I have to get off topic for this blog for a hot sec because this has been eating away from me for hours now. Yeah, I watched the DaddyOfFive videos, and then their “explanation” video in which one of the kids said (which sounded suspiciously like parroting to me) “We’re not being beaten, like most kids.” Not only does this line sound force-fed (kids do not have awareness of what ‘most kids’ go through in their homes) but it also makes my blood boil because this clearly means that these parents think that if it isn’t physical, it isn’t abuse.
I moved out when I was 18, and I mean days after I turned 18. For reference, my birthday is May 6th. On May 6th 2010, I turned 18. A few days later on May 15th, I graduated high school. On May 16th, the day after I graduated, I flew halfway across the country to move in with internet friends with nothing but two suitcases full of my belongings. My mother was livid at me. How could I leave her like that, and so soon? How could I hate her? Had I been planning to move out so soon?
Well, yeah, I had been. To the detriment of my studies, I got a job waiting tables when I was 17 so I could make money and afford a plane ticket to get the hell out of dodge as soon as I had my diploma in my hands. I even tricked my mother in to signing a document for me so I could have her signature, that I then forged on an application for a passport. I didn’t know how far I was going as soon as I came of age, I just knew that wherever I was going it wasn’t far enough. And why?
In my entire family, I was the “odd” one. I didn’t like things most kids my age liked, I was quiet and reserved and very shy. I lashed out easily when provoked. I didn’t like feminine things to the dismay of my very traditional grandparents. I had one sister, however, who fit their image perfectly. So did my cousins, my aunts, my uncles. Naturally, I became the butt of jokes from my family. And when I didn’t find them funny or became upset at the cruel things they would say and do to me, I was told, like Cody in those videos, that I simply “couldn’t take a joke”.
But you want to know the shitty thing? They couldn’t either. They didn’t like being pranked. They didn’t like being made fun of. They didn’t find it cute or funny. But when they did it to me, I was supposed to take it as playful jesting, even though I pleaded with them for years to leave me alone. The mother in the videos becomes explosively mad when they prank her, but then she turns around and does it to her children. Does she not think they feel the same way?
It wasn’t just pranking either. A lot of behavior I saw in their videos (I watched more than one, sadly), are really gross things I lived through myself. I know first hand how damaging they are:
They say hurtful and dismissive things. One of the earliest memories I have of my mother being unnecessarily cruel to me was when I was very very young, and for some reason or another I was excited about something. It was during family Christmas so all the adults were gathered in the living room, and I ran in to tell my mother my story. Literally mid-sentence, as I was talking, she looked away and struck up a casual conversation with my uncle. I was upset, why would she interrupt me? I asked her as much and she said, “I got bored and didn’t care anymore.” As a little kid I was crushed, that was so hurtful to me. You couldn’t even begin to care? To this day this has affected me – I get really withdrawn and irate when people interrupt me. Your actions have consequences when they are acted upon young, impressionable children.
They pit one child against another. The other kids are constantly hitting and pranking the others, with most of their cruel attention focused on Cody. Growing up in a household with my mother, my sister, and me, it was always like we were in the middle of some game. Two people would gang up on the other. My mother actively encouraged it. If she was pissed off at you, the best way to get her off your back was to tell her why she should be pissed at the other kid instead. And if me and my sister were mad at each other, we would do anything to get our mother on our side to “punish” the other. One time, after my sister and I had fought, I was getting something out of the freezer in the kitchen, just as my sister was getting something out of the fridge. I was about to go to close the door when my sister stood up and knocked her head on the freezer door quite hard. The impact made the freezer door fly open again and to stop it from hitting and denting the wall I grabbed it. She started screaming and crying and my mother walked in, saw me holding the door, and assumed I had slammed it on her head on purpose. My mother hit me, screamed at me, and told me she would take away everything I owned and then hit me and screamed at me some more. And my sister just stood by and let all of this happen as she watched. She didn’t speak up or say ANYTHING as I was getting verbally and physically abused. In fact, she didn’t come clean about it until a week later. And why? She said she wanted to punish me for whatever argument we had had earlier. And my mother for her part never apologized either, she simply said she was “doing her job”.
My sister also concocted story about me drinking with friends at a party when I was fifteen, and my mother grounded me for four months even though she had no proof I had been drinking (I hadn’t been). I wasn’t allowed to see or talk to friends, go on the computer, watch movies or tv, or EVEN READ A BOOK. I pleaded with her for months to the point of exhaustion, tears, and complete withdrawal that I hadn’t done anything wrong, but she never believed me. And when did my sister finally admit to my mother she had made it all up? Years later, when I was 21 years old. Why had she done it? My mother was mad at her for lying about being with a boy. She wanted to distract my mother by showing her that I was the “worse” child.
This taught me and my sister to shift and deflect anger on to others when we feel threatened, and she still does this to this day. And I can’t really blame her – when you grow up learning how to prevent abuse (in this case by throwing it on someone else) it becomes a sort of defense mechanism. That was her way of personally dealing with the abuse in our household, and people don’t think that these kids in the DaddyOfFive household aren’t going to grow up having issues with proper social interaction?
