Parental abuse excuses [Trigger Warning]

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When I was a child, before anyone in my family knew about autism, my parents knew that something was off about me. My father first thought he could beat it out of me, and then thought that negative reinforcement would work. The worst physical and emotional punishments I can remember include:
• having my pants taken off so he can whack me with a belt 14 times in a row until there were welts and bruises all over my lower half (I remember multiple times, but my parents insist it only happened once)
• making me take off my pants so he can slap my bare skin with his hand (multiple times)
• slapping my face so hard that my glasses flew off and broke (he then 'fixed' the glasses with a twig and bailing wire, and made me finish out school wearing that)
• picking me up and throwing me (one time)
• splitting up my little brother and I whenever we played together in fear that I would 'spread the stupid' (countless times)
• directly informing me that I would not get to go to Disney World, because they were going to wait until I moved out, and then go (told when I was about 9 years old)
• trying to 'cure' a stim by using nasty, stinging liquid (multiple times)
• trying to 'cure' a stim via physical punishment (multiple times)
• teasing me for a stim: telling me he would buy me a doll to kiss if I keep making that sound (happened for years)

And probably more, smaller things that I've just forgotten.

As an adult, I have since gone back and spoken to him, in the proverbial 'man-to-man' style, and also to my mother, who did more emotional damage over time. However, when I brought up the subject of abuse, they scorned me, and told me that I was 'just looking for attention'. They insist they have not abused anyone, nor done anything worthy of being called abuse. And the excuse they use is that their own parents did far worse to them, so what they do can't be abusive.

First of all, would you consider that list to be abusive, at least on the terms that most of what I did was out of my control, such as stimming or meltdowns?

Secondly, what, if any, excuses have you heard from abusive parents to excuse their behavior?

Last edited by Mastercraft on 27 Feb 2019, 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I consider it to be abusive, both physically and emotionally.

Excuses:

I did the best I knew how to do.
It was the way I myself was raised.
You were a difficult child.
I don't remember these things ever happening.

Yes, this is plain abuse.
My mother abused me a lot emotionally. Physical punishments were my father's domain and he created a system of clear, simple and fair rules - I don't consider them abuse because it was very easy to avoid them.
So, my mother's excuses:
1. Plain denial
2. Attack on me
3. "I regret I didn't punish you more!"
4. "Others do worse things"

I've learned she can be okay to me now most of the time but when her self-image is threatned, she will stop at nothing to defend it.

Okay ... I could have used a "Trigger Warning" before opening this thread ... too many bad memories.

But here I am, so I may as well contribute.

• Getting smacked in the face and head, and THEN getting told what for.
• Getting accused of things I didn't do because my siblings were good liars.
• Getting threatened with arrest and "juvie hall" for "lying" (see previous).
• Getting mocked because I spent so much effort trying to get every detail absolutely correct (so I wouldn't get punished) that I screwed everything up anyway ... and then getting punished for it as well.
• Getting humiliated in front of guests for being clumsy and inarticulate.
• Getting threatened with burns from a lighter for dropping a Christmas candle, "Just so you know what it feels like".
• Getting smacked for "having all of the answers" or for saying "I don't know".
• Getting smacked because my older brothers got into trouble, and I didn't snitch on them (even though I never knew what they were doing at the time).
• Getting punished because the daughter (whom I had never met) of one of his co-workers became pregnant and she and I were the same age.
• Getting punished for being one of the "usual suspects" whenever an act of arson or vandalism occurred at school.
• Getting beat up for getting beat up at school.

... and all because my dad said that I "deserved" to be punished because he believed that I must be guilty of something, even if he didn't know what it was. He also seemed to resent the fact that he "had to" marry my mother because she was pregnant with me.

...

My dad died 15 years ago last week. When he was nice, he was very nice, and I really miss him for that. But when he was mean, he was very mean, and there was no defense when he got it in his mind that someone needed to get beat up ... better me than my sisters, though.

* Added a trigger warning on Fnord's behest.

Addressing Fnord:

I'm sorry to hear about that, my friend. Sounds like you had it rougher than I.

My father (still living) also has had good moments, and I will miss him for those when he is gone. As the years went on, my father's extended work wore him out to the point that he stopped punishing me altogether. However, my mother began to take over for him in an unspoken agreement of sorts. She claimed that she was just getting tired of me, which is a sound argument, I suppose, but still no excuse for her emotional abuse.

I remember this one time that she overreacted to something I did. I was playing with my younger sister (I believe I was 18 or so at this point, so on my way out of the house), when the rough-housing went too far and she started to cry. In response to this, my mother suddenly came at me with a golf club, with intent to bludgeon me. I responded wrestling the club from her hands, at which point she immediately turned it around and started screaming for help, insisting that I was the one who was trying to beat her.

