Anyone here had parents who tried to beat you normal?

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My father always forced me into situations where I had to interact with new people or be around a lot of activivity. When I did something that made people uncomfortable, made them laugh at me, or tell my dad I was strange he would beat the crap out of me to try to fix me. I was smaller than everyone from kindergarden to tenth grade. I would go to school and get my ask kicked for being strange then go home to get my butt kicked by my dad for making trouble for myself. Durring the summer of 1986 when I was 16 I got a growth spurt growing both in height and muscle density. I was bigger then the kids who kicked my ass everyday so I lashed out violently towards anyone who started with me or that thought was starting with me. It scared a lot of the teachers because they said I did not relize how bad I was choking or kicking the other kids.

When I was little I think around 8 or 9 they wanted to put me on some kind of medication. I remember sitting in an office with my parents and some school offical. He was telling my dad to let me try the medicine to see if it would make me behave more normally and my father refused because only mental patients take pills to act normally. He told them I was just shy, clumsy, and stubborn all he has to do to break me of this stupidity was to beat it out of me.

that sounds like a horrible thing to have to go through. i hope you are ok. I never had it bad but i would occasionally get hit by my dad. it was really scary and although it did not hurt that much and was not a regular occurrence i feel it certainly left a mark in my psyche. I feel there is no reason to ever hit a child, it just makes no sense. hitting a child shows a lack of control.

That's horrible. Did he really say that in front your teachers? These days you'd be taken away from him if he did that.

I was forced into social situations, still am but only get yelled at not beaten. Been hit a few times when my mum has lost control of emotions. That's not very hard for her to do that.
My dad would just blame me if he lost his tools but he never hit any of us. He wasn't really into being a father. My parents divorced and he moved away.

I wasn't physically hit beyond the spanking that was normal for kids of my generation, but I got the living hell beaten out of me verbally nearly every second I spent at home until I turned 18 and left. Here's a handy parenting tip: All the verbal abuse and screaming in the world will not make a spectrum kid "act right." To be fair, nobody knew about AS back then, but still, no child should ever be treated like that. Verbal abuse leaves no cuts, bruises, or other visible marks, and when I tried to tell other adults what was going on, they told me I was disrespectful, crazy, and a liar (but mostly crazy). I grew up truly believing I was insane because of all the mind games adults played with me.

All these years later, I am still dealing with the scars on a daily basis. And nope, the AS most definitely did not get beaten out of me.

My heart goes out to the OP and to all victims of abuse, no matter what kind of abuse it is/was, and no matter whether the person is on the spectrum or not.

Yes. Several trips to the hospital we're involved through the years. 30 years later I still have some of the physical scars.

When I fought back against the kids at school he did not seem to care when I brought letters from school or was suspended from school for fighting. I remember when I worked in a resteraunt when I was in my 20's everyone was afaid of me I am very big and did not hesitate to threaten pople with violence or death when they screwed with me. It took me forever to change my behavior so I would not be prone to violence. The Manager did not care because I never was late and did more than one job on my shift. I believe my dad's anger issues caused him to have three strokes and now he depends on me for a lot things. He said he was mean to me because he did not want me to be seen as weak or crazy by the other people.

I hardly leave the house, when I was a kid it was because if I had some kind of interaction with my friends parents that my father knew that it would get back to him that I was acting odd or strange that I would get my ass kicked for it. Now as an adult its a learned behavior or habit I guess. I feel like something bad is going to happen when I leave the house.

My a-mom would scream at, curse, and insult me, calling me a nerd and crazy, complain that I had no friends then call the people I would befriend freaks and wackos, and told me I would grow up to be just like my real mom: a wackjob and a slut. She was receiving money for me up to the age of 21, but would refuse to give me dental care or buy me new clothes or shoes because she said it was too expensive. Through junior high and high school my pants were fashionably torn, and some items have lasted me since I was 10. She sent me to Catholic school, and when one school wouldn't have me unless I had psychiatric care, she decided she would rather pull me out and give me no care than give it to me. She could have afforded it after pulling me out, but she only wanted the appearance of caring for me and private therapy wouldn't do it. How embarrassing that her prize waif was not responding to her kindness and needed help. She also forced me to live with her abusive older daughter, who was physically violent toward the two of us. I left 5 years ago and I haven't talked to her since. I hate that she is still my next of kin and my legal parent.

That sounds real familiar. I remember I finally made a friend freshman year of high school and then my parents said 'No, he's too wierd". Hey, mom and dad, open your eyes I'm not going to exactly make normal friends. (that being mutual, I hated the normal kids as much as they hated me.)