They also clearly say that Cody is not ‘alright’. In their Disney video, they talk about how they did not take Cody on a family trip to Disney because he was in trouble for defecating and smearing his feces in the bathroom. This is NOT NORMAL BEHAVIOR, EVEN FOR A CHILD! Children do not act out like this unless they are severely STRESSED or mentally disturbed in some way. They literally told the entire world that Cody did something commonly associated with mentally ill individuals, and then turn around and claim that their ‘pranks’ have no affect on his mental well-being. When I was a child, I would have incredibly manic episodes where I would behave erratically. My mother just called me a problem child, and then would wonder why I was going from erratic, abnormal behavior to being severely depressed for days on end. Turns out when I sought mental help when I was 20, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. When I was finally medicated, it was like all of my behavioral problems disappeared. I felt normal – after years and years of being told that I was a “problem child”. In reality I was “acting out” from the stress my home life was putting on me.
They incite their kids to normalize abuse by rewarding them. In their “explanation” video, the children say that they won’t stop making videos because they get money and gifts from fans for them. These kids are literally being bribed – and they are suffering from some really horrific Stockholm syndrome. They don’t enjoy being pranked and being verbally assaulted, but if they put up with it they get rewarded with material things, things that children LOVE. If the videos stop, they don’t get toys anymore, and to young children that’s everything. It’s so fucking disgusting that these people would use that in their video and say that their kids “want” to do it. And in that video, Cody, who gets the brunt of most of their abuse, doesn’t really seem all that convinced that he enjoys it.
Watching those videos were especially painful to me as someone who grew up in a household of unapologetic abusers. The worst part is that these kids are going to grow up, especially Cody, and carry this abuse around with them forever. They will always perform their actions based on their experiences. They will form relationships and either treat their s/o’s or children the same way (”I went through it and turned out fine!”) or they will attempt to normalize abuse thrown their (or their children’s) way. I did the latter for years. I allowed myself to be in emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive relationships because I was just used to it.
And to this day my mother still wonders why I left home so early. Why I never come home to visit unless it’s for an occasion I have to attend – I went home for my sister’s wedding a few weeks ago and I literally landed the night before the wedding and flew out the morning after it. My family was upset that I didn’t stick around to ‘hang’ out with them, but the last time I did anything with them I was once again subject to their cruel intentions.
It was at Christmas, and my sister and cousins wanted to go out clubbing. I told them I didn’t want to go because I get super ‘handsy’ when I get drunk, which I don’t like. Well, I was guilted in to going anyways and of course I got drunk. I started making out with random men and allowed one to grope me and buy me drinks (all while my sister, who should have been protecting me, stood by!) that could have easily been roofied, and the next morning after I woke up with a killer headache and a mounting feeling of shame and disgust, I walked in to the living room and my entire family was LAUGHING at me. Turns out my sister and my cousins had filmed my escapades as they were all unfolding and had sent multiple videos of me embarrassing myself to all of their friends and my entire family. I once again, at 24 fucking years old, was the butt of the joke in my idiotic family. After voicing my concerns and fears to them, they turned around and used that to make fun of me. I was devastated.
And they wonder why I hate them. Why I don’t like them. Why I don’t want to spend time with them. Why I moved away as soon as I was legally allowed to (after running away from home as a minor more times than I can remember) and moving in with my “internet” friends. I remember my mother told me that friends made on the internet are not “real” friends, that family is forever, family is blood, family is all you “really” have. And yet – when I was growing up in a rural town after my mother married my abusive step father and moved up to bumfuck nowhere and she wasn’t ever around and he wasn’t ever around and my sister was always driving around with her best friend and I was left alone literally 18 hours out of the day every day with nothing to entertain me but the internet and the friends I made on there, those friends became closer to me than my so-called family ever was. And I still TO THIS DAY, seven years later, live with those same friends. (I love @snugglysoju with all of my heart.) They stick up for me now when my family berates me. Without my stupid dumb not-real-friends internet buddies, I would have nothing. I would have had to stay in an abusive household for god knows how long.
There was so much more – my entire childhood was a nightmare from start to finish. Physical, mental, verbal abuse. All of it. I saw so much of myself in those kids, especially Cody, in that video. It’s sickening, and the worst part is that unfortunately getting him out now won’t even help him as much as we hope it will. The damage has been done. He’s learned unhealthy coping mechanisms already and they will affect him later in life.
If you’re going to abuse someone, at least have the balls to own up to it and admit you’re an asshole. Don’t hide behind “it’s just a prank, bruh” to justify your sociopathic shortcomings.
This whole situation is fucked, but all I want is for this dad and mom to read stories like this, like mine. Maybe hearing from other people who were treated this way as children will help them understand that what they are doing is absolutely damaging AND abuse. I just want them to be forced by a judge to read open letters like these. I want all parents to. And I want all the kids in these kinds of situations, where their abuse is overlooked because it “isn’t physical” or is seen as “toughening up” or “building character” to know they aren’t alone and it isn’t fucking normal.
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