Were You Afraid of Your Parents?

I got to thinkig because of Dick's thread about the loss of common sense and Carol brought up removing kids from their homes.

Did you ever wish to be removed from your home?

I was afraid of my mom. So were my brothers. For that matter, so was my dad. I was not afraid of my dad. He was the kindest, gentlest man I've ever known. There were times he should have protected us from her. He loved her too much to admit she had a problem.

Ann

Alice,

No one was afraid of my parents. Like Ann, my father was a kind gentle man. My mother was feistier but never scared me.

My grandmother hurt my feelings from time to time with statements such as this one regarding the upcoming prom I wasn't invited to, "I guess you just aren't very popular."

My aunt and grandfather also lived in our house and they were kind as well.

I did dream of leaving this home, moving to an apartment with my mom, dad and brother, and not living with all these adults. But what I learned from the situation was good, and I learned even more when I wrote my books about them. It is amazing the things we don't know about the people we live with sometimes!

Kids who are abused don't always leave the abusive situation unfortunately. It just isn't an even near perfect world in those cases.

Carol

I don't know what frightened me the most. The thread of a whipping or the wrath of God. Seems my mother combined the two. She didn't do the whipping but threatened hells punishment and/or the strap when my Dad came home from work. She promised us a whipping and he had to carry it out. I could tell he hated to do it, but there were seldom any idle threats. The one left unfulfilled is the hell fire and brimstone. No, I'm not losing any sleep over that.

I could never say, "Wait until your father gets home!" because it might be three or four days away and everyone would have forgotten what the heck the punishment was for by then. Ah, it was just a hectic existence: six kids or many different ages, "sweet" frustrated Mom, Dad who came home and just wanted to relax.

Carol

Abe F. March wrote:

I don't know what frightened me the most. The thread of a whipping or the wrath of God. Seems my mother combined the two. She didn't do the whipping but threatened hells punishment and/or the strap when my Dad came home from work. She promised us a whipping and he had to carry it out. I could tell he hated to do it, but there were seldom any idle threats. The one left unfulfilled is the hell fire and brimstone. No, I'm not losing any sleep over that.

We were usually relieved when Mom said,"Wait til your father gets home." His "discipline" was always gentler than Mom's. When we were little, it might involve his belt, but as we got older, it was more often a quiet talk that let us know, more than any spanking, that we had a responsibility where obeying rules was concerned. Part of the problem with Mom was that the rules kept changing. We were never really sure what the boundaries and limits were. All Dad could do was to tell us to stop upsetting her. We never quite figured out how to do that.

As to alice's question about being taken from the home, we never thought of it. In that community, our family was, let's say, inside the circle. If anyone outside the immediate family had been aware, it would have been kept secret. It was never an option.

Ann

Absolutely. And if I got to a point of not being afraid I got it beat out of me immediately. Some of the most terrifying moments of my life weren't being shot at or locked into a tank full of hostile gangsters or getting trapped in an underwater cave or whatever... they were waiting for my father to come home and mop me up.

This does little to instill respect, responsibility or character. Quite, quite, quite the opposite.

Yes, and the 'being removed' from the home aspect was so desirable that I ran away from home three times. Twice the cops took me home, but the third time I was of age, and there was nothing they could do.

My parents were funny folks,. My dad knew I was perfect and incapable of wrong-doing--Mom said I drove her crazy.

She was not hard to drive crazy because all you had to do was not love to eat piles of peas and she would go off of the deep end.

She liked me to work all of the time. For example one day bkes came for us. It was Friday,I was nine years old, Mom looked at the bikes and said to my brother,"You put these together," and to me, " You change the beds."

There were four beds in the house. I did them as fast as I
could, but did not do them "rght."

I wish she would have said , "Wait until your father gets home."

He would have said," Is she the hired help or what?"

zadaconnaway wrote:

Yes, and the 'being removed' from the home aspect was so desirable that I ran away from home three times. Twice the cops took me home, but the third time I was of age, and there was nothing they could do.

Zada,

Were your parents mean or just neglectful?
Or were you a handful?

My father died when I was young, but he had his faults. Mostly he just didn't provide for his family like most fathers would. He was never mean or threatening. My mother was and always will be the most incredible woman I have or ever will be associated with. She was simply wonderful. Well, I should say my darling wife is tied with mom.

So, absolutely not, I felt very comfortable and loved in my mother's home.

Charlie

Marie said:

Quote :

It wasn't until I was a parent that I realized how difficult it is to set limits and be consistent in standing by them

.

