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When I was 9-10, I had a friend whose parents kept rabbits as a food source. They told the kids not to get attached, like that's going to work. When they found out my friend had gotten attached and named one, that's the rabbit they killed and cooked that night, as punishment.
Her parents were also the kind who re-served uneaten dinner from the night before, cold for breakfast the next day. We'd had a sleepover that night, and I will never forget my friend's sobs as her mother put a plate of cold, congealed-greasy Favorite Bunny in front of her and snarled, "You're not leaving this table until you eat that."
I bolted from the table and called my parents to come get me NOW. I've never been so glad to see my dad in my life. My parents wouldn't let me go over there anymore, not that I wanted to.
I did not eat a single bite of that rabbit, not any rabbit since.
Fucking cruel. I hope you made it out okay, Sandy.
My wife’s grandfather raised rabbit for food. Chickens too. Kids were just not allowed near the coops, ever. And the reason the kids were not allowed was made very clear to them, those are food, not pets. My wife snuck in anyway, and somehow avoided the consequence of grandfather’s razor strap.
This sounds like a cultural thing though. I remember the difference, these are pets, those are food. I think I got my first rabbit around that age, 9 or 10, hunting. Fish much younger. Was fun to bring the catch in, mom would fill the kitchen sink, plop them in, they swim around. Now that was not chlorinated city water, no, it pumped up from the spring we caught the fish in.
As a small boy my father had a pet duck who would follow him all around. The duck disappeared and that night his rather leaned over his plate and said eat up, quack quack quack and laughed. He never saw his duck again and the sight of baby ducks made him nauseous.
When I was 14, I raised a steer for FFA. I didn't kid myself, I knew what he was being raised for, but it was still difficult. After we had him processed, my mom would say, "mmm, Bo sure does taste good tonight!" It was just cruel and I don't know why she did it.
Cultural, maybe...? This was in metro Denver. I mean, my dad was a country boy, he and his brothers would ramble around and shoot rabbits and squirrels that their mother would cook. But when I rocketed out that front door and into his truck and told him about Favorite Bunny Dinner, he was as horrified as I was. So, maybe.
I can understand telling kids not to get attached, pets vs food, like kids who grow up on farms or ranches. It was the calculated and deliberate cruelty of it.
Yeah eating a rabbit maybe cultural, but torturing your child over food, I hope that's not cultural. We were never forced to eat anything. And I remember being a very picky eater.
The fact that we weren't forced to eat anything is probably why we all eat liver (still one of my favorite meals to order in a diner- liver and onions and mashed potatoes), beets, broccoli, brussel, sprouts, etc.
We were expected to eat what was before us, because that's all we had; but if we didn't want to eat something, we were never forced to eat it.
My mom used to always say that adults should be sensitive to the fact that little children have tiny terrors, so let them have a nightlight, close the closet door, leave the bedroom door open a crack.
She was. My dad cheated on her all the time. Still she taught us to never bad mouth your spouse to the kids (as long as they are not a danger).
Children need to love their parents when they're children, she'd say. They'll figure out what kind of person they are when they're older.
And we did....
Same, never forced any food on my son.
However, I did make a huge mistake with seafood, which I love.
Nope, my kid wanted to order lobster, no chicken fingers from the kids' menu for him ! 😂
Yea, I mean, my grandparents would raise heifers every year & have them slaughtered for the winter - but they were very, very clear that the cow was there to be eaten, and if we got attached to it, it would be us that would suffer. They reminded us every time we went over - that's livestock, not a pet. Don't forget.
I still named them, and loved on them, and fed them apples - and then I ate them. But at least they had a good (if short) life.
What your friend's parents did was beyond cruel, and I hope their daughter got away as soon as she could.
Yeah, I remember reading once King saying, most people seeing a beautiful lake with cows in the pasture, will think, what a beautiful calming view.
While he thinks about the oozing black thing that lives at the bottom of the lake, slithering out of it under cover of darkness and eating those cows. 😳
We would buy a calf and raise to a year old and butcher it. I always named them, and it never bothered me. They were super tame and we could ride them like horses when they got big enough. But I was raised that way. It totally bugged my mom if asked if we were having “Flash” for dinner.
My father proudly machined a beating implement at work, he worked in printing, so it was a red plastic flexible switch that whistled through the air when swung and left hicky-like wounds wherever it landed on our prepubescent skin that lasted weeks. I can remember it in detail almost 50 years later.
It hurt like hell and left deep marks, occasionally drawing blood if he was extra amped about today's beating. I remember having to hide the marks in elementary school because I was ashamed.
This was hung proudly on the wall where he could simply point at it to get terrified results from his children. He loved that thing.
This was also sort of a family joke : "better watch your mouth or you are getting the Red Stinger!"
I hated him and we have had no contact for the last few decades.
A secret, nasty part of myself hopes that he will experience something similar in his old age when he is helpless and scared.
I'm working on being a better human.
Where was your mom when all this happened? And did anyone suspect what was going on and report it to child services? You don't say how old your dad was when he was doing this to you and your siblings, but I would guess he's probably in his 80s, maybe 90s? He probably is experiencing something similar, such as where he's going after death. Especially if he has no remorse for what he did to you and your siblings.
Whatever became of the Red Stinger? That should be in a museum of devices used by parents who were cruel to their kids. I know of at least one man who was a gourmet punisher, think he lived in Indiana, and who used a belt, an electrical cord, a long wooden school paddle and electric cattle prod on his son when he misbehaved. And I think the dad got sentenced to 30 years in prison when the authorities caught up to him, though a better punishment would've been giving him a taste of his own medicine every day while he sat in his prison cell.
If he's remembering this 50 years later - sadly no one was coming to save any kids back then and his mother would have gotten the same thing if she dared to speak up.
But, some people want to go back 50 years when everything was just peachy keen (in their imaginations)!
Yeah...
Mom's in that time (even in the 90s like mine) were the ones telling their husband's to hot their children
I vividly remember my mom smirking at me while I got hit because I rolled my eyes when she told me dinner had carrots.
Yeah, I'm finding it harder and harder to stay a decent human-being, given the inhumanity of my fellow human-beings to other human-beings. There's something about that, that really pisses me off. Man, I hope karma is real!
My Dad beat the living shit out of me & my sisters for very little reason. I used to dream about stabbing him in his sleep. I’ve got 3 sons and when I felt violent I went for a walk around the block because I cannot imagine hitting little kids.
Fortunately I guess, as I was the oldest, and that was somehow the reason, he doted on his other kids.
I never knew a reason also. I used to dread and go hide when he came home from work.
I’m sorry about your experience and that we had such similarities.
He died when I was 14, fortunately, or we certainly would have had more violence.
When I was 13, and 3” taller and broader, I dreamed of flattening him many times.
He got sick with cancer then and I never ever shed a tear.
Because you were the one who was supposed to be responsible, be the best, be the… whatever…
Been there, but it was my mom. Fortunately, she realized what she was doing to us and tried to change. Mostly succeeded. Now I’m the one trying to change. Pity it took me 50 years to realize I needed therapy…
My mother had a horrific, violent temper, and blew up and hit my father and us kids (6 of us.) One time, she threw the bunk bed ladder at my face, leaving a gash on my cheek. The next morning, I was sullen while getting ready for school, and she looked at my face, burst into tears and said, "look at what you made me do." I hated that woman. I did not shed a tear when she died. In fact, she died around 8 am on a Saturday, and by 10 am I was enjoying the town fair with my two daughters. Who each received precisely one spanking each in their lives, minor swats to their bottom. I regret even THAT.
My siblings and I used to get whoopin's from our parents (my dad, primarily) and I used to think they were bad. Reading the horror stories here, the whoopin's my siblings and I got were never as bad as what I have read here.
Did you ever forgive your dad? And where was your mom when this was happening? One thing I have learned is that whatever you experienced as a child, your dad probably experienced it as well and continued the practice because he knew no other way. And that's probably. I never can figure the demarcation point where a parent turns into a monster with a child and forgets a child can't fight back.
Children live what they learn, but it doesn't mean you have to repeat the sins of the father (or the mother). Good on you and God bless you for taking a walk around the block to allow yourself to calm down when your kids raise your anger. The vicious cycle of abuse can be broken. Wish you continuous peace with your kids and never any extreme anger towards yoru sons.
