She thinks its not verbal abuse, I say it is!

[PandorasBox]

A mother is on the phone with someone and starts to yell at her child. Her child is getting on her nevres by not listening. So the mother says, to the person on the phone, not TO the child, but infront of the child, which is bascially the same thing. Mother says about her daughter, "Shes getting on my F'ing nerves (actaully says the word), and shes acting like a a little bitch! She better sit down and shut her mouth or I'm gonna beat her ass. I don't know what the F*ck her problem is."

 

Now this is something the mother pretty much always says/does about her child. The mother is pretty hateful in her words towards the child. In comes the dad, he hears the mother saying these things to the child, the child is pretty much arguing with mother, yelling at the mother telling her not to talk to her that way etc. The father then puts his 2 cents in by saying, "You both have some issues. You both need to work on things, and learn to talk better to each other. However as he saying this to the child and mother, he is cussing F this and F that himself. Telling them theya reboth F'ed up in the head. He places alot of blame on the mother for the way she talks/handles things with the child, but yet he handles. things pretty much the same way.

 

They end up going to family counseling. The father tells the counselor what it is the mother says to the child. The mother tells the counselor the same thing that the father does. The counsleor comes right out and tells both parents, "If you don't stop with the way you talk to you child, and the way you go about handling things, you're going to have a hard time later on when she is a teen. She will think thats the correct way to handle things in life and realtionships. He even told them itspossible she will fall in with a not so good crowd looking for attention or reassurance from people for not feeling that at home. The mother then speaks up and says to the counselor, "I don't talk TO my child like that." The counselor then says, "But you talk INFRONT of her to others about her, while shes standing right there, and you telling someone else shes a bitch etc, am I correct?" The mother says, "Yes but its not the same." The counselor says, "oh but it is, pretty much the same thing. And if you think by telling me its differtent you're looking for some justifcation in your behavior towards child, then you are sadly mistaken."

 

The parents agree to stop their behavior infront of the child. 2 weeks pass, it starts up again. I shared this story becasue this is my sisters situation. I feel really bad for the child who is 7 years old. Both parents were shown and told some effective ways to get their point across, without being rude, hateful cussing etc, and they still do this behavior. I have talked with my sister about this, and to this day, she says shes not doing anything wrong. She does not see its verbal abuse. She thinks unless shes point blank talking to the child or calling the child names then it might be abuse. She justifys it by saying she doesn't say things like that directly to her, but infront of her to others. I think thats pretty much the same thing as well. I just feel bad for my neice. I think shes gonna have a hard road ahead of her becasue of her parents. Its sad to say the least.

 

If you were a child of verbal abuse, how did you turn out? Did you have a hard road? Only we have the power to change who we are or how we act, no matter what our parents have said or done, but are there any out there that had a hard road? Or any whose life was pretty good reguardless of what their parents said/did?

[a4a]

If you can you may want to intervene and talk with the child and explain that your sister has some issues and she is not to blame ect. It will help more than you may think. Don't make your sister out to be a monster but just assure the child that they are good and she can come and talk to you when she needs to.

 

It is abuse. She is telling her daughter she is "bad/worthless".... regardless if she does so directly or just in front of her. The father is not helping and they both are setting an example to deal with conflict with anger and not in a calm manner with respect.

 

The C is right..... they are creating a huge problem later down the road. I would bet that this probably will turn physical in a short time as well.

[PandorasBox]

I agree. I can be on the phone with her and she will start in with the child, calling her name(she has said things TO her before, not just INFRONT of her to others) but she will start cussin at her saying she needs to stop acting like a bitch etc. Shes 7 years old for goodness sake! I will then say to my sister, "Look, I'm not going to listen to this, call me back when or if you are done talking like that. " It doesn't make a hill of beans, to her what I say, a few days later I'll be talking to her and she starts again. I'm not real sure why she says these things, our parents didn't talk to us like this. The only thing I can figure is maybe she got it from her husband. He is just as bad as she is. He will tell her to talk better to the child, but yet its like calling the kettle black, he does it too.

[JackJack]

1. Yes its verbal abuse.

 

2. If your sister didn't learn this behavior from your parents as you say, then chances are it was learned from her husband or possbily someone else she was around. Its still not an excuse.

 

3. Unfortunalty until your sister and her husband come to terms with the fact it is abuse and change their ways, it will probably continue.

 

4. Its POSSIBLE, the child will grow up and not have any major issues with what has been said/done to her.

 

5. Its also POSSIBLE, that she WILL have major issues from all that was said/done to her.

 

6. I bet if if it was video taped and got in the hands of the authroities, she would possibly be removed from the home.

 

7. Some people just don't need kids.

[tinktronik]

1. Yes its verbal abuse.

 

2. If your sister didn't learn this behavior from your parents as you say, then chances are it was learned from her husband or possbily someone else she was around. Its still not an excuse.

 

3. Unfortunalty until your sister and her husband come to terms with the fact it is abuse and change their ways, it will probably continue.

 

4. Its POSSIBLE, the child will grow up and not have any major issues with what has been said/done to her.

 

5. Its also POSSIBLE, that she WILL have major issues from all that was said/done to her.

 

6. I bet if if it was video taped and got in the hands of the authroities, she would possibly be removed from the home.

 

7. Some people just don't need kids.

This always disturbs me to see , the faint .."will be taken away from those horrible parents" statement. Yes this is verbal abuse. But if you take action , where will she be taken away to? I'll tell you , a series of ever changing foster homes , many very likely where shes subjected to more than she is previously , perhaps she'll go to an institution ? Where is it that you think she'll go? To some wonderful people's home where everything will be better and no one will ever be mean to her again. Get real. and before you make the faint sugestion that children should be shuffled around by the STATE who dosn't really give a crap beyond peices of papers that have to be filled out to complete their files , you should know what your suggesting .Would you think it was better to have a child subjected by a distant mother who used degrading comments , or a agency that loses them and has no liability?