They put me in special education classes starting in first grade ending at tenth grade. The classes were filled with a lot of kids with behavioral problems and I started to pick up those kids strange behavior. My father was seriously pissed with school for putting me in with those "freaks". So they finally put me in some main stream classes so I would pick up normal behavior. Normal behavior my ass, all I got from that is that I was wierd and worthless. All those years in special education made me have no clue in how to interact with "normal" kids. I never made eye contact or talked to anyone. They saw me in the lines in the hallway with the special education kids so they assumed I was ret*d and treated me as such. I was in hell.

If I ever have children I will never put them in special education. I still fail math tests today and it has kept me from obtaining better paying jobs and from going to college. It turns an aspie kid into an even stranger kid if the classes are run halfassed like mine were. All mainstream classes will get the kids at least being able to identify normal behavior.

Last edited by Todesking on 23 Apr 2010, 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sounds all too familiar to me. My parents convinced themselves that I was just being an @sshole.
They'd give me hell for things I did that I had no idea I was doing or things I wasn't doing that I didn't know I was supposed to do. When I tried to tell them that I didn't know what they were talking about or that I didn't know what I was doing they'd really flip out.
They were terrified of the prospect that something might really be wrong with me because that would mean that I'm "nuts" which would be a bad reflection on them and just something they didn't know how to deal with. When I was 9 I was taken at the school's recommendation to a psychologist.
It was implied to me in a pretty direct manner that they're better not be anything wrong with me.
It was just more than they were equipped to cope with.
To their way of thinking I looked normal so therefore I must obviously be normal.
They put blinders on to make the problem less visible to them and wrote it off as me just being difficult.

All I can say about it now is that it was something to learn from.

Yes, my father was like that. There was also a lot of verbal and emotional abuse going on and was told that it's always my fault if someone abuses me or treats me badly. I've learned from early on to be as invisible and compliant as possible, but it didn't help much. He never beat me that bad as to have to go to the hospital - there were usually just bruises, belt marks and sometimes a broken lip. I've lost a tooth once.

I was never rewarded either although I did very well in school and were never bought new clothes or things (my parents had a good financial situation), because they believed this will built my character.

At 17 I had a complete break down and tried to kill myself. My father refused to take me to a psychiatrist saying it will mess up my mind and put ideas in my head, while all I actually needed was some proper discipline.

The funny part is he was a Sociology professor at the University before retiring, has a Ph.D. in Sociology and one in Philosophy, published 3 books and has always been a pro-eminent and respected member of the academic community.

No child should have to go through any abuse.

No, but we do. And we survive, mostly intact, most of the time. Not that that makes it any more excusable...

I wasn't beaten to make me normal. I was beaten because I was too abnormal for typical manipulation strategies to work on me--they just went straight over my head because I depended on facts instead. When the facts didn't match up, people got mad at me--plus, I wasn't anywhere near diplomatic enough to figure out how to walk on eggs. Sometimes I think I deliberately provoked it, just so I'd know when it would happen and have a bit of safety afterward. He blamed me for all of it, of course. I was the "rebellious teenager", y'see, because I didn't want to do chores and read under the covers. (I was convinced those were horrible faults as a teen... go figure.)

Then again, the guy was probably going to target somebody. I was just the one who seemed the most exploitable. Autistics often do broadcast "target" vibes to the sociopaths.

I wasn't beaten as a kid by my parents, beyond being spanked every now and again.

I was beaten because my dad was a piece of crap who felt the world should revolve around him. I showed no affection towards him, and that really bothered him a lot. He told me , years later when I was grown, that I was my "mother's pet" and that it was my fault he left.

When I was four the cops showed up and convinced me to let them in the house. He was asleep in bed in the middle of the afternoon while my sister and I were still in pajamas and hadn't eaten. My blind grandfather was oblivious in the basement den, and my mother was at work. The cops promptly carted him off, but not before he grabbed me and yelled that it was all my fault he was gong to jail (actually, he hadn't paid his child support to the first wife- nothing to do with me).

Unfortunately he made bail and came back, and I had a lot of beatings and sick games after that. He always maintained that everything bad in his life was my fault. Ironically, my sister sings that tune now, too. Oh well, better me than one of her own kids.

no beatings out of the ordinary, though one time I got a spanking I THOUGHT it was for killing a caterpillar. I can't even remember, now, anything I WOULD have been guilty of that deserved that. All I remember doing was squishing a caterpillar and the teacher wailing "you KILLED It" (it was a TENT caterpillar, a blasted PEST!) and the next thing I know when I get home I get a spanking and "I don't wanna hear any more reports from Mrs. Steel". I had no idea WTF these 'reports' were so I assumed it was for killing the caterpillar because I didn't know anything bad I had done.