#abusive parenting

[sickofthis666]

Another thing that my mom told me today that I've found pretty depressing (and that is feminism-related): (2)

— When comparing her experience with her current lover vs my dad (25 years of marriage):

"I'm not used to not fighting all the time. It must have been two or three years since I've been in a fight."

With my father, there would always be a fight sooner or later. On average, it was every two or three days. At the best of times, we would get maybe a week of peace. In the worse cases, there would be a fight every day.

I hear you say: "it takes two to tango."

Well, you don't know my dad. He always found reasons to fight. You could be minding your business one minute, and the next he would barge in and makes a list of everything that was wrong with you. No matter what you did. Criticism after criticism after criticism. Even if you started to do the contrary to avoid unpleasant remarks, he'd criticize you for doing to opposite of what he criticized before! On the morning of my 13th birthday, he spent an hour lecturing me on how they couldn’t afford to buy me a mobile phone. (I was a reasonable kid, I gave up on the phone very quickly). Then the same day, the afternoon, he took me to a store to buy said phone.

"Just leave" is what you'd do to avoid conflict, right? You can’t avoid the criticism, you can’t win the argument (I tried so many times, it only make things worse, to the point where you just sit there in silence and take it because at least it's not as bad as it could be). Makes sense, right? Oh, but no. No, you can’t leave. He'll follow you. In the next room, on the other floor, even outside. If you ask to be left alone, he won't listen. (That doesn't apply to him though. He decides when the argument is over.) I once locked myself into the bathroom because it was the only room with a lock (he threatened to remove my bedroom door despite me being a teenage girl at the time), the only way to breathe, and he went to pick up tools and started to unbolt it.

I wanted to cry when my mom told me that. It was so surreal. Of course I knew about her fights with my dad, better than anyone (most of the time the fights would happen in the evenings, in front of my bedroom door because it was the "crossroad" between the kitchen, living room (the two rooms where my dad spent most his time) and my parents bedroom (where my mom was)).

But to hear that she was so used to it, that not fighting felt abnormal to her? It makes me want to cry, to break things, to beat up my dad, to turn back time and make it so they never meet, even if it means I'd never be born.

My mom was a smart, wise, and careful young woman. Every single one of her pregnancies was wanted and planned. She meticulously made the decisions to first finish her studies, then get a stable job, then get married, then have kids. The studies for a stable, well paying job. The job to be independant and not rely on a man. The marriage to have kids in a stable relationship. Everything should have gone smoothly.

But there was one thing she couldn’t have planned— no one could have, and it was that 10 years down the road, my father would become abusive.

First she couldn’t leave because her children were too young. Plus, that's the things with abusers, they're not always awful. They alternate. So you think it was a one time fluke. You think the man calling you crazy and stupid on a daily basis will turn back into the man you fell in love with. You think the man who routinely terrorizes your kids will turn back into the loving father he once was. It's a human thing, to hope. After all, if he changed for the worse, why couldn’t he change for the better?

By the time she realized he was only getting worse, it was too late. He accumulated so much shared debts and loans that she couldn’t leave.

There's a french book about domestic violence, and how the judicial system finishes off battered women rather than save them, whose title I can't forget.

Madame, il fallait partir.

Ma'am, you needed to leave. Or, Ma'am, you should have left.

[phoenixyfriend]

A recurring thought I have about neopets is that, all evidence given, they are not pets. They are children. They have human intelligence. The vast majority of work is done by other neopets who happen to be adults, since the fairies are usually too busy being bitchy at each other to, you know, do real work.

But we dress them up. We decide what they wear, and (most of) what they eat, and what they read, and what they train, and how they fight, and what toys they play with, and what their skin looks like, and are basically their lords and masters. If we get bored, we can just��� put them in the pound.

Neopets users are really shitty teen parents who all ended up 'my child is an extension of myself.'

This is surely a thought people have had many times over the past twenty-plus years of virtual pet care, but I have been rolling it around in the brainflesh for a few months now.

