Why Parents Bully Their Children

#parents #bullying #childhood
One of the strangest and saddest phenomena of psychological life is that there are parents, too many parents, who end up - while sometimes only half realising it - bullying their own children. The bullying may take many forms. Why do parents bully their children?

FURTHER READING

“One of the strangest and saddest phenomena of psychological life is that there are parents, too many parents, who end up - while sometimes only half realising it - bullying their own children.
The bullying may take many forms. Why do parents bully their children? In short, in order to try to feel better about themselves. Because they suffer intensely in the very same area that they are bullying their child in. If we, as children, want to know what our parents were afraid of or haunted by, we only need to ask: in what areas did they bully me? What did they make me feel scared or inadequate about? Someone made them feel awful and they surmise - by twisted logic - that they will feel better through the process of making their own child feel very bad indeed; they aren’t doing it personally, the child is collateral damage to a misguided project of healing and attenuation of symptoms. It doesn’t make any sense of course, but it may actually work for the parent, for a time.”

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CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

Mike Booth

Title animation produced in collaboration with

Vale Productions

[theschooloflifetv]

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[nebana]

I wish all parents did some inner work before they become parents.

[trinaq]

It's really heartbreaking learning that your parents may have subconsciously belittled or verbally abused you growing up because they suffered the same thing in their own childhood, and they may not even recognise it as abuse.

[CraigSimmonds]

Realising that parents often hurt their kids because someone once hurt them was such a pivotal lesson for me and helped a lot with the healing process

[marianabrasil]

A lot of these people know exactly what they're doing, they just don't care because since children have almost no agency and are seem as the parent's property, they think they'll face no consequences from that behaviour. Fast forward a few years, and the now grown up children want nothing to do with their toxic parents anymore (and they wonder why no one calls or wants to visit them).

[affirmationsfortoday]

Bullying children is such a common thing where I come from, that if you try to help the child, you are attacked. Recently I witnessed a mother slap her baby. The baby started crying and was gasping for breath. When I went to speak to the woman and said, "you know this is abuse, right?" it triggered her and she started yelling at me. I was new in this place, and had moved during the pandemic, so I did not know anyone yet. This woman started a defamation campaign against me, garnering support from her friends, and spent the entire day ranting against me on the community whatsapp group. She called ME dangerous. All this because I had tried to defend her baby when she had been bullying it.

[Manu-ihzf]

Childhood is considered to be the most dangerous time in life. 🥺

[priscillapark]

"I'm not awful, something awful happened to me." Hits hard

[Itsmeshree]

To all the parents out there.
Never relate or associate love and care with bullying, cursing and insulting!!!!

[Emzo]

I’m so scared of doing anything like this to my children

[KristiContemplates]

"You think your better than me?"
Weirdly too many of these parents think that this is good parenting, namely because they were told it was how good parenting is done by their own bullies, and they never questioned it

[rastiu]

It seems a popular idea to absolve people of the harm they've cause their children because 'they were hurt too', or 'they didn't realise what they were doing'. Perhaps in some mild cases, but in cases like mine where there was a couple of decades of bullying (and more), the parent makes a conscious decision over a long period of time to take out their frustrations on their child, to feel powerful by making someone else feel weak and humiliated. It is deliberate, and the damage is caused on purpose - many parents cannot control this sadistic impulse that arises from a defect in character and personal failures. There are no excuses for bullying your own child, and I don't think anyone does it by accident.

[Alice.in.Marmalade]

Excellent video. I was bullied my my mother and grandmother every single day since I can remember until aged 21 when i finally left. Took me about 10 years of therapy to truly grasp on an emotional and not just intellectual level that there was never, ever anything wrong with me. And even though I now feel a lot of compassion towards my mother and her own suffering, I absolutely can't stand the mere thought of having her near me. I went no contact eleven years ago, and honestly don't think I will ever speak to her again.

[pollyanna]

