[wisewoman]

I was accidentally triggered by Myself's post about her own Mother doing what was culturely acceptable during that time. The trigger is I have heard the line of;"she did the best she could considering....." I do not agree. Not everyone my age was tortured as was I by the female parent. In fact my dear friend who is no longer with me is about the same age,within 10 years and she did not torture her kids. I can't make excuses for the abuse of magical beautiful beings. And yes, had them, have them and they can be so frustrating but that is MY problem, not theirs and I will not abuse a child because it is what I learned.

*edited to add trigger icon due to subsequent discussion

[Rapunzel]

Most abusers, I understand, were themselves abused. However, only about 30% of children who grew up with abuse become abusers themselves. While patterns of abuse occur in families from one generation to the next, individuals can and do choose not to continue that pattern in their own families.

WW, I appreciate you and everyone else who has made the choice to stop the cycle.

Rap

[wisewoman]

Thanks Wendy.

I think I understand wisewoman. My mom's abuse wasn't of the norm back then.

********warning--- may trigger********




Broken bones and children shaking in terror, food withheld and getting pleasure from seeing the tears of a small beautiful being are not/should never be cultural norms. Sometimes people just don't do the best they could have done- period.

I'm sorry for your hurting, wisewoman. I agree, sometimes there aren't any excuses for past abuse. And sometimes... like my mom-- they are NEVER wrong and have nothing to apologize for.

Please know I'm here and understand.

mandy

--edited for extra space between possible triggering content-

Im sorry ((((((((Wisewoman)))))) my post didn't mention "torture" stuff. maybe I should have been more detailed.

Back in the days that my mom was raised in (1920 - 1960's) was acceptable to spank with belts, a flyswatter, and so on. It was also acceptable back then for a parent to back hand a child that was mouthing off or swearing. Back in my moms days just about every household had a razor strop hanging on the wall to use. The basic bible saying Spare the rod spoil the child was followed back then.

So when my mom was an adult and raising children that was the type of parenting skills she had - what was taught to her and what she experienced as good parenting. So she used some of those parenting skills on me. There was no such thing back then as parenting classes for her to unlearn what she was raised with and learned about taking care of children. Back then the families were not scattered all over the place my mom learned parenting from her mom and grandma learned her parenting from great grandma and so on.

Now as I was growing up (1960's -early 1980's) those standards of using objects to spank with were still there but the standards of use and so on was beginning to change.

So at home I was being parented by a mother using physical dicipline but at school I was learning how wrong it is to get hit with a belt, the back of the hand, a flyswatter and so on.

That kind of conflict sent alot of mixed messages my way.

Its not my mothers fault she learned parenting one way and me and my siblings come along and somewhere half way through our raising the world sudedenly realizes and calls hitting with a belt, getting back handed and so on abuse.

My mother did the best she could parenting me with what the world had given her - my grandmother and the rules and standards of my moms time frame.

Just like I as an adult have to parent by using the present rules and standards for raising my child, and when my child becomes an adult he will have to parent his children according to the rules and standard of his timeframe.

With each generation rules and standards change and now thankfully there is such a thing as parenting classes so that parents no longer have touse what they learned in growing up about being a parent and raising children. Now that there is such a thing called parenting classes my child as an adult will be able to learn what the rules and so on are during the time that he is raising his children.

My mom, grandmother, great grandmother didnt have the benefit of parenting classes. what they had was each generations female told the next generation females how to raise children and be a good parent when that next generation female is pregnant. My great grandmother taught my grandmother when she was prenant with her first child how to raise a child, my grandmother taught my mother when my mother was pregnant how to raise a child.

That is why I say my mother did the best she could with what she had.

That does not include torture situations, My mother did not torture me and Im sorry you went through that.

[dottie]

Hmmm. I was punched, strapped by a belt(buckle part), hair actually pulled out by the roots, and slapped. Punched if I didn't iron something correctly or if I left dust behind after dusting. Thank God that is no longer acceptable!

Good post Myself! dottie

Thanks Dottie
Sorry that happened to you.

[JustAPixie]

Myself, I admire you for viewing the world from your mother's persoective, this just shows that you are very compassionate.

