How were you disciplined as a child??

Kate1949

Our nuns were The Sisters of Charity. What a joke. Marist Brothers taught in the senior school, which I didn't attend. They were just as cruel.

I don’t think the Marist Brothers were quite as vicious as the Christian Brothers!
The CB’s were renowned for their cruelty.

Something to add; we only found out when we children were adults in our 30s/40a that mum had been placed in a strict children's home when she was 5 to the age of 14, and so had no experience of a normal family life. She thought that the way she was treated there was normal and so we got the same.
It goes some way to explaining things.

My mother was a very strict disciplinarian and I remember many slaps, beatings and good hidings: being beaten with a wooden spoon and dragged by my hair across the floor. She was very short tempered and it didn't take much to rile her. Mostly I supposed I answered back or didn't agree with her about something - she couldn't stand that.
I remember one day she decided to cut my hair; I wanted to grow it and sobbed - every time I cried she hit me.
Mum was like Jekyll and Hyde, you never knew which one.you were going to get. I think with a family of 5 she thought she had to be strict and me being the eldest got most of it.

My dad was a real gentle man, and.him expressing disappointment meant more to me than physical punishment.

I vowed never to treat my children like mum did me. Neither did I shed a tear when she died.

Dad never touched me although I also got " wait till your father gets home". At the time the threat worried me to death but now I don't understand why since he never smacked and rarely shouted.
When all three of us girls , clinging to Mum's legs and demanding things she couldn't afford, started whingeing, we got the " stop crying or I'll give you something to cry for....". That was the precursor of a good smack , always on the back of the legs, never anywhere else and that shut us up. The offender or offenders then sulked in silence.
My Mum was a lovely Mum and one of the sweetest women on the planet.
That was how you did it in those days . It wasn't cruel at that moderate level and I was only ever punished when I deserved it. I didn't then and don't now resent either her or her behaviour. Everyone was treated the same way. We were all lucky enough to have good , kind parents so none of us resented it.
At school and being a girl who had been socialised to be cooperative , I was. Also it made sense. I was punished only once , with a ruler on the hand, for talking in the cloakroom. I resented it , not because of the ruler , which didn't bother me, but because I didn't actually do it and I remember it, 65 years later , because it was unjust.

I was adopted as a tiny baby, always knew, all was good till about ten, began to have opinions, my mistake, was smacked so hard by my mother, I wet myself, she stopped hitting me when I was seventeen, as I found my courage to stand up to her, telling her if she hit me just once more I would kill her, at the time I meant it, she then saw the anger in me.
I have three wonderful children whom I’ve never laid a finger on, but I did perfect a ‘don’t you dare look’. Cruelty to children is utterly unforgivable.

I am truly shocked to read of the amount of violence directed at some of you as children. It should be against all natural instincts to be violent towards someone smaller than yourself. It’s also setting a very bad example to the children involved..

Talking to my children and grandchildren they are astonished that slapping and hitting at home were normal for many of us of my age ( 73).
They are equally horrified to hear that, in school, rulers across hands, board rubbers thrown, etc were completely acceptable to teachers, and to our parents.

Our nuns were The Sisters of Charity. What a joke. Marist Brothers taught in the senior school, which I didn't attend. They were just as cruel.

I too was taught by nuns The Sisters of (NO) Mercy.
They were witches, all of them.
So there was little respite when you had an abusive home life and school life.
There was one teacher who used to drum her nails on top of your head and slam your desk lid down onto your fingers.
Like my evil parents they were all there at mass on Sunday.
I’m surprised they weren’t queuing out the door for confession.

My mother slapped me only once ever, on the back of my legs, after being inexcusably rude to her. Her punishment was usually disposal of something precious to me, a book, a toy, my bicycle, jodhpurs. When I was 14 and my first boyfriend gave me a cheap bracelet one Saturday, I came home from school on the Monday and my father told me he’d flushed it down the loo, along with my diary which he’d read first. All we’d done was kiss.

I'm very sorry for anyone who had a difficult childhood.

I was raised (with siblings) by a single mother who would be more likely to laugh at our misdemeanours, we were never spanked. She also always took our side! Not necessarily a good thing

When my brother was caned at school, she went to the headmaster and complained about it.

She always looked out for us. I miss her so.

My birth mother cleared off when I was 5 years old so I was brought up by my father and he was lovely, he slapped me once when I made a racist comment! He remarried when I was twelve she was evil verbally which has never left me!
Sticks and stones may break your bones names hurt for ever!

My mother was also a "wait til your father gets home" style parent. I was a child who was often cheeky and answered back. I was also very stubborn. My father used to wallop me with his fists, his belt or whayever came to hand, Sometimes I did not know what I was being punished for because it was no sooner a word than a blow.