Taking this chance, she forced me out of the house, and then called my father and told him that I had attacked her, causing him to confront me as well, while I spent the night at a relative's house because she refused to let me back in. To this day, she claims that she doesn't know what I'm talking about when I remind her of this event.

Thanks.

Like you said, my mother basically denies that certain events ever occurred. That is, when she talks about them at all. I don't blame her, though. I would like to forget all of the bad stuff and focus solely on the good. All I can do, however, is keep reminding myself that I am a survivor, and not a victim. That helps a lot.

hey guys. so, abuse. in my case, physical punishments were not so frequent, and sometimes even deserved.
the bulk of my situation was systematic emotional abuse.
examples of physical stuff -
smacking on my face with impulse enough to send me flying off a stool, because she thought i was intentionally failing a piano exercise (more than she agrees to admit)
slapping me with my own school diary so i get a nosebleed (because some red lines there, something across the lines of "teacher didnt like my behaviour")
examples of emotional abuse are hard to pull out, because it was subtle and so mundane (systematic), that i was not even realising it for 30 years of my life.
kinda summs it up (and i know i posted those before, but i perfectly understand, that ppl normally dont follow everything i post ^^ so here goes)
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... tic-abuse/
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... c-mothers/

and back to main topic
http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2013/09/ ... o-end.html
http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2013/10/ ... a-and.html
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... tic-abuse/
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recoveri ... tic-abuse/
https://medium.com/@sheaemmafett/10-thi ... 234cb5e407

sorry that i keep throwing them, but they explain stuff pretty well. so ya, abusers allways will insist they didnt do anything wrong, and that part hurts the most (at least, me). its easier to deny, when subject is emotional abuse, too. and that denying has a name. gaslighting. one of articles above explains that, too. sorry, im in a hurry and those links explain it kinda better than i can. i will try to write a better coherent post later.

Like I said in other threads, it wasn’t easy for me growing up. Neither parent believed in modern methods of child-rearing. Their rule was what was supposedly written in the Old Testament: Spare the rod, and spoil the child, which was preached literally in the more extreme fundamentalist congregations (and, as far as I know, Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family still preach and teach this, as well as you have to break a child’s spirit like you break a horse, in order to make the child 100% compliant to your will, as well as the will of YHWH.)

It also didn’t help the both parents came from broken and dysfunctional homes. Mom had it worse than Dad: Her father was the town drunk. When he got drunk, he got extremely mean. She was abused physically, mentally, verbally and emotionally. His first wife (my grandmother) wasn’t much better, but at least she didn’t drink (that I know of). However, she was extremely judgmental, and wasn’t afraid to “knock you down a few pegs” to the point of being worthless. Both of them believed that education was not worth much, and that education beyond high school was nothing more than an exercise to get laid. She, like me, was the oldest child in the family. Her brother, on the other hand, got away with holy murder. Even as a child, I could see (even as dumb and naieve as I was, as well as “being in my own little world” most of the time), she was the black sheep, whenever mom, dad and my brothers would visit on a weekend. Then again, Grandpa was a WWII vet, and, while he would never talk about it, probably saw action, possibly at Normandy, possibly during the Battle of the Bulge, or maybe Iwo Jima. My brothers and I will never know. He died almost 25 years ago, from complications due to Alzheimer’s. While she was never diagnosed, I suspect mom was bipolar, because you constantly had to walk on eggshells around her. She had a hairpin trigger on her temper. Get her mad, and you got your ass beat with whatever object she got her hands on: a coat hanger, a curtain rod, a rolling pin, her fists (she had a vicious left upper cut), she had a mouth that would make drunken Russian sailors blush. She’s been gone almost 8 years.

Dad, on the other hand, had it a little easier. His father was humping another woman behind his wife’s back. Dad also had 3 older sisters and 2 younger brothers. Despite all the bullsh!t his dad heaped on him and his siblings, dad remained loyal to him almost to the day Dad died, 33 years ago. It was shortly before Dad died that I found out how viscious grandpa could be. Dad, while he had a temper, was more inclined to verbal and mental abuse to totally destroy what little self-esteem I had: I was always the butt of his jokes. If I didn’t play along, I’d be browbeaten. If he didn’t like someone, he’d find a way to make them look worthless. Yet, he was supposed to bea “pillar of the community”: he was the Sunday School superintendent in the church I grew up in, he served on town council briefly (and fought with the rest of council, because he thought (and was right, most of the time) the town’s finances were being misspent (he was a salesman, and the only Democrat that was a fiscal and social conservative on a town council that was solidly Republican), and was a well-loved milkman and convenience store manager, after he fell off his truck. My biggest beef with him, other than making me out to be a total jackass, was that h was always right, and I was always wrong, even if I could prove 12 different ways to Sunday that I was right. Hose discussions usually ended up with threats of physical violence, being disowned, and being silenced.