[wisewoman]

Myself, I agree that all of those things were the norm in the 50's, 60's. I also want to say not everyone did them and that some people's parents got excitement, stimulation, reward from it. I believe that when one holds that power over another it can be rather titalating which was my experience with the female parent. I recently spoke with an eighty year old who was abused in many of the same ways. It was not the only way her mother knew how to discipline, it was about control and anger. Not every eighty year old had that happen to them. Thank goodness.

It is just a very sensitive place for me. In my opinion even-though the straps, belts etc were readily available it was not the norm to use them. Doing those things to a child reflects on someone's mental health or lack thereof. Some people are just bullies.

[wisewoman]

Dottie, sounds like torture to me. I am sorry.

[dottie]

Thanks wisewoman. It haunts me, still! You are correct I could see the emotional release in her eyes each time she hit me. Like she was purging some inner demon.I dunno!! The closest apology I ever got was when she told me a few years before she died..that she had nightmares about how she treated me. No actual.."I am sorry" That's all she needed to say. "I am sorry" But I never got that. Now I stuggle to forgive her as I believe when we hold in such memories it begins to eat away at us. I personaly am struggling to just leave it to my higher power as I feel like my soul has been branded. Take good care all! dottie

I can relate to the comment "she did the best she could ", but I don't think "myself" meant it the way some people use that phrase.
My mother was also a torture freak who abused me and my brother regularly, but some people when you tell them that, like my relatives, they don't believe you were abused, maybe just spanked, and they tend to say, well she did the best she could.

So hearing that phrase is a little triggering to me as well,
because it sort of excuses my mothers abuse because she didn't know better. If only people really knew the truth.

But then again most people were not abused, just maybe spanked , but not tortured . So I can see why they say well I went through it and it turned out fine. But it is like compairing apples to oranges.
Plus people just can't get their head around that a mother could do such things, yeah, when they hear child abuse, most assume it is the father, but not the sacred "mother".

[kimmydawn]

(((((((((( WW ))))))))))))))

It's wild that you brought this up. My aunt was just "reviewed" by a p'doc for the state (SSDI stuff), and he said, "You're very injured from your childhood. You will get worse as you get older. Is it your parents fault? Yes and No. Back then people were either sane or insane and since they weren't insane, they were fine. They didn't mean to hurt you. They knew no better."

I disagree mostly, but not all. Yes, the times were different. There weren't the awareness then of things we now know to be so damaging. HOWEVER, the average person should know if they're hurting an innocent. For example, during what time in this world's history is it OK to wish horrible things about another (especially a child) and to verbalize it? I won't go into detail due to the triggering nature. Would that same parent have said that to a friend, another adult standing up for themselves? If not, then it seems to me it was known as inappropriate/wrong. If those actions were to all people, then it would appear to me that it really couldn't be helped. I saw just the children getting the ugly.

After saying all of that, my aunt did not grow to physically abuse her children, but the emotional/mental abuse she inflicted was at times horrific. My cousin is so damaged...all of her children are...all six of them. She did break some cycles, and seemed to "perfect" others.

Sorry, I got off track...back to the orginal topic...I think that statement can have some understanding and is an individual understanding for most when combining all aspects. In my family I see the "trail" and while I have realized that there were some things that are now understood as doing the best for the time, there are others that I know within me will never be OK for any time.

I applaud you for coming to your own understanding and respect it. I also know that others must come to their own understandings through their journeys in healing as healing is very individualized, I think.

KD

Wisewoman--Hope this is all right to post this-- it might be a bit off topic-- I'm not sure.....

Very well said Exoticflower! That's what I was wanting to say but didn't do a very good job of it.

And Kimmy too--- you express yourself so wonderfully! about one doing their best at the time.....
</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I think that statement can have some understanding and is an individual understanding for most when combining all aspects. In my family I see the "trail" and while I have realized that there were some things that are now understood as doing the best for the time, there are others that I know within me will never be OK for any time.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
"an individual understanding"-- that's what it is, and some things are never OK at any time.....