[JackJack]

This always disturbs me to see , the faint .."will be taken away from those horrible parents" statement. Yes this is verbal abuse. But if you take action , where will she be taken away to? I'll tell you , a series of ever changing foster homes , many very likely where shes subjected to more than she is previously , perhaps she'll go to an institution ? Where is it that you think she'll go? To some wonderful people's home where everything will be better and no one will ever be mean to her again. Get real. and before you make the faint sugestion that children should be shuffled around by the STATE who dosn't really give a crap beyond peices of papers that have to be filled out to complete their files , you should know what your suggesting .Would you think it was better to have a child subjected by a distant mother who used degrading comments , or a agency that loses them and has no liability?

 

 

Point taken, and you make take it however you like. I have no clue where the child would be placed if taken away. Yes its sad this type of thing happens alot. You're correct there are some homes that are worse, than where the child already is, but there are some good ones too. As a matter of fact, Dr.Phil (which i must have been hard up for a tv show that day) had some parents on there who were this way with their child. He flew hot, and gave them a warning after seeing a vid placed in the home, that if they didn't get their act together with how threated their kid, then he would call the authorities by the end of the show.Of course knowing him he could pull some stings and get the child placed in a better home possibly. Unfortunatly that doesn't work for all.

[tinktronik]

Point taken, and you make take it however you like. I have no clue where the child would be placed if taken away. Yes its sad this type of thing happens alot. You're correct there are some homes that are worse, than where the child already is, but there are some good ones too. As a matter of fact, Dr.Phil (which i must have been hard up for a tv show that day) had some parents on there who were this way with their child. He flew hot, and gave them a warning after seeing a vid placed in the home, that if they didn't get their act together with how threated their kid, then he would call the authorities by the end of the show.Of course knowing him he could pull some stings and get the child placed in a better home possibly. Unfortunatly that doesn't work for all.

Your right Jack, there are a FEW good homes , unfortunatly , the way the system is set up , children get shuffled out of the Good foster homes as fast as they go in . You see a lot of things on TV , you won't see the truth of the System on Dr. Phil.

[Alexandra]

It is emotional abuse indeed. I've both lived through it and had many people in therapy who did. There's no telling what the end result in an adult really is, it depends on many factors.

 

While I agree you can provide an emotional safety net for the child by being there later on when she will need more support I strongly advise against expressing what another poster suggested to the girl, especially at such an early age. It will serve for nothing other than make a bad situation worse. Your best bet in helping is keeping up the work in convincing her parents they need help to deal with the issues that make them treat their own child as such.

[Grrlish]

If you were a child of verbal abuse, how did you turn out? Did you have a hard road? Only we have the power to change who we are or how we act, no matter what our parents have said or done, but are there any out there that had a hard road? Or any whose life was pretty good reguardless of what their parents said/did?

 

I was physically and verbally abused by my single mother. She used to tell me and my two siblings that we had ruined her life by being born, that she wished we'd never been born, all kinds of great stuff like that.

 

I am a confident adult woman now but I spent a lot of years struggling with extremely low self-esteem, wasted a lot of years doing drugs because I never thought I could make anything better of my life, and felt as if I had no right to take up room on this planet. I thought that no one every really liked me and I never felt like 'one of the gang' even though I had a lot of friends. I always felt like an outsider...different.

 

Personally, I think that the verbal abuse was worse than the physical abuse, although combined, I'm sure they had a cumulative effect on my self-esteem. But it may be difficult for me to separate the two since I was experiencing them both.

 

Yes, as we get older, we need to take responsibility for dealing with the crap that we went through as children if we want our lives to change and get better, but for some of us it was a long hard intentional road.

 

The child's mother needs to understand that she is teaching her child to accept abuse as an adult. She is setting her child up to be abused by men. Actually, she is setting her daughter up to be pushed around by life, in general but perhaps the understanding that she is setting her daughter up for an entire LIFE of being abused by men might be heard a little more clearly. And there is no way to say that the abuse she'll be willing to accept as a grown woman will end with verbal abuse. She is also training her daughter how to eventually treat her own children - your sister's future grandchildren.

 

Your sister need to get some counseling. She obviously has some issues of her own and she is inflicting them on her daughter.

[vampress1]

I don't have any personal experience to reference here, but I can tell you how it made me feel to read what your neice is going through. It would make me incredibly sad to hear my mother speak about me to another person that way. I would also be extremely embarrassed.

Your sister may not be willing to accept the term "abuse", but surely she can accept that what she says makes her daughter sad. If, as you Perhaps aproaching it from a different angle might make the point stick.

Like I said, I have no reference point here, just a thought.

[RecordProducer]

I think it takes more to call something abuse. My mom would say all kinds of hurtful things to my kids. I hated it. But the kids never took her seriously. They even told me once: "Well that's what grandma is like! " They absolutely adore her. Of course, it influenced their behavior too - they became impatient, rude when they thought something was not their way, etc. But they are good, happy kids.

 

Their other grandma doesn't call them names, but they hate her because she is cold and reserved to them.

 

What I am saying is - if there is balance, the kids will feel loved and will eventually respond as loved people. Of course, calling your child names is very bad, but it's not so terrible as being cold and cruel and nothing else.

 

Hubby doesn't allow hitting or screaming at the kids. He is like those books, but it's easy for him since he has natural authority inside him. He also spoils them like no one else... geez!