Yes, it is difficult. I parented three of them, and while my daughters and I went through a difficult period later on, I look back and know that I did a pretty good job. One of the reasons I was able to do that was that I came into adulthood with a pretty realistic picture of my own parents. I was aware that things had not been as they should. I could see the difference between my mother and my friends mothers. I had several of the "helping witnesses" that Alice Miller writes about. (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, For Your Own Good, etc.) I wanted to be a good parent, so I did everything I could; I studied every expert available, and I mostly learned to get to know each of my children as individuals, by spending time with them and listening to them. After Lynn was born, the minister's wife from our church brought me a another parenting book. The thing I got from it was the idea that my children were not my property and that it was not my right to choose what they would become, that God had a purpose in mind for each of them, that my responsibility was merely to see to it that they reached adulthood ready to do the work that they were sent to do, then let them go. (I had read Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, and wondered if the author of that Christian Parenting book had it in mind:

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you
.......................................
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls....")

Discipline means different things to different people. Mostly it means enforcing those difficult limits as consistently as possible. From Eda LeShan I learned How to Survive Parenthood, as I read how all parents make mistakes and you aren't going to ruin their lives when you make the little daily ones we all make. From Haim Ginott in Between Parent and Child, I learned how to discipline with calm but firm words, and that the biggest problem with spanking was that it didn't teach positive lessons, and left the child free to continue the unacceptable behavior because the payment for misbehaving had been paid, and there ws no carry-over of a healthy guilt (as opposed to unhealthy guilt or shame). Guilt is healthy when it has a known object. While I was jumping on the sofa, knowing it was against the rules, I broke the lamp. It was wrong of me to disobey that rule. I should stop jumping on the sofa. There are reasons for rules. (That was one of David's.)

It's hard to draw a line between discipline and abuse, and it's not a good idea to have children setting the limits. They haven't experienced enough of life to know how to do that. It's why they have parents. Abuse is not about correcting; it is not done out of love; it is about using a child as an outlet for expressing anger and powerlessness. That's where the difference lies.

Ann

I seldom disagree with Ann, but on the subject of spanking I have to.

I believe that spanking is a tool that can be a positive reinforcement as well as a means to make a behavioral change in a child. I also know the difference between spanking and beating, and that there sometimes is a fine line between punishment and abuse.

I honestly don't think that you can learn to be a good parent from reading a book. To me it's more of a hands on, learn on the job kind of thing. At some point in time a culture arose that attemepted to phychoanalyze our children, and I believe it was because some people wanted to blame everyone except the child for whatever that child did. Children will take all of the liberties we permit them to take, and unless we, as adults, teach them that some things are not allowable, then they will continue to feel that they can do whatever they want to with no consequences.

As far as my own parents were concerned, and my feelings for them, that can be found in the thread called MAMA: ONE WORD SAYS IT ALL.

Or, you can visit www.donharpe.com and buy my book, The Last of the South Town Rinky Dinks, and get a lingering trip down memory lane, when kids were kids, the sky was blue, and the whole world was waiting for us when we finally walked off 21st Avenue.

E Don,

I don't know that we disagree so completely. I made the decision not to spank. I see it as an option for caring parents to choose or not. i do not see it as abuse.

You wrote:

Quote :

I honestly don't think that you can learn to be a good parent from reading a book. To me it's more of a hands on, learn on the job kind of thing. At some point in time a culture arose that attemepted to phychoanalyze our children, and I believe it was because some people wanted to blame everyone except the child for whatever that child did. Children will take all of the liberties we permit them to take, and unless we, as adults, teach them that some things are not allowable, then they will continue to feel that they can do whatever they want to with no consequences

I agree with much of what you say here. Yes, parenting is a hands-on learning experience, but it can be complimented by concepts expressed in those books. Notice I mentioned several different ones. I took bits of advice from each, tried them out, kept what worked and ignored what didn't. Yes, we as parents do need to be the ones to teach them what is allowable and what is not. They must be aware of consequences. They do not always naturally behave properly.



Natural consequences are sometimes best, I think, though, like David learning that the consequense of jumping on the sofa was a broken lamp. Had I spanked him in that instance, the consequence would have changed to the spanking, and he would have lost the fact that there was a reason for the rule. People who learn good parenting from good parents don't need books or psychoanalysts to tell them what to do. But in some cases, child abuse is real, and society needs to step in, and some people need to learn how to parent from sources other than their own parents.

I love what you write about your mother. You were very lucky to have her as a parent. If my son had followed a music career, as he once thought he might, I hope he might write such a song about his own mother.

Ann

A few days before my father died, this conversation occurred many times:

"Carol, I wasn't a good father."

"Dad, Why do you say that?"

"I was a terrible provider."

"Dad, you were a wonderful father."

