeling sorry for yourself” and “take responsibility.”
I wish you enlightenment.
Dave,
You must have grown up in a household that believed that abuse was ‘for your own good’. You obviously have not ‘awakened’ to the fact that what was done to you is not normal and is abusive. Yes it is a mothers job to protect her child, teach them boundaries and learn to separate. However, all of this can be done in a loving, non-threatening manner. There are more than one way to skin a cat. Are you going to choose the abuse and label ok because you were trying to teach a morale issue? How important is ‘eating all your food’? Is it so important to impress upon a child the lessons of depravity thru physical violence? so important that your kids need to learn to fear YOU? so what the hell do you do to your kids if they really do something wrong? Dear god, you are obviously an abuser. I am a mother. I have children. I am constantly trying to find new ways to teach them life lessons thru love. without violence and without abuse. I read, I search and I try to find myself. Mostly because I didn’t always ‘see’. I was blind like you too.
Yes, we don’t remember. Although a lot of this abuse is rushing back to be in major debilitating panic attacks. However, when I didn’t remember I would do crazy shit that I didn’t associate with my parents abuse. So your saying because you have a positive message it doesn’t make it abuse? You don’t realize your damage so it must not be abuse, right? Case in point, since we are talking about food. My parents did the same thing. They forced my sister and I to eat things we detested. We would sit at the table for hours (which after two hours food spoils -is this then the point of abuse). My sister vomited her food up and was served more (is this then abuse). I am not even going to discuss physical violence because you would have to be a moron to not see that as abuse. At first I didn’t remember this abuse. However, I do know that when I was older I felt compelled to finish my plate. I didn’t know why I felt this way. I would go to restaurants and I would be in pain I was so full, however for some reason I felt I needed to finish everything. My stomach is killing me I would say. I would sigh and attempt another bite. My husband would plead with me. So stop eating. I have to finish my plate. why? I don’t know. I just have to. I didn’t know why. I didn’t remember the trauma. I remember now. so your excuse about not remembering is foolish. It is also an excuse. It excuses your abuse and clears your conscious. No your mind protects you so you temporarily forget, but your body remembers. Eventually you will remember too and you will either deny it to protect yourself from understanding that your parents didn’t love you enough to protect you from themselves or you will deny it because you are an abuser yourself. OR you will recognize it for what it is and do all in your power to stop it.
Looks like you are taking the easy route. Deny, deny, deny, repress, repress, suppress. I am sad for you and fearful for yours. I hope they are saved somehow. I guess that will all depend on how much you love them and how much you love yourself.
You have given a lot of thought to your answer. Yes, these abusive forms of punishment have been handed down generation to generation as wisdom to child rearing. Understanding where the abuse came from is important. Knowing why parents chose to use certain forms of discipline is good to know. However, it does not change the fact that it is abuse. My guess is that you are hunting for reasons to let your parents off the hook. I did that too. Are your children grown? There would be a lot of pain when you are reviewing what your parents did to you and a whole lot more pain when you realize what you have done to your own children. Letting your parents off the hook would let you off the hook. If your children are grown then the best thing you can do is to heal yourself and seek ways to make it right in their eyes. Acknowledge the pain you have done to them. They may be repressing it too as it is easier to blame yourself (like you did something wrong and can change) then to blame your parents. If your kids are still at home then heal yourself, find out what is abusive and stop. Acknowledge them and ask them what you can do to fix it or make things better. Either way, you have ALOT of work to do.
Keep in mind that there are degrees of child abuse just like there are degrees of happiness. One does not excuse the others. One produces a cold blooded murderer the other produces an unhappy unfulfilled angry person who daily inflicts their anger on others in the form of: road rage, employer abuse, misappropriation of money, poisoning food for profit, turning a blind eye to torture on the street….on and on.
Perhaps her mother’s fears were over blown or she had no one to turn to? This is not a compelling argument. These are reasons for the abuse it does not disprove this as a form of abuse. I have no one to turn to, but yet I seek information. I go with my heart. Hurting and scaring my children is wrong. Hurting and scaring anyone is wrong. Why do you justify this because it is the mother? Mother should be someone you turn to not someone you run and hide from.