Any wonder I never had many friends, even though I supposed to be a social butterfly. Nowadays, despite what few successes that seldom got recognized, and many failures and shortcomings that would get thrown in my face whenever, I’d rather not be bothered, even if, like Hawkeye Pierce said, loneliness is everything it’s cracked up to be.

I would consider that stuff abuse. I wasn't abused physically but I was abused emotionally by my mom. She used to be on my back about my skewl work or how she had to cook special meals for me. She would get frustrated & yell at me about things or just put lots of pressure or guilt on me which would make me have meltdowns. When mom got frustrated she would threaten to kick me out of the house, send me to juvi, send me to military skewl, or put me up for adoption. Other times when she was complaining about a characteristic she didn't like about me she would say that there must of been a mixup at the hospital when I was born & that I cant be her child because her child wouldn't be like that. I have a much better relationship with my parents since I moved out but we never really had a talk about the way mom used to treat me. I never had a close relationship with my parents as a result of this & other things & having a conversation about this stuff with her is more intimate than I want to get with her.

i had tried. nothing good comes out of such attempts...

I stopped coming to the Haven for a while. Sorry (if anyone even cares). Anyway, imo this is an important thread. Thanks for sharing. The question that comes up for me is, don't you know that what your parent's did to you was abuse? This is not to criticize you for possibly not knowing, but rather to inquire into what being abused might mean to many of us. This is a very important subject to me because when I reached adulthood I definitely knew I was abused, as in college I can remember telling many of my peers I was abused as a child, but though I knew I was abused, I literally inside myself did not realize it. In other words I was cut off from life, from myself, and spent my whole life (and I am kind of old) until just a few years ago knowing I was abused but not realizing it, and so a deeper level of healing was not possible for me until I consciously realized/felt it. This is why I think a thread like this has such a great potential, and I really thank you and others for sharing.

By the way, I feel an odd but genuine for me kinship with you, as I used to live in Syracuse, when I went to school there, and still miss that place, and also a few years later lived in Ithca as a young person when I worked at Cornell University engineering library, but then left that area to go West with my young child. Still dream about those places (and Enfield Glen) and try to go back there in my dreams. Sad.

At the time, I thought that I was being punished because I deserved it. Around age 14, it finally began to dawn on me that I didn't deserve to be abused at all. By age 18, I was ready to get the hell out, and at the first opportunity (1 week after graduation), I did.

Had I known that I could have been manumitted at age 16, I would have done that instead.

I used to get literally thrown into the wall when I had meltdowns and told to "act like a white girl" by my dad. He would also mock me for anything to the point of making me pull my hair out from stress and think about suicide. My mom would just tell me it was my fault for making him angry. My mom would just abuse me emotionally. I was only allowed to do extra curricular activities specifically for special needs kids even though they were usually geared towards physically disabled kids or kids with more severe autism.

I was never allowed to learn to drive at 16 or get a job. Instead, I was forced to get SSI. When I told my mom I wanted to learn to drive and get a job, she would just reinforce the belief I would have a panic attack or meltdown before even letting me try. I had un-diagnosed dyscalculia and was just told I was lazy when it came to math. My mom would tell me as young as the third grade that I could never be a veterinarian when I grew up because I could not handle all the math requirements in college and better give up the dream then and focus on something more attainable.

I lost ANY motivation I had to even try after that and just gave up and got F's and 0's and didn't care. She never put two and to together and claims she never said that. She claims she didn't do or say a lot of things she did.

She also told me the bullying I received at school both from other kids and teachers was my fault because I "wasn't very easy to get along with". She stopped after the news said Adam Lanza possibly had Asperger's. But then I never talk about my bullying with her anymore, or anything serious.

She made me want to kill myself and when I tried to tell her about it, she would just turn it around and tell me I made her feel suicidal. I had (and still) a phobia of being sent to a mental hospital. She would use it to her advantage and threaten to send me to one whenever I annoyed her. I had a bad fever dream once and when I just wanted her to hug me and tell me it would be okay, she threatened to send me to the mental hospital when I didn't stop talking about it.

When my apartment caught on fire and I was having panic attacks, she would scream at me to leave her alone. If it wasn't for my boyfriend (he HATES my mother like the plague because of how she has treated me) I probably would have killed myself. My mother than goes around telling the neighbors how traumatized I was. Yeah, and you make it WORSE lady.

She once called me to tell me about my niece didn't get that part in a school play because the teacher discriminated against her and told me about how hard she tried to fight the bulling at my school (which she didn't) and when I told her the truth, she started screaming at me calling me things like "selfish" and "liar" It was SO bad that if my boyfriend hadn't been there at the time to make me feel better, I would have killed myself.

Due to all of this, I NEVER tell her how I truly feel about anything.