Then he would say he loved me and kiss me.

I think one has to parent from one's heart. My children were not perfect. They have faults just like I do. Perhaps they would have been better with spankings, but that would not have been me parenting from my heart. To me there was being a model, saying I love you (which I should have done more often.)

I was never neglectful. I was never permissive, but sometimes my six children ran my life. I found a wonderful poem titled "Dinner at Our House"
that was our life with people spilling milk, and needing to go to soccer practice, and mad at one's sister for wearing her favorite sweater, and not liking the meal that was fixed.

These people get along, they all have jobs, they are good people.

When I was a child my big punishment was going to bed without supper. I didn't really like eating that much anyway, so I'd go to my room and read a book instead.

When I had severe difficulties with one child I got all sorts of advice about what to do, mostly about being stricter. This was when this person was beyond a spanking age. That's when I went to graduate school and everything improved. I needed to follow my heart, get my own life in order, follow my bliss.

At one time I wrote a parenting book. It is about showing the caring, the love, listening, and addresses special problems.

I always looked for a book about creative punishment. I told before about taking the door off of a bedroom, and wouldn't do wash, or give my permission to get a driver's license, etc. Sometimes my discipline was more a detriment to me than the child, but that's what parenting is all about, unless your kids know that fact.

Love, Carol

Was I afaraid of my parents? No. I don't think fear based parenthood or fear based government or fear based religion are good things. If parents make their children fear them, they'll only drive them away and encourage them to rebell. Kids and parents should have a mutual respect for each other, but neither one should fear the other.

I know nothing about how to rear children. My children were perfect as was I, so who cares?

Now if we must know the truth of the matter--I don't know anything about anything.

Childrearing is very complicated business.

Children are so different--what works with one does nothing for another. I wish I could say I never laid a hand on my children. I guess I could but it would be a lie.

In the ideal world, it would certanly be preferable to sit down and have a reasonable conversation concerning misbehaviour.

However I am consoled by a friend's tale of what happened at her house.

Her husband was a renowned army doctor. Their daughter was a typical teenager. A seral killer was roaming the nearby streets.

One night no teenager came home. By morning doctor had decided she was dead and gone. Then she walked in the door. He jumped up snatched off his belt and whaled her backside.

I wonder who was misstreated the most here--I would say he was.

By the time1936 rolled around the worst of the Great Depression was over so both my parents had jobs and I was pretty much on my own until supper time and then again after that. I turned 11 in August of that year and was quite self-reliant. My parents had their lives, I had mine. Our paths crossed, but not often enough to be troublesome.
When I was 17 I left home for good. I roamed around and then for three months I lived with an aunt and uncle before entering the Army.

So my answer is: I saw so little of my parents there was no reason to fear them, or vice versa. Got along great with my dad. My mother and I tolerated each other. All that was fine with me.

I agree with what Ann said about parents not owning
children.

When I was young I used to ponder how nice it would be to decide, "something" myself.

My mother was so driven, she figured out my life for me.

She knew what I should eat, when I should eat it.
Where I should go to college, what I should take.

What I should believe about the
Bible. It was a bit stifling. Maybe that 's why I am a rebel now.

What a bore--our folks were too perfect.

I liked it better in the olden days-the old people sat around and vied with one another to see how poor and miserable they had been as children.

Now we sit around and talk about how marvelous our folks were.

Tain't near as interestiing. Oh well--it is, what it is.

I also agree about parents not "owning" their children. Children are human beings and human beings should never be thought of as property; that's slavery and it's wrong.

P. Gordon Kennedy wrote:

I also agree about parents not "owning" their children. Children are human beings and human beings should never be thought of as property; that's slavery and it's wrong.

Good thinking. My mother treated me like a slave.

She was a very good person--it just did not occur to her that perhaps I might have a few ideas of my own.

She believed it was her duty and obligation to mold your mind.

Ann

You bet I was afraid of my parents. Both of them. They were the example that perpetrated the court rulings about child abuse. The did it all. Raping, beating, starving, shouting, and finally dumping everyone at the welfare office and taking off. Actually, that was the best thing they ever did for any of their 13 children.

The best thing I can say for myself is that I never hated them. If I had, they would have won.

Love,
Betty

Betty Fasig wrote:

You bet I was afraid of my parents. Both of them. They were the example that perpetrated the court rulings about child abuse. The did it all. Raping, beating, starving, shouting, and finally dumping everyone at the welfare office and taking off. Actually, that was the best thing they ever did for any of their 13 children.

The best thing I can say for myself is that I never hated them. If I had, they would have won.

Love,
Betty

How can you argue with results? You turned out so good. Makes one wonder doesn't it?