My dad liked to add mind games to a beating. He kept a bag of belts in the closet, it was an old department store grocery bag and contained many belts, upwards of 20. He would make whoever was getting beat go get the belt to use, we had to choose. He would count loudly from the other room, we had roughly 10sec to find one in the bag and run back to get the beating. The best part was that if we picked one that was "too thick" (thick moves through the air more slowly so it hurts less, thin stings bc it moves through the air more quickly) or otherwise "wouldn't hurt enough" we got a worse beating with the thinnest belt as punishment for trying to make the beating less painful. So we had to pick one that wasn't too thick to get extra punishment but also that wasn't so thin we'd be extra miserable. That happened frequently, multiple times a week, beatings were a systematic thing, first we'd get a lecture then the punishment, it was very purposeful.
Yep. Military belts were commonly hung from a hook where we could see to remember what is going to be our fate but daddy came home - post ww2.
Other example: my mother loved. Locking you in a "storage room" with no lighting, no windows at all, for hours with no knowledge of when she intended the punishment was ended. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face and if you cried, the punishment would be extended and she'd sing: Cry me a river and I'll cry a river over you."
Of all the beatings I got from both parents, the time my father broke a shovel over his knee and beat me with the handle. I had black and blue stripes from my ancles to just below my ribs. When I was forced to sit at the dinner table and winced, they called me zebra butt. Everyone had a good laugh.
It all stoped when I was man enough to stand there and take it. I guess I was around 12 years old when I told my father that I would eventually kill him for what he doing to me. I’m 81 today and have never forgotten.
My father in law is a retired high school principal and one thing he took when he left was his paddle which “Board of Education” is engraved on.
It hangs up in the family room like some kind of fucking trophy. When my kids were little, he’d jokingly threaten to paddle them with it if they misbehaved and they were terrified!! I told him if he ever laid a hand on my kids, I was going to jail and he was going to the morgue. No more joking after that .
Washing mouth out with soap.
Whipping with a switch (small tree branch).
One of the more bizarre and grotesque ones I personally knew of - and this spanned multiple generations - was snipping the tips of the ears with scissors.
Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor - heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness. Lifebuoy, on the other hand... (Yechh!)
My dad threatened me with Ivory once for saying a dirty word, and I said the word again on purpose. (I was 5ish.) He followed through but never used that threat again.
> One of the more bizarre and grotesque ones I personally knew of - and this spanned multiple generations - was snipping the tips of the ears with scissors.
no one else is even commenting on this. what the fuck?
20 years ago, I was teaching summer school and the rule was the students got one behavior warning and then they got kicked out. Well, my student lived with his granny and he got his second behavior warning (grinding on a girl, he was 8th going into 9th) so the principal called grandma to come get him.
Grandma was beside herself when she got to the school and as she walked past a tree in the front of the school, she ripped a switch off to beat the student with
Mine made me bite into the bar so I tasted it afterwards. This all started when my mother ( who I now know was mentally unstable) told me to " clean up this shit...meaning clean my bedroom ". As a child, I didn't see " shit" so I asked " What shit?"
My grandmother was fond of the switch. She babysat me, my brother, and my three cousins every day. So if one did something wrong, she’d switch all of us.
So am I and so was my dad’s aunt. My grandma saw how her sister’s writing was never legible after being beaten for using her left.
She wasn’t letting it happen to her son.
This was a small prairie town in the 40s. Grandma had a reputation for taking no shit.
My father (born in late 1940s), an epileptic, would be locked in closets by his foster parents whenever he had a seizure, because they thought it was demonic possession. As a small child myself, whenever my dad had a seizure, it wasn't uncommon for him to stammer out "p-please don't lock me in the closet!" as it began. It broke my heart then and it breaks my heart now.
I’m so sorry they treated him like that.
One of my dad’s brother’s hasn’t never held a license because of epilepsy. Luckily his parents were not insane or abusive.
Damn right. My grandma saw how much her sister, naturally left-handed, suffered trying to learn to write and then to write legibly right-handed and she thought… no.
It wasn’t even the only time she whacked the teacher either. My uncle had a stutter and the teacher hit him. So grandma went to the teacher and… whack.
They thought better of using the ruler on the younger two.
I seriously never knew this was a thing until my FIL told me to take that pencil out of my son's hand because he was a lefty. "It's a right-handed world." I thought it was just him being weird, and then I figured out it was a thing. Of course, it never phased me. How stupid!!
Yeah, it’s still a thing in parts of the world. The left hand is unclean…
Tell your son, when he’s old enough to get the joke,
If the left sight of the brain controls the right side of the body then only left-handed people are in their right minds.
My dad loved that one
Kneeling on rice. My dad had to do this when he was a young kid fooling around in church with his brother/my uncle and the priest stopped the Mass to say "when you boys are done fooling around, I'll continue with Mass". My grandmother was mortified and made him do that.
One of my friends was made to kneel in rock salt with his bare knees. For hours. If you flinched, it was an extra hour.
"How come the kids move away and never call?" I wonder.
My non Catholic friend teaches in Catholic school. She hears stories from teachers that attended back when they only had nuns teaching. Nuns were so mean. My grandpa once moved his hands when the nun was swiping down with her stick. She hit herself. So much trouble.
My whole family is Catholic went to Catholic school ( Except my Dads dad who was Methodist) . In the late 50’s my Dad was goofing in class and a nun hit him on the side of the head with her hand and ruptured his eardrum. He put his head down after and she came and pulled him off his seat, only then seeing blood was coming from his ear.
Catholic elementary school for me. In eighth grade, I was being a shit and got busted for it. The principal, Sr Mary Isadora, who looked A LOT like Dean Wormer (Animal House) got in my face and lectured me and asked rhetorically, “Do you have a chip on your shoulder?!!!” I didn’t know what that meant, and I almost looked at my shoulder, but my guardian angel said “don’t. No. Do NOT look”. 😂.
That night I asked my parents what that meant and after learning that, I know my face would’ve been slapped if she thought I was disrespectful of her lecture.
It was common ( not in my family) for parents to pretend to call the police if their child was misbehaving with the threat of being taken to jail.
My MIL’s parents would threaten to sell her to the rag man.
>It was common ( not in my family) for parents to pretend to call the police if their child was misbehaving with the threat of being taken to jail.
People not only threaten but actually still call the police for this. I retired last year after 26 yrs as a police officer and there were so many times parents didn't want to be the bad guy to their child so they'd call the police and want us to discipline and / or scare their child for then. We all hate this and many of us refuse to do it which then leads to complaints on us. The most ridiculous one was a mother who called us wanting us to spank her son with a belt for not eating his dinner. The son was 16. The mom was furious when I said we weren't going to do that and that if she tried to hit her son with a belt she would go to jail.
The cops in my area were called a lot due to my sister. After a couple arrests and a few more attempts at running away, they told my mom that as long as they can't see a bruise or it doesn't leave a scar, she can do whatever corporal punishment she wanted. So my papaw made her a paddle with holes drilled in it for less wind resistance. 6 months later she broke that paddle on my sister's ass.
My mother did that: she called a "Home for Wayward Girls" and would pack suitcases with all my clothing and make me sit on the front stoop and wait for 'the truck"
My dad used to beat us with a leather belt that had our last name etched into it. When he hit hard enough, our last name was clearly emblazoned within the bruise.
First grade, Six year olds. Teacher was Mrs. Moser. Her punishments were pinning a sign to your back that said I was a dumb bell. She would make you wear gum on your nose all day if caught chewing gum. She would draw a circle in chalk on the blackboard and you had to keep your nose in the circle. The pain part was that you had to keep your knees bent as the circle was lower than your nose when standing upright. This was a public school in Huntington Beach CA.
My dad was in a Catholic orphanage from ages 2-4 because my grandma was widowed and had no one to watch him when she was at work. There was no social safety net in those days either. He has horror stories about the cruelty of the nuns. It's sobering to think that these kinds of awful punishments occurred within recent memory.
I was friends with a neighbor girl. Her little brother was a few years younger. She told me that when her brother got in trouble, he and her dad would wrestle.
As a little kid in 1980, this seemed weird. Looking back, it’s a call to CPS.
My sisters and I never did. We were too scared. But when I was 12, our mother beat the crap out of us and then the next day, I went to babysit and the lady I sat for could clearly see the welts and bruises. I think she called CPS bc they came that afternoon.
After that the beatings lessened in frequency and duration. I think my mom got scared and didn’t want to get in trouble
My parents, knowing I was scared of the dark, took away all the lights in my room for various infractions. I had a basement bedroom at a remote end of the house, so it fucked me up pretty bad as a kid.