My mother was more for psychological cruelts. Telling me that I was responsible for her heart condition. Or that some men were going to call on sunday to take me to a home. I was definitely the black sheep while my pretty sister was the golden princess.

I have my fathers violent temper and that was part of the reason I decided never to have children.

And some of you here wonder why some of us go low/no contact with parents when we reach adulthood.

I was the kind of child who always had my head in a book or drawing and a gentle mother and very noisy but loving dad. Lucky me, the only problem was I had no idea how to cope with school, no nursery then, I was terrified of the maths teacher waving a ruler around and lashing out. I also couldn’t understand the other children arguing and fighting amongst themselves. We were made to finish our lunches which led to me being in trouble and sent to the head, who shouldn’t have been near children. I had a couple of friends but never kept any contact with people from my schooldays.
I think now that our parents and teachers were bought up by Victorians and experienced a war. I don’t condone anything I just think it explains it

My mother had a hysterectomy for cancer with no HRT in those days. I think she got a bit frustrated at times and I got cracked with whatever was in reach just for annoying her, often a hairbrush. I was often warned for being cheeky. However the worst was she used to drag me to the local phone box and “call”the naughty children’s home and arrange for them to collect me! She would eventually “phone” them back and cancel when I promised never to be cheeky again. At school I got a table tennis bat on my backside for not having a sharp pencil on a Monday morning after pencils were sharpened on a Friday afternoon. The boy next to me had picked it up and broken it. I called myself to bring one from home but of course I forgot!
Believe it or not I was actually a quiet shy behaved child.

Well you should Kate. You are a helping others by putting your experiences into words and being willing to share. Keep going!

Thank you Greenfinch. Remarkable is the last thing I feel but it's nice of you.

I’ve just read your latest post Kate. Congratulations on surviving is all I can say. You too, are remarkable. Thanks for sharing.

What an interesting thread! A real insight into social history. BlueBelle I do admire your fortitude: an understanding of your husbands’ behaviour but not putting up with the consequences of it.
For others of you the behaviour of the nuns must have been bewildering and plain awful. It would be wrong to judge them but how to explain their behaviour! Hopefully they were in the minority and others were doing good works.

Terri. Thank you. I am sorry for your awful experiences too and everyone else who suffered. How did we get through it all? Being frightened at home and at school leaves its mark. I am a nervous wreck. I have told here before how I was taken out of class aged 7 and deloused without a word being spoken to me. Terrifying.

Oh dear, such dreadful stories!

I'm sorry so many of you suffered such abuse. 😥

I was a good child but frightened to stay at home because of my parent's mercurial tempers. It wasn't a happy marriage and I paid by being slapped across the face and head and sometimes over the side of a chair, knickers down and a leather strap applied with such force.

I was in Scotland, so the leather strap was applied to the palm of my hands. I rarely knew the reason.

I was delighted when I went to boarding school because the nuns were kind and fair. It was only holidays I was so apprehensive.

Because of my treatment into my late teens, I decided not to have children in case I ended up like them.

I was never allowed to have my own opinion, so was unable to reason or have a debate until well after I had left their clutches.

Kate1949

I agree Terri re the nuns. Mostly evil old witches. I knew school wouldn't go well as on my first day, aged 5, I was so scared I wet my pants. I was hauled in front of the class and the teacher (not a nun) said 'Look what this dirty little girl has done.'

What a horrible shaming way to treat a small child. So sorry to read about your unhappy time at home too, some of these experiences never leave us

I can remember being paralysed with fear with one particular nun who was teaching us long division and would lash out with the ruler if we didn't grasp the concept quickly enough, which just had the opposite effect. I thank God for my mum who painstakingly and patiently spent time with me at home going over it till I got it.

Yes they were a horrible lot, the nuns, and hugely damaging to many of the children who were subjected to their vitriol nothing holy about them as far as I remember.

ClicketyClick

The word Dad instilled the fear of god but it was mum who mostly did the physical bearings. This would be either with dad's big leather belt or what was called the wooden copper stick. It depended on which was nearest to hand. Sometimes after a beating I'd be put in the coal house outside no matter how cold it might have been. I wasn't locked in but knew the consequences if I came out before being told I could.

Oh dear, how terrible ClicketyClick. 💐

My mother had been a children's Nanny and she knew how to get you to 'jump to' and stop misbehaving just by the tone of her voice. As she always usually kind and cheerful it worked or she'd give me a job eg shelling peas outside in the summer or washing up to get me from 'under her feet'.
Dad used to just say "Don't upset your mother".

Mum did the slapping but Dad was very effective at showing disappointment if we went too far.

When my elder brother was teasing me badly Mum gave me a wet tea towel and told me to flick it hard at his bare legs. It worked. Thanks, Mum!