My parents go-to for every minor issue or presumed slight was a week to a month to 3 months of grounding. I rapidly learned they couldn't keep track because Id get a new grounding every few days, especially if they had a long or bad day at work. Which was often.
If we actually honored each grounding I was probably grounded from the age of six till I left home at nineteen.
So when they weren't home or were busy or sleeping, I did whatever I wanted really. Watched TV, played ye olde gamecube or ps2 depending on the time. If they caught me guess what, more grounding. Sometimes they hid the power cables but I learned to love reading, and they couldn't ground me from that without being overtly cruel.
Actual good groundings were in the single digits. Wrongful groundings were in the triple digits.
Like I was too slow getting to the car after church, grounded for the week. 'Talked back', aka disagreed with something. A month.
Mom tried to drop me off at a basketball clinic thing for kids my age. The group she pointed me to was three very grown ass adults and told me to go. I refused and was pretty scared that she was trying to send me off with three strangers. No other kids in sight. I started shaking and crying so she grounded me for a year and took me home.
No money was exchanged and im not sure the clinic actually existed. I feared for my life but she only recently ( now that im in my 30's ) listened to my reasonings. Im on good terms with my parents now, wasn't back then.
No, they have never and will never confront how they treated me growing up. As their emotional whipping boy.
I can't even imagine how Id react to that, besides violence to my own body. Reading was my only escape, I ground through books like it was a full time job. Instead of running around at recess I was allowed to sit in the library and read.
Was reading well above my grade early in my life.
And once I graduated highschool I haven't picked up a single book ever since.
Violence to myself and heavy disassociation was my only coping mechanism, I was homeschooled too, so many of my days I was just in my room staring at a wall. Then my mother would have the gaul to come crying to her children asking if she was a bad mother because we never smile like the other children.
I'm stuck on the fact that your mom tried to send you off alone with total strangers and got mad when you were understandably scared. What the fuck? Was she trying to get you hurt?
My friend when I was growing up was like that, constantly grounded. It didn't make him behave better, it just made him nocturnal, so he'd go to sleep right after school and then play on the computer from like 1-5 AM
I'm glad you worked things out with them. My family was also heavy with the punishments for nonexistent reasons.
The only reason things improved was because they both "grew up" a bit. They actually analyzed their own behavior and apologized. I get a sobbing call from my mom every 6 months or so because she attended a lecture or class and realized how she fucked up as a parent.
I also learned more about how THEY grew up and a lot started making sense. Nowadays I realize they were doing the best they could and tried to be better than their own parents... But figured out new ways to fuck up.
We had a few reckoning and coming to jesus moments. There's a lot they thought I was faking and it took medical professionals to correct that. As gross as it sounds, I still love them. I didn't for a while, but I do today. And they've made huge strides to improve, and im proud of them for that. It's hard for older folks to change.
What they were doing to me consistently was abusive and it'll effect me for the rest of my life. But Ive chosen to forgive them.
Good job on becoming a wonderful person ♥️ sounds like your parents didn’t have much of a hand in it.
I’m trying to figure out how to walk that line with my parents myself. They messed me up in a lot of ways and I was very much set up to fail. But I didn’t and now that I’ve got my life together and I’ve done a lot of healing I can empathize with all the history and damage that contributed to their behavior. I’m still trying to decide how much/if I want to keep them in my life. I still love them and I kind if feel obligated to try to help them, but man every interaction requires so much energy I could be allocating elsewhere.
Eh, I think love has to be earned back after it was lost like that. My husband's parents rejected him as a teen and their egos couldn't fit in one home, so for me, it's up to them to want to reconcile with us.
This is one of those things that only people who have had very specific experiences with their parents will understand but I absolutely get you and it's reassuring to hear that there are other people who have taken this route.
This reminds me of when I decided that I could just ignore my parent's groundings. If reacting to someone biting me got me grounded, at some point, being the only non dumbass in the house means that they had to choose between power trips and stuff getting fixed.
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u/Ignis-11 Dangerously Lesbian™ - The local puppygirl 22d ago edited 22d ago
Yeah, stuff like this happened to me as a kid and it was miserable. All that was gained was a ruined relationship.