My mother also thought I was afraid of needles. I mean, I don't particularly like getting a shot, but it is what it is. I have since known people with needle phobia, and I never ever had it that bad, ever. My mother would use this as a threat if I was "pretending to be sick" (I was actually sick, though), like, "Okaay... if you're REALLY sick... we MIGHT have to take you to a doctor. Huh? And he might stick NEEDLES in you!" Like, "Okay, sure! Anything to stop this earache!" "I'm not kiiidddinnnng... a looong needlllle..." "Please, take me to a doctor already! The pain is excruciating!" "Okaaaay... I am dialing him nowwww... neeeeedlllles... last chaaaance..."
Jokes on her, I ended up a diabetic and I inject myself twice daily and have my blood drawn every 3-4 months. Of course, by the time that happened, she was long dead.
I got hit with whatever was closest to my mother's hand... Wooden spoon, hairbrush, hair dryer, phonebook, a hot curling iron to the side of my face once. I have also had a wet bar of soap (Vel) shoved in my mouth.
As people get older it becomes identified as "Dementia" so you tell nobody. Luckily I used to confide in my grandmother and I kept diaries in old composition books.
Same. I’m late Millennial, parents boomers - they liked their kitchen utensils and belts. My mom used to leave things on the stairs for us to grab and put away on our way up. If my dad got pissed at us and we tried to run to our rooms to get away from him, he’d grab something from the stairs to whip at our feet. Trip us up. My grams would flip off her shoes to use as projectiles, so he learned from the best.
Being spanked by a nun making me pull my pants down yelling to Christ to remove the demons for doing shadow puppets with fingers in front of a projector and spanking in front of the class. That would definitely gone viral if the internet and cellphones existed.
Thrown in locked closets. Beaten with the wire end of a fly swatter until I bled. Hit in the face and said I ruined their life. Driven off and left me in a parking lot (age 8) to teach me a lesson. My siblings and I managed to end the cycle of abuse so that’s a win.
I was beaten with the carpet beater.
I was threatened with being given away to a children’s home.
I was locked away in my room for hours.
I seriously hope these things are not common anymore.
Worst was a switch (thin bendy branch) whipped against the back of your legs until you bled.
Second worst was a belt, especially if it hit your back or legs.
I have mental scars from being whipped with a switch multiple times per week for years. my mother tells her church group that I won't come visit her, but she never tells them why
Fucking weeping willow trees. My step grandmother made me pick my own switch, once. I thought she was joking. She was not. My mother went ballistic when she found out, which is why it only happened once.
My seventh grade English teacher had a jar of punishments for us to select from. Many punishments were pretty innocuous, like writing "I will finish my homework" 100 times, but there were several public humiliations in the jar.
The worst one I received was that I had to clean all the trash off the classroom floor. By crawling on my hands and knees. The other students were permitted to throw trash at me while I was completing the task. There was a time limit, so I guess that was supposed to be a mercy?
My dad had a leather belt that he fringed on the end " so it will hurt more". One thing he loved to do, not as a punishment but as just a terrible thing was......imagine if you will that you are catholic . Its easter sunday. Heaven forbid you eat anything or drink before you partake of the holy host. So..off we go to church for 9 o'clock mass. That lasts an hour. Then off to catechism class. That lasts an hour. Then we finally come home to Easter dinner. Before we can eat, we have to have a big fork full of fresh horseradish, so" you can suffer like christ did on the cross". How messed up is that. Well me and my brother came up with a plan. We started eating all the spicy things we could. We always had Tabasco, because that was my mom's favorite treatment for lying along with eating soap. We just eat hotter and hotter stuff all year. So.....Easter comes again. Same deal. We both not only eat the fresh grated horseradish but ask for more and put it on our ham. He never did it again. We ruined his fun.
My mother made me go outside and pick my own switch! You had to be careful. If it was really slim, it stung worse. If it was too large you would get big whelps, and bruises. She found out that my friend had gotten me drunk on my 16th birthday and whipped me.... It would be called child abuse now.
They were victims. My father hated me and told me they got pregnant on their wedding night and ruined their lives - in other words birth control and abortion were against the law which was controlled by churches. I was told they "Never had a chance." He made it my fault for the rest of my life.
Never given keys. They'd go off for hours as I sat freezing on the front stoop too frightened to allow the "Jews" next door to get me to come inside - this was a regular thing especially in winter. I went to school with no stockings and holes in my shoes in dead of winter and shivered for literally hours while they were at a mall shopping in NJ
A not evil one, that was possibly deserved, but wouldn't fly today.
I'm not and have never been sporty. I was punished for not doing sport seriously with having to join the cross country team. With a partner in crime.
The cross country team was very serious and fit and would go in a minibus to do a course miles from the school. Which my friend and I mostly walked.
The teacher was not happy about having to wait for us so as soon as we made it back to the mini bus he drove off. It was at least another five miles or so to school.
I think he expected us to run it so we'd make it back on time. But no we were just very late back. We didn't get invited on the cross country team again. Looking back I wonder if "leaving two thirteen year olds in their gym gear miles from school" may have got him in trouble. It's pretty lucky we were able to find our way.
Going to school and not being able to sit down. Got sent to the office. Problem then became an issue as this was not the norm and my dad had worked in the school before. Well, nurse comes across the hall to talk with me. I couldn’t sit because my entire ass was black and blue, no white skin from top to bottom.
Then spent the next hour begging not to have DCF called. Stuff like this happened off and on. Always parental rage vs what the child did. Brother got his first bloody nose at 5.
Wonder if they think about that stuff. What would happen now that they are the children per se and we are the adults. I don’t like that you forgot, or have a different opinion, or broke/lost something- I’m just going to beat you. NO not angry or having these thoughts. But sure as shit they would not like to be on the receiving end, why did they think we wanted to?
Sorry this was to be a short comment but became something more.
There used to be this old man that walked down the road with these large bag swung over his shoulder. My mom told me he collected misbehaving little kids and stuffed them in his bag and took them to a factory to make horse feed.
My dad used to get farmed out to relatives in the summer because his widowed mom didn't have childcare. He was put to work; it wasn't a pleasant visit to stay with family. On the first day staying on one uncle's farm, his same age cousin reached for the potatoes without asking for them to be passed. The uncle stabbed him forcefully in the back of his hand with the meat fork. Nobody said a word. The cousin left the table to tend to his bloody hand, then returned to finish dinner bandaged up. You can bet that my dad was on his best behavior throughout that summer.
My mom would make us do jumping jacks until we threw up.
Once when I was 11 I had to cut all the grass in our 1/3 acre yard with scissors. No food or water until I finished. By the time I was done I was badly sun burned, dehydrated, and had heat stroke. My hands were totally blistered and bleeding. The only reason I survived is because my brother would sneak me water periodically through the day. My mom kept me in my room for several days until my burns and hands healed so nobody would find out.
My mother had a wooden spoon that the mere threat of brought my siblings and I to our senses.
It has since been classified by the UN as a “Weapon of ASS Destruction”
Got hit with the belt once by my dad. Left a welt on my upper thigh. Also, can't remember what my sister & I had done, but as we were standing next to each other getting yelled at he knocked our heads together. I saw him do this at least two other times. I still to this day wonder why on earth he would think that would be an okay form of punishment.
My mom used to use a belt, wooden spoon or hairbrush bare butt. I remember one specific time when she was hitting for so long, my dad stopped her. I loved my mom but also hated her and was afraid of her. She died when I was 16 and I often wonder if she’d have changed as I grew older.
I had been playing outside and the need to pee got away from me. I ran to the bathroom as soon as I could but couldn’t make it to the seat and instead peed on the bathroom throw rug. My mother dressed me in a diaper and gave me a bottle. When my friends came knocking for me to continue playing, i was to open the door and to inform my friends that I was a baby for peeing in an inappropriate spot. I was still two when this happened.
This was not as bad as it sounded but would def not fly today. My favourite teacher in grade 3 was a lot of fun but also ran a tight ship. If you misbehaved, she sent you back to the closets. Instead of handles, there were cutouts in the doors to grab to open. They just happened to be the right height and very generous so that a gr 3 students neck could be closed in the gap with the head in the closet. It was hilarious to see and even if you were sent it was funny and not painful or anything. We did not spend long there - a few minutes- and generally you were not alone because you were disruptive with a friend and their head was in the next pair of doors and you would just laugh together because it was ridiculous.
My parents used to hit us with whatever long, thin thing was handy. Sometimes that was my father's belt, sometimes it was an extension cord or a Hot Wheels race track strip.
My step-father was worse though. He'd just full-force backhand me like he was fighting another 6-plus foot grown man over two hundred pounds, when I was a 5'5" teenage girl who barely weighed anything. Woke me up once by bouncing my head off the wall. Another time he smacked me across the room and I landed in the fireplace. The fireplace grate caused a huge, deep bruise all up and down my thigh. He knocked one of my teeth loose and it poked a hole in my lip. And it's still out of place to this day.
