I will try to preface all of these with saying that as I write them I am 42 years old, I am mentally scarred so badly I do not work outside the home or leave it unless I am with my husband.
How you are raised will mess you up. Abuse will leave scars on a child for life, and may stunt them as they grow older. Don't do this to your kids. Listen to your kids. If they say, "That hurts me, it's not helping", please take it into consideration. Don't simply say you know what's "best" for them, because my family told me all my life they did what was "best" for me.
_
This takes place when I was in therapy, a preteen I suppose. I don't really remember, again, but I'm pretty sure drugs were already being forced down my throat for depression and they're part of why I have a lot of missing memories.
Which, of course, is a mixed blessing.
I was sitting with my mother and stepfather in the room. Mom usually took me, but he was there for some reason - I think because the therapist requested to see him at least once. She started to talk to him, about "his daughter", when he laughed embarrassingly and said,
"Oh, she's not my daughter."
I looked at the doctor with tears in my eyes, pleading, look? See? This is my fucking family. This is supposed to be my daddy. I had called him that, for certain, hugged him and loved him as a "real" father.
I shouldn't have, but, you know. Abuse. Childhood. I had no idea.
The psychologist stared at him with her mouth open. She then told me to step outside and I assumed she tore into him... but I'll never know. The only thing I do know? I had no father. I had a biological father that didn't care because he had new kids, a stepfather that was ashamed of me, and a grandfather I lived with that treated me the same. I mourn that grandfather the most, as he showed more care for me than any man did until my husband came along... but he did still call me a "fat, stupid bitch" to my face more than once.
I will try to preface all of these with saying that as I write them I am 42 years old, I am mentally scarred so badly I do not work outside the home or leave it unless I am with my husband.
How you are raised will mess you up. Abuse will leave scars on a child for life, and may stunt them as they grow older. Don't do this to your kids. Listen to your kids. If they say, "That hurts me, it's not helping", please take it into consideration. Don't simply say you know what's "best" for them, because my family told me all my life they did what was "best" for me.
_
This one is another of those "neighbor kids" stories, and this one's actually fairly short.
My family comes from Northern Italy. We were farmers there, and it's in our genes as a lot of us have super green thumbs. Well, the house I grew up on had a half acre in the back that my grandfather had painstakingly mulched and turned the sand into rich, fertile dark soil by hard work and sheer force of will.
I don't really remember much again, all I can recall is the oldest kid suggesting we play farmers and move the hay from one pile to another, spreading it somewhere. I think there was a pile in the compost, and we moved it to cover some of the garden.
Some time later my mother is yelling again. Apparently that was wrong and I was in trouble, although no one had ever told me not to do it. The neighbor kids were sent home - smirking, by the way -- and I was dragged over and over the emotional coals again until I was in tears.
I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. It was the first time I had done this action. Why did I have to be called a bad child for that? Why was it suggested I should have magically "known better"?
I will try to preface all of these with saying that as I write them I am 42 years old, I am mentally scarred so badly I do not work outside the home or leave it unless I am with my husband.
How you are raised will mess you up. Abuse will leave scars on a child for life, and may stunt them as they grow older. Don't do this to your kids. Listen to your kids. If they say, "That hurts me, it's not helping", please take it into consideration. Don't simply say you know what's "best" for them, because my family told me all my life they did what was "best" for me.
_
One day when I was young I went off to play with the neighbors. I can't recall how young I was, but you can take a guess if you know what our game was: making dirt pies.
Actually, it was more like sand pies. We lived close to the beach so dirt in most of the yards wasn't rich soil, it was sandy.
Well, we went to their backyard and turned on the hose and played. Their mother could see out out their kitchen window, and she was keeping an eye on us and smiling. Their father walked around the side at one point to leave for something work related, and he also smiled and waved cheerfully at us four kids playing happily.
Then my mother saw me.
Screaming like a horror queen she ordered me to come home right now. I knew that tone - I was in trouble. I would be in far, far worse trouble if I didn't do what she said, so I immediately went to her side. She took hold of my ear in a firm grip and pulled me in, speaking loudly in a shaming voice. I don't remember what she said but I do remember she insisted on saying I was playing "mud babies", over and over again.
It hurt.
I was at the age where I didn't want to ne a "baby". She knew this, so grinding on and on about how childish I was being she yanked me inside. The neighbor kids just stared with wide eyes.
I do recall trying to reason with her. As young as I was I was far more mature in my mind than I should have been, and I reasoned that both the other adults had seen us playing and smiled. Why was I in trouble? I didn't know I had done anything wrong!
Long story short, they were "wild Indians" and "filthy" and "I should have known better".
I heard "mud babies" the rest of the night as she humiliated me with it as my grandfather and stepfather came home, each time being subjected to the torture although I had already promised never to do "that" again.
There's many a Rugrats episode where the babies make mud pies. It makes my stomach hurt when I see them.