My experience - I was bullied and abused by both parents. Abuse - sexual, physical, emotional, mental from both parents. My father began the sexual abuse on me when I was a baby of only two weeks old and continued right through into my adult years. I thought that was what parents did, I didn’t know it was abuse, I knew it hurt, that I was scared every single time, that I hated every touch - my mother joined in (under his control) and was made to do things no mother should ever do to a child. . (In my 40s when I finally recognised that it was sexual abuse, I told my Aunt + she instantly believed me. She told me that she had changed my diaper when I was 2-3 weeks old + there was blood etc + my father yelled at her for changing me + forbade her from ever changing me again. She was scared to interfere so never did anything at the time, but when I went to the police at age 42 she became a witness). Anyway, apart from the sexual abuse, the beatings, being starved, I was forced to eat everything on my plate, even if my cold mash potato made me vomit, my mother would mix my vomit into the mash potato and force me to eat it until my plate was clean. I believed I was stupid, ugly, because I’d constantly hear that my sister was the pretty one, my brother was the clever one, and I was the baby because I’d sit on the floor rocking back n forth, from toddler years right through to adulthood. Eventually, over time, I found out my father came from a sexually abusive family - all siblings (8) were sexually n physically abused by their father / my mother came from a family where her father was very strict but died when she was 11. My father was many years older than her (16) and started dating her when she was 13 and he was 29. Her mother was depressed due to her husbands sudden death so one less child to look after didn’t matter. Hence my father groomed my mother from the onset, hence her incapacity to be strong and confront him when she knew exactly what he was doing to me. By going to the Police and then through them, they arranged for therapy for me, I began to slowly recognise I needed to give myself permission to be safe, to be nurtured, to say No, no you will not abuse me anymore. Once I knew the police had ample evidence to charge my parents, I wrote to them to let them know I will no longer see them. I politely and calmly wrote about how I recognised that the abuse they did to me was not my fault, it was theirs. I let them know I will no longer keep their secrets, I will always speak out. I will become strong, safe, healthy - not because of them and not because of what they did to me, but I would become strong because I deserve to be and I had been strong from the day of my birth because I survived. Survived over 34 /thirty four years of constant abuse. I promised them that I would not just survive from then on, but I would thrive. I would rise up, fly, soar because I had the truth and their truth was out too. They could no longer hide behind our fake perfect family. The evidence was overwhelmingly strong. When they both died, I never went to their funerals. My brother n sister did. They remained controlled by them, even though they were older than me. My name wasn’t / isn’t on either parents tomb stone - my siblings didn’t put me on it as they wanted to have me invisible in the family history as it was too painful for them to face, knowing I’d told the police etc. I have never visited the graves. My aunt went one day, and let me know. I went 10 years without seeing speaking to my mother before her death and 19 for my father. I do not regret it. I had to take control of my life. I had to find my voice, to be safe, to learn how to connect to my emotions. I only went to the police in order to protect my nieces nephews from being abused in all ways. I never made a big public scene or a big family scene. Just quietly went to the police and they quietly gathered evidence. Then I sent my letter, which now that I think about it, I am surprised at how incredibly polite I was in my letter. How calm I was. How I didn’t even express anger or hate. I simply let them know the secrets were out and I was strong (etc). It’s strange what we are capable of surviving especially when we don’t recognise the war for what it is at the time, in those years of life, of growing.

[Kenan-Z]

I'm from Türkiye and this video touched a chord with me. My old-school parents were just the type of parents described in this video. I've alternated between hating and loving them because of what they did to my self-esteem and confidence. My adolescence years were a constant revolt against my "fate", full of red-hot fury that consumed all my vital energy. It took me a lot of years and lots of reading to finally understand that they just imitated what their parents had done to them. I realized that they were also victims in their own way. I was only the latest victim of a vicious cycle. Did this epiphany reduce my pain and depression? No. But my anger subsided over time and I came to "understand" (but not forgive) them. Unfortunately the scars I sustained during my childhood are still taking a severe toll on my psyche.

[nichola]

My parents haunt me, they really do. Compared to so many other abuse stories, I don't even think my experiences were 'that' bad. It was how they made me feel. My Dad was so hateful, I remember around aged 11 things taking a turn where I felt he hated on me constantly. My mum used to complain about us arguing all the time, even threatening half-heartedly to leave as if I wasn't a child but an equal partner in the verbal abuse. I had strict rules, like not being allowed to leave the house or see friends, not shower in the morning for waking him up. Eventually he had me take out a bank account which he had control of and took my student finance and loans for 'keep'. I told him I wanted my freedom at 18 and he told me nothing would change. Only by dropping out of uni and throwing everything away did I escape. He belittled absolutely everything I enjoyed, banned me from talking about them because they were 'boring'. In my early teens I used to go to bed holding a pillow over my head hoping I wouldn't wake up, it just makes me so sad for that person because she is my foundation and I am now a mess of an adult that I can't see recovering. I have severe anxiety, depression at times and I don't feel I've achieved anything of worth. They used to tell me all the time about how the 'real' world was going to be a shock because I wouldn't cope and they were so right, but I can't help but feel they had a huge part in that. :-(.

[TheMazer-pkbo]

I also think this bullying/abusing towards children by their own parents happens, because said parents take out their childhood “revenge” on their children, to avoid being jealous of their children’s lives, privileges and choices, that the parents themselves were never able to have or weren’t allowed to have.

[darthlazurus]

My father suffered abuse as a child, and his depression shows itself as anger. It took years for him tae get therapy and even admit he had depression.

He's in a much better place now.

[manubecker]

It is not only parents who bully their children although that's terrible. Generally people inflict misery on others as a form of reserving happiness to themselves by exporting outside themselves. I recall here Jean Paul Sartre's famous quote: "Hell is other people."

[john_carter]

i never bully my kids... i was so bullied by my parents i never even HAD kids