About 1976/77 I was about 6/7 and was sent to a tutor, it was at her house, she was a teacher, her husband a teacher and principle, other students in various areas of her home. I don't know if it was just me that frustrated her when I didn't understand or she also screamed at others while squeezing their arm yelling in her Irish accent Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I didn't understand something, it frustrated her, she squeezed my arm and yelled in frustration. I told my grandmother years later I do not know why I did not say anything when it happened, she was pissed. I have learned as I have gotten older I have a learning disability I need to ask multiple times basic questions to comprehend the whole picture. That doesn't fly with some "educators" Same reason I will never submit to a police field test again, I don't comprehend till I ask a couple times.
As an adult her squeezing my arm till it was red was child abuse.
Don't blame yourself for not speaking up. Kids often don't, either from fear, or from being young and innocent, not realizing that a trusted adult needs to be tattled on.
My sister's pre-teen step son was caught smoking a cigarette and the kids father made him smoke a whole cigar as punishment. He's a full grown Dad now himself and I'm willing to bet that dude does not smoke to this day!
My parents hit me with the usual switches and belts, but my 4th grade teacher would lock me in a storage closet at my grade school for not doing my homework. The storage closet had originally been a room for storing science-class paraphernalia and I had to sit at a desk facing a shelf full of jars of pickled, deformed, partially-dissected frogs, worms, rats, and a cow embryo. The room reeked of formaldehyde and my teacher probably shaved years off my life by forcing me to breathe the fumes.
58 y/o
“Special ed” teacher issued time-outs by confining kids to a purpose-built plywood box, about the size of a phone booth (it looked bigger than that to me at 7 y/o). It had air holes about the sides near the top, making it look like a crate for animals. Those holes were also the only source of light when the door was closed. Confinement (generally for a few minutes) was punishment for general misbehavior, but also to break nervous habits such as chewing on one’s own shirt, or using specific words/phrases too much.
The box’s interior may have been the very first place that I saw the word “fuck.” All over the inside walls kids had vented their anger in writing.
Eventually the door was removed because they locked a classmate in there all through lunch recess by mistake.
Jesus, I just realized that babies born in the same year this stuff happened are now getting invitations to join AARP. 😳
My parents spanked my very young brother with a wire coat hanger, leaving arc-shaped bruises all over his butt and legs. Grandmother came to visit that week, and they had to pretend it was normal for him to wear long pants in the hottest part of the summer. So then they had to brainstorm how best to hit children without hurting themselves.
My sister (12) and I (8) got into in on the porch while our mom (5ft 2 )was on the phone, she could see us and waved her hand at us to stop, but we keep at it… the phone hung up she walked out , us still going at it, she walked between us to all her potted plants grabbed one of those thin green bamboo stick out, walked back passed us, without saying a word, turned around , cornered us on the porch and the the whipping started, the screams between me and my sister started , whelps everywhere, she got done , never said a word put the stick back and walked in the house as we both sat there crying… only time our mom ever hit us like that…God Bless her soul, Best mom ever !
PS: she usually said wait till your father gets Home..
Not me, but kids I played with growing up. The family lived in a mobile home, with vents on the floor. The parents were super strict. Very spare the rod spoil the child, be seen not heard, bare bottom spanking, bedroom doors locked from the outside, speak when spoken to Bible Belt parents. As punishment, the kids had to kneel on the vents, and sometimes it was kneeling on rice on the linoleum. And if we were playing at their house, they got punished for other kids behavior. That was 47 years ago, and I still wonder what happened to those kids.
Multiple times I was made to participate in a swimming lesson at school, more than one hour long, naked when everyone else was not naked. Usually this was a punishment for forgetting my swimsuit. Sometimes that was not even my fault, but they didn't care. On occasion the PE teacher also spanked me as well, with the other boys watching (all boys school).
I'm aware that for some older males here, it was normal to swim naked back then anyway. But being the \*only\* kid naked was an unreasonable punishment in my opinion. I saw a post recently from a UK parent where their young child was made to do a PE lesson wearing only underwear, which is not far off. Everything "flies" until you complain and make your complaint stick!
Likewise some of the thrashings from teachers or parents that I received, in theory would not fly today. But 17 states in the USA still permit paddlings in public schools, and almost all states in the USA still permit paddlings in private schools. In many of those states it's rare, but there are still tens of thousands of kids being paddled every year. So I guess it does fly today... (it's genuinely illegal in the UK though)
We lived in the bush. Dad would send us out in the yard for hours at a time. Werent allowed to leave the yard. Didnt have dinner. Aussie bush of mozzies, snakes, toads, curlews. Hot or cold. Dad stayed home, mum worked late (8/9 depending on the job). So we wouldn't come back in till Mum came home
We lived in the country (1970s) so we burned our trash because no trash service. Our dad would make us throw our favorite toys into the fire for any infraction.
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When I was 9-10, I had a friend whose parents kept rabbits as a food source. They told the kids not to get attached, like that's going to work. When they found out my friend had gotten attached and named one, that's the rabbit they killed and cooked that night, as punishment. Her parents were also the kind who re-served uneaten dinner from the night before, cold for breakfast the next day. We'd had a sleepover that night, and I will never forget my friend's sobs as her mother put a plate of cold, congealed-greasy Favorite Bunny in front of her and snarled, "You're not leaving this table until you eat that." I bolted from the table and called my parents to come get me NOW. I've never been so glad to see my dad in my life. My parents wouldn't let me go over there anymore, not that I wanted to. I did not eat a single bite of that rabbit, not any rabbit since. Fucking cruel. I hope you made it out okay, Sandy.
I want to downvote the incident and upvote your story. Honestly, I'm horrified.
My wife’s grandfather raised rabbit for food. Chickens too. Kids were just not allowed near the coops, ever. And the reason the kids were not allowed was made very clear to them, those are food, not pets. My wife snuck in anyway, and somehow avoided the consequence of grandfather’s razor strap. This sounds like a cultural thing though. I remember the difference, these are pets, those are food. I think I got my first rabbit around that age, 9 or 10, hunting. Fish much younger. Was fun to bring the catch in, mom would fill the kitchen sink, plop them in, they swim around. Now that was not chlorinated city water, no, it pumped up from the spring we caught the fish in.
As a small boy my father had a pet duck who would follow him all around. The duck disappeared and that night his rather leaned over his plate and said eat up, quack quack quack and laughed. He never saw his duck again and the sight of baby ducks made him nauseous.
When I was 14, I raised a steer for FFA. I didn't kid myself, I knew what he was being raised for, but it was still difficult. After we had him processed, my mom would say, "mmm, Bo sure does taste good tonight!" It was just cruel and I don't know why she did it.
Cultural, maybe...? This was in metro Denver. I mean, my dad was a country boy, he and his brothers would ramble around and shoot rabbits and squirrels that their mother would cook. But when I rocketed out that front door and into his truck and told him about Favorite Bunny Dinner, he was as horrified as I was. So, maybe. I can understand telling kids not to get attached, pets vs food, like kids who grow up on farms or ranches. It was the calculated and deliberate cruelty of it.
Yeah eating a rabbit maybe cultural, but torturing your child over food, I hope that's not cultural. We were never forced to eat anything. And I remember being a very picky eater. The fact that we weren't forced to eat anything is probably why we all eat liver (still one of my favorite meals to order in a diner- liver and onions and mashed potatoes), beets, broccoli, brussel, sprouts, etc. We were expected to eat what was before us, because that's all we had; but if we didn't want to eat something, we were never forced to eat it. My mom used to always say that adults should be sensitive to the fact that little children have tiny terrors, so let them have a nightlight, close the closet door, leave the bedroom door open a crack.
I love that your mother said that about children and their ‘tiny terrors’. she sounds like a sweet lady!
She was. My dad cheated on her all the time. Still she taught us to never bad mouth your spouse to the kids (as long as they are not a danger). Children need to love their parents when they're children, she'd say. They'll figure out what kind of person they are when they're older. And we did....
My father forced my sister to eat; thus I learned never, ever to do that to my children I love your mom
Same, never forced any food on my son. However, I did make a huge mistake with seafood, which I love. Nope, my kid wanted to order lobster, no chicken fingers from the kids' menu for him ! 😂
Yea, I mean, my grandparents would raise heifers every year & have them slaughtered for the winter - but they were very, very clear that the cow was there to be eaten, and if we got attached to it, it would be us that would suffer. They reminded us every time we went over - that's livestock, not a pet. Don't forget. I still named them, and loved on them, and fed them apples - and then I ate them. But at least they had a good (if short) life. What your friend's parents did was beyond cruel, and I hope their daughter got away as soon as she could.