To everyone here --

[Perna]

I was physically and emotionally abused by my stepmother but believe a lot of who I am and how I have developed has to do with my own attitude and growth toward compassion and better understanding of my stepmother and her life. Yes, I agree some people are bullies, wisewoman, but I don't think anyone is just one label someone else applies to them. They have/had their own trials and tribulations, physical and mental problems, which we can't ever know fully which contributed to who they are or were just as we have ours. Some of us were abused and some of us weren't and some of us abuse and some don't but that's only one area of very complicated/complex dynamics. I don't want to ever belittle or forget my abuse but I don't want to make it the center of my life either. I was abused: that's both in the past and not related to who I "am" as an adult. It's a series of actions, very very painful, scaring actions but not part of my core. I have physical scars from stitches, burns, operations, diseases. I have emotional scars from my mother's death, my stepmother's abuse, friends' duplicity and death, etc. I don't believe anyone, other than a literal psychopath, wakes up in the morning and thinks, "Gee, I wonder how I can make my sweet child's life hell today."

[wisewoman]

Group reply, hope it's okay. I don't carry the family abuse with me as I used to. I used to have some need to have it validated. That is why that phrase was a trigger. I have no hatred toward any of them, including the female parent. I wish no evil on any of them. I hope they suffer little or no more pain in their lives. I don't know what forgiveness is in this case. For me I think it is learning and growing and loving and being as best I can. They are old, frail, sick. They know how I feel. It's out in the open now and I was quite clear that I did not approve of the father's treatment of little sister either, that this was all abuse.

All of that said, When my Jane died I wished it had been them, why did such a good soul have to die so young when the mean ones live on? I feel like an orphan in the sense that though I have 8 sibs there is no one to hold my history. Sibs are out of contact as well. I wouldn't like them if I were introduced by a friend and I don't like them now. Selfish, damaged, some continuing the abuse, some not. Most have grown kids and some of those were abused. I have a baby baby sister who has two children. I think the oldest is about 15. She was protected by me and my older sis, why did she go on to abuse her own?

It is a sensitive issue to me as I see kids abused all around me and feel powerless to make it change. These precious gifts should be rocked and kissed and snuggled and read to. That is my mission in this world now. Perna, I agree, it is the past but it took me years to say the words out loud and heal. They have no effect on me now. And I am who I am in spite of them.

Dottie, I know the look you mean. Careful reading below.



For me it was almost as though she derived sexual pleasure from it. With him it was plain hatred and anger.

Thanks Tanya

Wisewoman - where I come from they didn't have resourses to those kinds of things that this 80 year old woman probably had access to. For example where I was raised it was country setting. not the country settings that you see now but mountain country. Where I lived and was raised you had to drive an hour to be at any thing that would fit todays standards of a shopping center. We had one country store in my town where you could buy the basic milk and bread. Alot of the people in the towm worked in the mining business. Most of the adults if not all of them in the area were educated at a K-12 school for the two neighboring towns. In fact many of the adults taught a the school.Even now the school has the people I grew up with teaching and working at the school. Where I was raised Everyone knows everyone, blink and you miss it type of town up in the middle of a mountain range. From time to time I say I was a country girl. Well thats putting my towns and my life mildly. The highight of the town was when the school kids put on musicals programs at the school and the summer clambake. In my town it was the normal so much so that some of the teachers and the principal had paddles and rullers that they used even during my raising.

What is normal for one community and group of people is not always the normal for another and yea thinking back now as an adult I know that some of the situations went too far but for where I was raised those situations were the normal parenting styles passed down through generations because that was all they knew and had access to until the school started hiring people from outside our town and nearest town communities. All the students loved it when a few teachers from an hours drive away were hired but because they tried to bring new things into the teaching and would not conform their teaching styles to the generational type teaching the two were basically backed against the wall so bad that they ended up quitting.

I can see where you are having a problem with parenting syles. I uderstand what you are going through and I'm sorry you are going through this. but I also understand that for my mom the way I was raised is considered abusive by todays standards but back then with what she had available to her she did the best that she could. take care.

i agree that not every parent is doing the best they can. I hate when ppl say that about my parents. It literally makes me mad. It sounds like an excuse.. although it may be true for someone elses parents.