Also I mentioned this in a server and @thelifestoryofkara brought up that an added complication is the whole "Neopets can and will eat other neopets." She was thinking blumaroo steaks, but I managed to ruin everyone's day a little by revealing that all Chocolate Kougra Paws come with the item description:

No need to worry - we declawed this paw before dipping it in [dark/white/mint/milk] chocolate.

[furiousgoldfish]

Neglected children will go 'At least I have freedom! Because nobody pays attention so I can do whatever I want!' and then go and use the 'freedom' to mainly endanger themselves

[chaos-in-one]

People who comment "gentle parenting at it's finest" on posts of kids having a meltdown in public and their parents not doing anything about it do not understand what gentle parenting means at all and it makes me want to put my head through a wall

[theconcealedweapon]

And this is why people stay in abusive relationships.

Abusers often use "you can't survive without me, therefore you must never question anything I do no matter how much it hurts you" as a defense of their abuse.

And because of parents like this, many people consider that normal.

[khr-guilded-cage]

Enabler parents the always forgive their abusive partners and want the kids to do it too, refusing to leave and pretending everything is fine and their family isn't a mess, sacrificing their child (the actual powerless one in the family) for the sake of their peace are just as bad as the abusive parent

[only1lorrie]

[iamthehamburglar]

[themuselesswriter]

Jeremiah be like:

Also Jeremiah back then:

[biblicallyangry]

Friendly reminder that you can always lie to your abusive parent figure 🤗 it’s always morally correct!!!!!

[muffinwalloper]

Abusive parenting, your guides

[my-cages-were-mental]

i was at work the other day, and a couple of the teenagers i work with that are two years older than me were talking about how they hate getting sent home early. and the guy said that he doesn’t like it because then he just has to sit around and just wait until his scheduled end of shift time before he can go home. and girl asked why he doesn’t just go home because he has his own car he brings to work every day. and he was like “i don’t like going home early because then my parents get mad about it [going home early].” and the girl said she used to do the same because she too didn’t like going home early because her mom would get mad. and i honestly think that’s really sad because i too relate to the ‘not wanting to go home’ thing, but i do ususlly go home because my life is pretty busy so i usually use any time off i can.

but like, i have stayed for two whole hours helping my supervisor out after she asked me to clock out early (out labour is high) just because i didn’t want to go home. like i worked for free. and my supervisor and i get along well and so i felt safe and happy with just staying and helping her out. and thats happened more than once.

and not to say i don’t feel safe at home, but sometimes i just don’t want to go home. because my parents, especially my mom, recently, have been saying things like how i’m disrespectful and have changed and make things unenjoyable.

so anyways i just found it sad that others have also felt that way even a little.

[i-may-be-paranoid]

hey so I just had a realization. maybe my mom taking out her phone to film me crying when we were having a fight and threatening to send the video to my instructors (who I looked up to a lot and didn't want to think badly of me)… wasn't normal? like I knew that was kind of fucked up but a lot of the shit she did fell into the "kinda fucked up but probably normal parent behavior" category in my mind

[killerpancakeburger]

My mom: *finally divorcing my dad after a decade of verbal abuse and being drown into debts* I can't even bear to hear his voice anymore. He disgusts me. Once the divorce is done I'm never interacting with him ever again.

Me: *had to watch my mom being abused for years, got abused too, lived in terror of the debts for years ETC ETC* Yeah same

My mom: Oh my God HoW cOULD YOU say that!! He's your father!!! And he will always be! You can't cut him from your life like that!!

Me:

Me: *looks into the camera like in The Office*

[eandtheks1]

Child Protective Services (CPS)

This is a bit of an oldie but very interesting and I hope it will help another person. Several years ago my husband, John, at the time was removed from our home because he was abusive. (I will discuss this at another time (August of 2016?) As our divorce started he was regularly more neglectful and abusive towards our 3 children. At the time, I became ill with what they thought was a cancer mass…

[classycookiexo]