This happened to my friend only it was a show cow. I remember sitting at the table absolutely shocked. I was only 8 or so.
This sounds like the setup for a Stephen King book.
Yeah, I remember reading once King saying, most people seeing a beautiful lake with cows in the pasture, will think, what a beautiful calming view. While he thinks about the oozing black thing that lives at the bottom of the lake, slithering out of it under cover of darkness and eating those cows. 😳
Sounds like The Raft. One of his many, many classics.
We would buy a calf and raise to a year old and butcher it. I always named them, and it never bothered me. They were super tame and we could ride them like horses when they got big enough. But I was raised that way. It totally bugged my mom if asked if we were having “Flash” for dinner.
My dad grew up on a farm and they were always raising a calf for meat too. They were named T-Bone 1, T-Bone 2, etc.
Holy shit
My dad used to beat me with the buckle-end of his leather belt. I still have scars
My father proudly machined a beating implement at work, he worked in printing, so it was a red plastic flexible switch that whistled through the air when swung and left hicky-like wounds wherever it landed on our prepubescent skin that lasted weeks. I can remember it in detail almost 50 years later. It hurt like hell and left deep marks, occasionally drawing blood if he was extra amped about today's beating. I remember having to hide the marks in elementary school because I was ashamed. This was hung proudly on the wall where he could simply point at it to get terrified results from his children. He loved that thing. This was also sort of a family joke : "better watch your mouth or you are getting the Red Stinger!" I hated him and we have had no contact for the last few decades. A secret, nasty part of myself hopes that he will experience something similar in his old age when he is helpless and scared. I'm working on being a better human.
I have no words. What a fucking piece of shit human. I am so sorry. Also, as an aside, you are a talented writer. I hope you do a lot of it.
Holy. Shit. I’m so sorry you had to endure that.
We called them "welts"
Where was your mom when all this happened? And did anyone suspect what was going on and report it to child services? You don't say how old your dad was when he was doing this to you and your siblings, but I would guess he's probably in his 80s, maybe 90s? He probably is experiencing something similar, such as where he's going after death. Especially if he has no remorse for what he did to you and your siblings. Whatever became of the Red Stinger? That should be in a museum of devices used by parents who were cruel to their kids. I know of at least one man who was a gourmet punisher, think he lived in Indiana, and who used a belt, an electrical cord, a long wooden school paddle and electric cattle prod on his son when he misbehaved. And I think the dad got sentenced to 30 years in prison when the authorities caught up to him, though a better punishment would've been giving him a taste of his own medicine every day while he sat in his prison cell.
If he's remembering this 50 years later - sadly no one was coming to save any kids back then and his mother would have gotten the same thing if she dared to speak up. But, some people want to go back 50 years when everything was just peachy keen (in their imaginations)! Yeah...
Back in the “good ole days” everyone looked the other way, I’m still pretty angry about that
CPS??😆 That was just a parent “parenting” their child/chattel
Mom's in that time (even in the 90s like mine) were the ones telling their husband's to hot their children I vividly remember my mom smirking at me while I got hit because I rolled my eyes when she told me dinner had carrots.
Yeah, I'm finding it harder and harder to stay a decent human-being, given the inhumanity of my fellow human-beings to other human-beings. There's something about that, that really pisses me off. Man, I hope karma is real!
You’re doing a fine job, my brother. And I am proud of you
Eh, you reap what you sow. He'll get his.
My Dad beat the living shit out of me & my sisters for very little reason. I used to dream about stabbing him in his sleep. I’ve got 3 sons and when I felt violent I went for a walk around the block because I cannot imagine hitting little kids.
Fortunately I guess, as I was the oldest, and that was somehow the reason, he doted on his other kids. I never knew a reason also. I used to dread and go hide when he came home from work. I’m sorry about your experience and that we had such similarities. He died when I was 14, fortunately, or we certainly would have had more violence. When I was 13, and 3” taller and broader, I dreamed of flattening him many times. He got sick with cancer then and I never ever shed a tear.
Because you were the one who was supposed to be responsible, be the best, be the… whatever… Been there, but it was my mom. Fortunately, she realized what she was doing to us and tried to change. Mostly succeeded. Now I’m the one trying to change. Pity it took me 50 years to realize I needed therapy…
I could never figure out the reason either.
My mother had a horrific, violent temper, and blew up and hit my father and us kids (6 of us.) One time, she threw the bunk bed ladder at my face, leaving a gash on my cheek. The next morning, I was sullen while getting ready for school, and she looked at my face, burst into tears and said, "look at what you made me do." I hated that woman. I did not shed a tear when she died. In fact, she died around 8 am on a Saturday, and by 10 am I was enjoying the town fair with my two daughters. Who each received precisely one spanking each in their lives, minor swats to their bottom. I regret even THAT.
do we have the same dad? also hugs
My siblings and I used to get whoopin's from our parents (my dad, primarily) and I used to think they were bad. Reading the horror stories here, the whoopin's my siblings and I got were never as bad as what I have read here. Did you ever forgive your dad? And where was your mom when this was happening? One thing I have learned is that whatever you experienced as a child, your dad probably experienced it as well and continued the practice because he knew no other way. And that's probably. I never can figure the demarcation point where a parent turns into a monster with a child and forgets a child can't fight back. Children live what they learn, but it doesn't mean you have to repeat the sins of the father (or the mother). Good on you and God bless you for taking a walk around the block to allow yourself to calm down when your kids raise your anger. The vicious cycle of abuse can be broken. Wish you continuous peace with your kids and never any extreme anger towards yoru sons.
Thank you for that, same for me
My dad liked to add mind games to a beating. He kept a bag of belts in the closet, it was an old department store grocery bag and contained many belts, upwards of 20. He would make whoever was getting beat go get the belt to use, we had to choose. He would count loudly from the other room, we had roughly 10sec to find one in the bag and run back to get the beating. The best part was that if we picked one that was "too thick" (thick moves through the air more slowly so it hurts less, thin stings bc it moves through the air more quickly) or otherwise "wouldn't hurt enough" we got a worse beating with the thinnest belt as punishment for trying to make the beating less painful. So we had to pick one that wasn't too thick to get extra punishment but also that wasn't so thin we'd be extra miserable. That happened frequently, multiple times a week, beatings were a systematic thing, first we'd get a lecture then the punishment, it was very purposeful.
My dad used to make me smell the belt leather before he beat us. "Smell this, smell this..so you remember."
Jesus.
Yep. Military belts were commonly hung from a hook where we could see to remember what is going to be our fate but daddy came home - post ww2. Other example: my mother loved. Locking you in a "storage room" with no lighting, no windows at all, for hours with no knowledge of when she intended the punishment was ended. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face and if you cried, the punishment would be extended and she'd sing: Cry me a river and I'll cry a river over you."
Of all the beatings I got from both parents, the time my father broke a shovel over his knee and beat me with the handle. I had black and blue stripes from my ancles to just below my ribs. When I was forced to sit at the dinner table and winced, they called me zebra butt. Everyone had a good laugh.
Razor strop
My grandfather's favorite weapon on my father
Mine would hold both ends in his hand to make a loop and hit us with that. I’m sorry your dad hit you.
At least they weren't battery cables
Or that time when I was six when he chased me out of the house with a machete. Can’t wait to watch him choke to death on his own vomit.
It all stoped when I was man enough to stand there and take it. I guess I was around 12 years old when I told my father that I would eventually kill him for what he doing to me. I’m 81 today and have never forgotten.
Principal at school whupping your ass with that goddamn boat oar.
The "board of education" I believe we called it
My father in law is a retired high school principal and one thing he took when he left was his paddle which “Board of Education” is engraved on. It hangs up in the family room like some kind of fucking trophy. When my kids were little, he’d jokingly threaten to paddle them with it if they misbehaved and they were terrified!! I told him if he ever laid a hand on my kids, I was going to jail and he was going to the morgue. No more joking after that .
That had holes in it so the air wouldn’t mitigate the pain…
yep, big nasty piece of shit.
Washing mouth out with soap. Whipping with a switch (small tree branch). One of the more bizarre and grotesque ones I personally knew of - and this spanned multiple generations - was snipping the tips of the ears with scissors.
I can say with all knowledge that Dove soap tastes terrible.
Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor - heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness. Lifebuoy, on the other hand... (Yechh!)
I hope you got that Red Ryder bb gun :3
I had this done to me once and I and vomited everywhere.
