Some of us were lucky enough to get both kinds!
Do both at the same time by getting your kids to go pick the switch (young, thin tree branch that’s still bendy) that they’re going to be whipped with!
-a huge portion of southern parents
Had a weeping willow tree in the front yard. Been there done that!
I remember this! My sister’s legs were bleeding.
All boils down to chronic anxiety. Verbally abusing your kids raises their anxiety and stunts their development.
Similarly, children who are chronically bullied by their neighbors, perpetually harassed by the local police or mall security, abused by child care workers, or subject to an anxious environment (malnutrition, chronic illness, unreliable/impoverished caretakers, war-time violence and social conditions) develop poor mental health into adulthood.
On the flip side, adults who are sleep deprived, impoverished, overworked, subject to harassment from police or debt collectors, terrified by social panics and media-driven hysterias, and deprived of basic health care for themselves or those in their care will show more signs of their own stress and mental well-being. That can often manifest in a short temper, angry outbursts, fits of depression or anxious sobbing, and emotional neglect towards those around them.
Stabilize the life and well-being of the caregivers and you can often radically improve the quality of life of the children in their care.
Furthermore, the prevalence of physical abuse halved from about 20% among those born between 1950 and 1979 to 10% among participants born in or after 2000. However, for verbal abuse, the prevalence increased from 12% among those born before 1950 to about 20% among those born in 2000 or later.
“Any gains made in reducing physical abuse risk being undone by rising rates of verbal abuse. We must act now to confront the lasting harm caused by cruel, critical or controlling language. We need to build children up – not knock them down. The mental health of the next generation and our shared future depend on it.”
Both my parents were physically and mentally abusive. When I was around 16, I was too big for my mom to hurt me much, and I was almost on par with my dad, so them being physically violent was reduced, as it started to be consequential for them. Nothing ever stopped them from being cruel, manipulative, or spiteful to me.
I think it’s a lot easier to justify to one’s self that you aren’t abusing someone when you aren’t physically hurting them. They’re “just words” after all. But when I wasn’t being hit, it was mostly over. It still sucked that I knew I couldn’t trust them, but without active physical assault, not much is going on. But when you tear into a person’s conscious and subconscious, I always thought that stuff keeps hurting long after the action is done. I remember just a handful of times I was hurt physically really bad, but some of the hate and insults from 20-30 years ago still have effects on me from time to time.
I got help for my depression a few years back now, and have largely moved on, but what was done to me absolutely has left lifelong issues for me. All you others in this thread that have been through similar, I hope you’re all at least doing alright today. None of us deserved what we got taken out on us.
I remember a speaker from when I was about 11-12 doing an assembly about the power of words. They used a metaphor of a plank of wood, and every insult is a hole drilled into it - it doesn’t go away.
The intent was to reduce bullying, but I remember walking away thinking, “I must have nothing but wood shavings left over by now.”
I’m sorry you went through what you did. Some things truly never leave you.
Kids really can go through a lot and everyone just acts like we have to move on. In a way that’s true, as it’s the only real option, but people that went through stuff didn’t ask for it.
Me and my brother still don’t get why our parents ever had us. We just got treated like big inconveniences and they fought with each other and just sucked us into their misery.
I’m as far past stuff as possible now, like in your analogy, what’s done is done, and I’m better than I was at my worst, but it really grinds me and my brother that they will never acknowledge they should have been better for us. It’s like, you did this to us, and while you can’t fix it, you’re still blaming us for not being what we could have, but you guys were the ones tearing us down our whole lives.
They get all upset when we go a long time without talking, but I say you didn’t want us when we were there and needed you. Now we’re on our own and you’re upset you don’t have a more inclusive role in our lives? We were forced to live without you, other than being scared of you, be glad you get this much.
Ugh, I forget what my point was, but I liked your story. 😂. Wood shavings gang unite!
Sorry your parents suck
They’ve mellowed out a bit and I can see them a few times a year, but we’ll never be close. It’s very odd seeing my girlfriend’s family be so close with each other, especially as they tend to get loud and argumentative, but still like each other a lot. It just confuses my brain.
Me and my brother are close though, and I have some good friends and a great girlfriend, so I have the family I want in a way. It’s not the same, but I make it work.
I wonder how much of this overlaps with Sunday sermons. Surely all those “you’re going to hell” messages classify as verbal abuse in this case.
Especially when your dad is delivering the sermons. I’ve heard.
Thankfully my dad was not a hellfire and brimstone pastor, unlike my uncle, whose kids almost all hate him.
My dad was, my brother followed in his footsteps, and I had two uncles who were pastors, too. Because fuck me, I guess.
Damn, god must’ve called on a partly line.
As I recall it, my Grandpa said God called him and he didn’t pick up. I narrowly missed the “call,” too.
I was lucky to get both physical and verbal abuse from my family, so I’m just a grown up mess now.
I am glad to see the studies come out that validate these experiences on a more empirical level.
I read a comment recently explaining that a child’s nervous system cannot differentiate between pain or threat of pain inflicted due to discipline or pain or threat of pain inflicted due to abuse and honestly that changed something in my head. Like. It doesn’t matter if the kid knows they have done something wrong and understands that there’s a punishment as a result. The nervous system cannot tell the difference.
Can confirm.
Can confirm…
And then their kids grow up with parents that don’t make a sound when they move around the house (developed skill to not be noticed and subsequently harassed/abused) and they develop hyper vigilance and have to try re-learn how to relax when living on their own.
Break the cycle.
Use your parents skills and your hyper vigilance to instead make something better.
It’s time for you to have kids and start a new ninja clan 🥷
You don’t say.
Ikr? Called my kid a useless pos would effect him how would have guessed.
Checking in ✋
I’m glad that verbal abuse is getting the spotlight it deserves, but we should include emotional abuse too. I’ve always heard about verbal about but not emotional abuse.
yup
Yep+1
:o
No way
I can attest to that.
Indeed.