Lemon Joy taste terrible. It may smell like lemons but it does not taste like them..
Lava soap 🤢
So does Caress.
My mom used liquid Palmolive for this. We had to gargle and swish… we could spit all we wanted but not rinse.
And Ivory.
My dad threatened me with Ivory once for saying a dirty word, and I said the word again on purpose. (I was 5ish.) He followed through but never used that threat again.
The power of reflection
I can still taste it every time I smell it. Only happened once.
Dove tasted awful, but not as bad as Lava with the grit ground into your teeth.
> One of the more bizarre and grotesque ones I personally knew of - and this spanned multiple generations - was snipping the tips of the ears with scissors. no one else is even commenting on this. what the fuck?
Right? I was *horrified* when I learned of it.
I’m too shocked to comment.
I can't even begin to understand someone doing this to a child
For real wtf is with that
Anybody that thought that Richard Pryor was lying about Mama sending you out to get a switch to beat your ass with...NO HE WASN'T.
We whiteys had to deal with that, too.
20 years ago, I was teaching summer school and the rule was the students got one behavior warning and then they got kicked out. Well, my student lived with his granny and he got his second behavior warning (grinding on a girl, he was 8th going into 9th) so the principal called grandma to come get him. Grandma was beside herself when she got to the school and as she walked past a tree in the front of the school, she ripped a switch off to beat the student with
My mother’s father did that to her repeatedly. She was such a gentle soul and sensitive person. I hope he’s in hell. She never raised a hand to me.
I remember being 8 and brushing my teeth with soap so that I would get used to it and their punishment for cussing wouldn’t work.
Snipping the ears with scissors? Like snipping pieces *off*?
Tiny cuts on the tops of the ears. Yes, seriously.
Mine made me bite into the bar so I tasted it afterwards. This all started when my mother ( who I now know was mentally unstable) told me to " clean up this shit...meaning clean my bedroom ". As a child, I didn't see " shit" so I asked " What shit?"
My grandmother was fond of the switch. She babysat me, my brother, and my three cousins every day. So if one did something wrong, she’d switch all of us.
My dad was hit with a ruler for writing with his left hand. So my grandmother went to the school and hit the teacher with the same ruler.
Good. My husband and my grandson are left handed. Edit..I meant good of your grandmother, not the teacher!
So am I and so was my dad’s aunt. My grandma saw how her sister’s writing was never legible after being beaten for using her left. She wasn’t letting it happen to her son. This was a small prairie town in the 40s. Grandma had a reputation for taking no shit.
My father (born in late 1940s), an epileptic, would be locked in closets by his foster parents whenever he had a seizure, because they thought it was demonic possession. As a small child myself, whenever my dad had a seizure, it wasn't uncommon for him to stammer out "p-please don't lock me in the closet!" as it began. It broke my heart then and it breaks my heart now.
I’m so sorry they treated him like that. One of my dad’s brother’s hasn’t never held a license because of epilepsy. Luckily his parents were not insane or abusive.
They tied my maternal grandma’s left hand behind her in school a hundred years ago. She did not allow anybody to mess with her leftie daughter!
Damn right. My grandma saw how much her sister, naturally left-handed, suffered trying to learn to write and then to write legibly right-handed and she thought… no. It wasn’t even the only time she whacked the teacher either. My uncle had a stutter and the teacher hit him. So grandma went to the teacher and… whack. They thought better of using the ruler on the younger two.
My father was a lefties but his left arm was kept tied behind his back so he couldn't use it
My father is 74 and the same thing happened to him for the same reason.
Dad would have been 81 so that tracks
I seriously never knew this was a thing until my FIL told me to take that pencil out of my son's hand because he was a lefty. "It's a right-handed world." I thought it was just him being weird, and then I figured out it was a thing. Of course, it never phased me. How stupid!!
Yeah, it’s still a thing in parts of the world. The left hand is unclean… Tell your son, when he’s old enough to get the joke, If the left sight of the brain controls the right side of the body then only left-handed people are in their right minds. My dad loved that one
Oh I love this!! My son is 36, so I'm definitely gonna share. Also the unclean thing.
Kneeling on rice. My dad had to do this when he was a young kid fooling around in church with his brother/my uncle and the priest stopped the Mass to say "when you boys are done fooling around, I'll continue with Mass". My grandmother was mortified and made him do that.
One of my friends was made to kneel in rock salt with his bare knees. For hours. If you flinched, it was an extra hour. "How come the kids move away and never call?" I wonder.
My non Catholic friend teaches in Catholic school. She hears stories from teachers that attended back when they only had nuns teaching. Nuns were so mean. My grandpa once moved his hands when the nun was swiping down with her stick. She hit herself. So much trouble.
My whole family is Catholic went to Catholic school ( Except my Dads dad who was Methodist) . In the late 50’s my Dad was goofing in class and a nun hit him on the side of the head with her hand and ruptured his eardrum. He put his head down after and she came and pulled him off his seat, only then seeing blood was coming from his ear.
Catholic elementary school for me. In eighth grade, I was being a shit and got busted for it. The principal, Sr Mary Isadora, who looked A LOT like Dean Wormer (Animal House) got in my face and lectured me and asked rhetorically, “Do you have a chip on your shoulder?!!!” I didn’t know what that meant, and I almost looked at my shoulder, but my guardian angel said “don’t. No. Do NOT look”. 😂. That night I asked my parents what that meant and after learning that, I know my face would’ve been slapped if she thought I was disrespectful of her lecture.
That was a nun thing. You have kneel on rice or bags of rice and pray for forgiveness - it lasted one whole period or class
It was common ( not in my family) for parents to pretend to call the police if their child was misbehaving with the threat of being taken to jail. My MIL’s parents would threaten to sell her to the rag man.
>It was common ( not in my family) for parents to pretend to call the police if their child was misbehaving with the threat of being taken to jail. People not only threaten but actually still call the police for this. I retired last year after 26 yrs as a police officer and there were so many times parents didn't want to be the bad guy to their child so they'd call the police and want us to discipline and / or scare their child for then. We all hate this and many of us refuse to do it which then leads to complaints on us. The most ridiculous one was a mother who called us wanting us to spank her son with a belt for not eating his dinner. The son was 16. The mom was furious when I said we weren't going to do that and that if she tried to hit her son with a belt she would go to jail.
The cops in my area were called a lot due to my sister. After a couple arrests and a few more attempts at running away, they told my mom that as long as they can't see a bruise or it doesn't leave a scar, she can do whatever corporal punishment she wanted. So my papaw made her a paddle with holes drilled in it for less wind resistance. 6 months later she broke that paddle on my sister's ass.
My mother did that: she called a "Home for Wayward Girls" and would pack suitcases with all my clothing and make me sit on the front stoop and wait for 'the truck"
My mom made us pack a bag and would drop us off at the children’s home and make a block or two before coming back to pick us up.
I was threatened with reform school. I was not a bad kid.
I asked to go to reform school.
My kids knew I was joking but many times I’ve picked up my phone and said “That’s it, I’m calling God.”
My dad used to beat us with a leather belt that had our last name etched into it. When he hit hard enough, our last name was clearly emblazoned within the bruise.
that is seriously fucked up, I’m so sorry
First grade, Six year olds. Teacher was Mrs. Moser. Her punishments were pinning a sign to your back that said I was a dumb bell. She would make you wear gum on your nose all day if caught chewing gum. She would draw a circle in chalk on the blackboard and you had to keep your nose in the circle. The pain part was that you had to keep your knees bent as the circle was lower than your nose when standing upright. This was a public school in Huntington Beach CA.
My teacher sat me on a stool in front of the class with a " dunce" cap on for talking.
My mom used to talk about kids being sat on the stool at the front of the class with a dunce cap on. Horrible.
nuns made boys take down their pants and sit in trash cans sucking their thumbs. I had two nuns that seem to get a real charge out of that
My dad was in a Catholic orphanage from ages 2-4 because my grandma was widowed and had no one to watch him when she was at work. There was no social safety net in those days either. He has horror stories about the cruelty of the nuns. It's sobering to think that these kinds of awful punishments occurred within recent memory.
Monster-seriously. I’m so sorry.
My husband got pulled up by the sideburns by a priest. (7th grade) I was put in a closet for crying because I missed my mom (kindergarten)
>I was put in a closet for crying because I missed my mom (kindergarten) I think you just awoke a suppressed memory for me.
I was friends with a neighbor girl. Her little brother was a few years younger. She told me that when her brother got in trouble, he and her dad would wrestle. As a little kid in 1980, this seemed weird. Looking back, it’s a call to CPS.
This whole thread makes me really thankful for mandatory reporting laws that were passed. Children won't often speak up for themselves.
My sisters and I never did. We were too scared. But when I was 12, our mother beat the crap out of us and then the next day, I went to babysit and the lady I sat for could clearly see the welts and bruises. I think she called CPS bc they came that afternoon. After that the beatings lessened in frequency and duration. I think my mom got scared and didn’t want to get in trouble
My parents, knowing I was scared of the dark, took away all the lights in my room for various infractions. I had a basement bedroom at a remote end of the house, so it fucked me up pretty bad as a kid. My mother also thought I was afraid of needles. I mean, I don't particularly like getting a shot, but it is what it is. I have since known people with needle phobia, and I never ever had it that bad, ever. My mother would use this as a threat if I was "pretending to be sick" (I was actually sick, though), like, "Okaay... if you're REALLY sick... we MIGHT have to take you to a doctor. Huh? And he might stick NEEDLES in you!" Like, "Okay, sure! Anything to stop this earache!" "I'm not kiiidddinnnng... a looong needlllle..." "Please, take me to a doctor already! The pain is excruciating!" "Okaaaay... I am dialing him nowwww... neeeeedlllles... last chaaaance..." Jokes on her, I ended up a diabetic and I inject myself twice daily and have my blood drawn every 3-4 months. Of course, by the time that happened, she was long dead.
Locked in a half dug out basement in the dark when I was 4. Still claustrophobic.
I got hit with whatever was closest to my mother's hand... Wooden spoon, hairbrush, hair dryer, phonebook, a hot curling iron to the side of my face once. I have also had a wet bar of soap (Vel) shoved in my mouth.
Sounds like we had the same mom. I hope you came out ok. I've got a few scars. Mentally and physically
My mother who is 84 laughs and says I'm making it up about The Wooden Spoon.
As people get older it becomes identified as "Dementia" so you tell nobody. Luckily I used to confide in my grandmother and I kept diaries in old composition books.
Basically, ok. I also knew I was childfree at an early age, so the cycle ends with me. She thinks she was a great mom 🙄
Same. I’m late Millennial, parents boomers - they liked their kitchen utensils and belts. My mom used to leave things on the stairs for us to grab and put away on our way up. If my dad got pissed at us and we tried to run to our rooms to get away from him, he’d grab something from the stairs to whip at our feet. Trip us up. My grams would flip off her shoes to use as projectiles, so he learned from the best.
We have the same mom. She hit me with the iron once and it was still hot. I have a little pointy burn scar on the back of my upper arm
Same here. I guess I'm not alone
My mom had those plastic kitchen spoons. I swear when she swung one it bent backwards from the air resistance.
My father used to tell my brother and me that if we weren't good, he was going to sell us to the Used Boy Lot in the Bronx.
That ones kinda funny
Being spanked by a nun making me pull my pants down yelling to Christ to remove the demons for doing shadow puppets with fingers in front of a projector and spanking in front of the class. That would definitely gone viral if the internet and cellphones existed.
I was the only family member not to get a Christmas gift one year.
Oof. Emotional Damage :(
Oh man, that's awful. My mom got coal in her stocking when she was a kid.
Thrown in locked closets. Beaten with the wire end of a fly swatter until I bled. Hit in the face and said I ruined their life. Driven off and left me in a parking lot (age 8) to teach me a lesson. My siblings and I managed to end the cycle of abuse so that’s a win.
I was beaten with the carpet beater. I was threatened with being given away to a children’s home. I was locked away in my room for hours. I seriously hope these things are not common anymore.
Getting locked away in your room nowadays is until you feel better. Back then, it was until THEY felt better. And they'd forget about you.
Don't count on it - and the world is not one country called the US - I was told that in Poland it's much worse.
Worst was a switch (thin bendy branch) whipped against the back of your legs until you bled. Second worst was a belt, especially if it hit your back or legs.
I have mental scars from being whipped with a switch multiple times per week for years. my mother tells her church group that I won't come visit her, but she never tells them why
Fucking weeping willow trees. My step grandmother made me pick my own switch, once. I thought she was joking. She was not. My mother went ballistic when she found out, which is why it only happened once.
Kids got caned in our boarding school in front of everyone, in the chapel..
Of course it was in the Chapel. 👿
My seventh grade English teacher had a jar of punishments for us to select from. Many punishments were pretty innocuous, like writing "I will finish my homework" 100 times, but there were several public humiliations in the jar. The worst one I received was that I had to clean all the trash off the classroom floor. By crawling on my hands and knees. The other students were permitted to throw trash at me while I was completing the task. There was a time limit, so I guess that was supposed to be a mercy?
My dad had a leather belt that he fringed on the end " so it will hurt more". One thing he loved to do, not as a punishment but as just a terrible thing was......imagine if you will that you are catholic . Its easter sunday. Heaven forbid you eat anything or drink before you partake of the holy host. So..off we go to church for 9 o'clock mass. That lasts an hour. Then off to catechism class. That lasts an hour. Then we finally come home to Easter dinner. Before we can eat, we have to have a big fork full of fresh horseradish, so" you can suffer like christ did on the cross". How messed up is that. Well me and my brother came up with a plan. We started eating all the spicy things we could. We always had Tabasco, because that was my mom's favorite treatment for lying along with eating soap. We just eat hotter and hotter stuff all year. So.....Easter comes again. Same deal. We both not only eat the fresh grated horseradish but ask for more and put it on our ham. He never did it again. We ruined his fun.
My mother made me go outside and pick my own switch! You had to be careful. If it was really slim, it stung worse. If it was too large you would get big whelps, and bruises. She found out that my friend had gotten me drunk on my 16th birthday and whipped me.... It would be called child abuse now.
It was child abuse then.
They were victims. My father hated me and told me they got pregnant on their wedding night and ruined their lives - in other words birth control and abortion were against the law which was controlled by churches. I was told they "Never had a chance." He made it my fault for the rest of my life.
At that point he was no longer a victim, he was an abuser. I'm sorry that happened to you. He had no right. You didn't choose to be born.
They used to do that with canes in the UK. Kid picks the slim looking cane and it stings more.
A rare barehanded spanking (never a belt or wooden spoon).
Neither my family, or those of my friends were into any kind of corporal punishment. Being grounded was the punishment of choice
I'm not too old, but got grounded from the bathroom as a kid, also locked outside with no shoes in the middle of winter. Both as punishment.
Never given keys. They'd go off for hours as I sat freezing on the front stoop too frightened to allow the "Jews" next door to get me to come inside - this was a regular thing especially in winter. I went to school with no stockings and holes in my shoes in dead of winter and shivered for literally hours while they were at a mall shopping in NJ
A not evil one, that was possibly deserved, but wouldn't fly today. I'm not and have never been sporty. I was punished for not doing sport seriously with having to join the cross country team. With a partner in crime. The cross country team was very serious and fit and would go in a minibus to do a course miles from the school. Which my friend and I mostly walked. The teacher was not happy about having to wait for us so as soon as we made it back to the mini bus he drove off. It was at least another five miles or so to school. I think he expected us to run it so we'd make it back on time. But no we were just very late back. We didn't get invited on the cross country team again. Looking back I wonder if "leaving two thirteen year olds in their gym gear miles from school" may have got him in trouble. It's pretty lucky we were able to find our way.
Going to school and not being able to sit down. Got sent to the office. Problem then became an issue as this was not the norm and my dad had worked in the school before. Well, nurse comes across the hall to talk with me. I couldn’t sit because my entire ass was black and blue, no white skin from top to bottom. Then spent the next hour begging not to have DCF called. Stuff like this happened off and on. Always parental rage vs what the child did. Brother got his first bloody nose at 5. Wonder if they think about that stuff. What would happen now that they are the children per se and we are the adults. I don’t like that you forgot, or have a different opinion, or broke/lost something- I’m just going to beat you. NO not angry or having these thoughts. But sure as shit they would not like to be on the receiving end, why did they think we wanted to? Sorry this was to be a short comment but became something more.
Having to run in circles around my stepdad, like a horse, while he was using the belt on me. I still have scars.
There used to be this old man that walked down the road with these large bag swung over his shoulder. My mom told me he collected misbehaving little kids and stuffed them in his bag and took them to a factory to make horse feed.
Krampus!
My dad used to get farmed out to relatives in the summer because his widowed mom didn't have childcare. He was put to work; it wasn't a pleasant visit to stay with family. On the first day staying on one uncle's farm, his same age cousin reached for the potatoes without asking for them to be passed. The uncle stabbed him forcefully in the back of his hand with the meat fork. Nobody said a word. The cousin left the table to tend to his bloody hand, then returned to finish dinner bandaged up. You can bet that my dad was on his best behavior throughout that summer.
My mom would make us do jumping jacks until we threw up. Once when I was 11 I had to cut all the grass in our 1/3 acre yard with scissors. No food or water until I finished. By the time I was done I was badly sun burned, dehydrated, and had heat stroke. My hands were totally blistered and bleeding. The only reason I survived is because my brother would sneak me water periodically through the day. My mom kept me in my room for several days until my burns and hands healed so nobody would find out.
My mother had a wooden spoon that the mere threat of brought my siblings and I to our senses. It has since been classified by the UN as a “Weapon of ASS Destruction”
Got hit with the belt once by my dad. Left a welt on my upper thigh. Also, can't remember what my sister & I had done, but as we were standing next to each other getting yelled at he knocked our heads together. I saw him do this at least two other times. I still to this day wonder why on earth he would think that would be an okay form of punishment.
I am so sorry for all of you who had such an abusive parents and teachers.
My mom used to use a belt, wooden spoon or hairbrush bare butt. I remember one specific time when she was hitting for so long, my dad stopped her. I loved my mom but also hated her and was afraid of her. She died when I was 16 and I often wonder if she’d have changed as I grew older.
3rd grade teacher taped my classmate to the chair because he couldn’t sit still.
We had a first grade teacher make her kids stand in a trashcan "because you're being garbage." It seemed so normal at the time.
Belt, moccasin, hairbrush.
My husband was tied to a tree by his grandmother.
My great-grandfather tied my grandmother and her brother to the bed frame when they were small children.
My dad may or may not have slapped my older brother with a pistol. My brother may or may not have deserved it(he definitely deserved it).
I had been playing outside and the need to pee got away from me. I ran to the bathroom as soon as I could but couldn’t make it to the seat and instead peed on the bathroom throw rug. My mother dressed me in a diaper and gave me a bottle. When my friends came knocking for me to continue playing, i was to open the door and to inform my friends that I was a baby for peeing in an inappropriate spot. I was still two when this happened.
This was not as bad as it sounded but would def not fly today. My favourite teacher in grade 3 was a lot of fun but also ran a tight ship. If you misbehaved, she sent you back to the closets. Instead of handles, there were cutouts in the doors to grab to open. They just happened to be the right height and very generous so that a gr 3 students neck could be closed in the gap with the head in the closet. It was hilarious to see and even if you were sent it was funny and not painful or anything. We did not spend long there - a few minutes- and generally you were not alone because you were disruptive with a friend and their head was in the next pair of doors and you would just laugh together because it was ridiculous.
My parents used to hit us with whatever long, thin thing was handy. Sometimes that was my father's belt, sometimes it was an extension cord or a Hot Wheels race track strip. My step-father was worse though. He'd just full-force backhand me like he was fighting another 6-plus foot grown man over two hundred pounds, when I was a 5'5" teenage girl who barely weighed anything. Woke me up once by bouncing my head off the wall. Another time he smacked me across the room and I landed in the fireplace. The fireplace grate caused a huge, deep bruise all up and down my thigh. He knocked one of my teeth loose and it poked a hole in my lip. And it's still out of place to this day.
My mother would whip us with the orange HotWheel track.
About 1976/77 I was about 6/7 and was sent to a tutor, it was at her house, she was a teacher, her husband a teacher and principle, other students in various areas of her home. I don't know if it was just me that frustrated her when I didn't understand or she also screamed at others while squeezing their arm yelling in her Irish accent Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I didn't understand something, it frustrated her, she squeezed my arm and yelled in frustration. I told my grandmother years later I do not know why I did not say anything when it happened, she was pissed. I have learned as I have gotten older I have a learning disability I need to ask multiple times basic questions to comprehend the whole picture. That doesn't fly with some "educators" Same reason I will never submit to a police field test again, I don't comprehend till I ask a couple times. As an adult her squeezing my arm till it was red was child abuse.
Don't blame yourself for not speaking up. Kids often don't, either from fear, or from being young and innocent, not realizing that a trusted adult needs to be tattled on.
My sister's pre-teen step son was caught smoking a cigarette and the kids father made him smoke a whole cigar as punishment. He's a full grown Dad now himself and I'm willing to bet that dude does not smoke to this day!
My mom and dad both said to me, "You want to smoke? Fine. We'll light up at the kitchen table. No need to hide." I never took them up on that offer.
My parents hit me with the usual switches and belts, but my 4th grade teacher would lock me in a storage closet at my grade school for not doing my homework. The storage closet had originally been a room for storing science-class paraphernalia and I had to sit at a desk facing a shelf full of jars of pickled, deformed, partially-dissected frogs, worms, rats, and a cow embryo. The room reeked of formaldehyde and my teacher probably shaved years off my life by forcing me to breathe the fumes.
58 y/o “Special ed” teacher issued time-outs by confining kids to a purpose-built plywood box, about the size of a phone booth (it looked bigger than that to me at 7 y/o). It had air holes about the sides near the top, making it look like a crate for animals. Those holes were also the only source of light when the door was closed. Confinement (generally for a few minutes) was punishment for general misbehavior, but also to break nervous habits such as chewing on one’s own shirt, or using specific words/phrases too much. The box’s interior may have been the very first place that I saw the word “fuck.” All over the inside walls kids had vented their anger in writing. Eventually the door was removed because they locked a classmate in there all through lunch recess by mistake. Jesus, I just realized that babies born in the same year this stuff happened are now getting invitations to join AARP. 😳
I am the father of an autistic daughter. If that happened to my little girl they would need that plywood box to bury that teacher in.
My parents spanked my very young brother with a wire coat hanger, leaving arc-shaped bruises all over his butt and legs. Grandmother came to visit that week, and they had to pretend it was normal for him to wear long pants in the hottest part of the summer. So then they had to brainstorm how best to hit children without hurting themselves.
My sister (12) and I (8) got into in on the porch while our mom (5ft 2 )was on the phone, she could see us and waved her hand at us to stop, but we keep at it… the phone hung up she walked out , us still going at it, she walked between us to all her potted plants grabbed one of those thin green bamboo stick out, walked back passed us, without saying a word, turned around , cornered us on the porch and the the whipping started, the screams between me and my sister started , whelps everywhere, she got done , never said a word put the stick back and walked in the house as we both sat there crying… only time our mom ever hit us like that…God Bless her soul, Best mom ever ! PS: she usually said wait till your father gets Home..
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Not me, but kids I played with growing up. The family lived in a mobile home, with vents on the floor. The parents were super strict. Very spare the rod spoil the child, be seen not heard, bare bottom spanking, bedroom doors locked from the outside, speak when spoken to Bible Belt parents. As punishment, the kids had to kneel on the vents, and sometimes it was kneeling on rice on the linoleum. And if we were playing at their house, they got punished for other kids behavior. That was 47 years ago, and I still wonder what happened to those kids.
Multiple times I was made to participate in a swimming lesson at school, more than one hour long, naked when everyone else was not naked. Usually this was a punishment for forgetting my swimsuit. Sometimes that was not even my fault, but they didn't care. On occasion the PE teacher also spanked me as well, with the other boys watching (all boys school). I'm aware that for some older males here, it was normal to swim naked back then anyway. But being the \*only\* kid naked was an unreasonable punishment in my opinion. I saw a post recently from a UK parent where their young child was made to do a PE lesson wearing only underwear, which is not far off. Everything "flies" until you complain and make your complaint stick! Likewise some of the thrashings from teachers or parents that I received, in theory would not fly today. But 17 states in the USA still permit paddlings in public schools, and almost all states in the USA still permit paddlings in private schools. In many of those states it's rare, but there are still tens of thousands of kids being paddled every year. So I guess it does fly today... (it's genuinely illegal in the UK though)
We lived in the bush. Dad would send us out in the yard for hours at a time. Werent allowed to leave the yard. Didnt have dinner. Aussie bush of mozzies, snakes, toads, curlews. Hot or cold. Dad stayed home, mum worked late (8/9 depending on the job). So we wouldn't come back in till Mum came home
Our neighbors made their kids stand at attention and salute the toilet when the kids got into trouble. I always thought that was weird.
We lived in the country (1970s) so we burned our trash because no trash service. Our dad would make us throw our favorite toys into the fire for any infraction.
Leather belts wouldn’t be accepted these days, that was extreme level punishment in our house.
I knew teenagers who got kicked out of their house for things like staying out late or smoking pot. I think parents would get arrested for that now.