There’s one thing I see so many parents (cishet dads especially in my personal experience but this is no way limited to them) say and it goes; “We’re having a great day, then one or both the kids start acting up and that’s it. That’s all I’m going to remember of that great day and it ruins it and it pisses me off.” And so much of the time I hear this when I’m listening to these men EXCUSE BEATING THEIR CHILDREN.
Yeah your kid acted up. NO, they does NOT deserve to have their ‘ass beat’ as so many people in my area at least say. Even if that’s a threat you tell the kid to get them to straighten up and you don’t intend to hit them, YOU ARE THREATENING YOUR CHILD WITH PHYSICAL HARM. Even if it’s not that extreme and it’s just a spanking, YOU. ARE. THREATENING. YOUR. CHILD. I don’t know how to explain to people that that’s fucked up.
And why are you doing this? Because the kid acted up for five minuets and ruined your nice day? Are you, a grown ass adult, admitting that one tiny incident is enough to emotionally wreck you to the point that you need to physically hit your child? You have such little emotional control, that a child acting like a child is enough to destroy all the nice memories you made that day? Because if so you’re not a fucking adult you’re a toddler in big kids clothes and you need to grow the FUCK up.
My dad did this but he didn’t hit/spank me over it, instead he withheld the enjoyable activity forever citing the same argument. I threw a tantrum in the grandstands of a county fair rodeo at age four after losing my new stuffed animal and 15 years later he still brings up how I ruined rodeos for him forever with that memory of “how I ruined the fair for everyone” and he never went with the family to any fair events ever since. That’s one example of very, very many.
That’s not as bad as hitting your kids over it, but it’s still incredibly immature and possibly even emotionally abusive (that was a lighter example but apply the same logic to something a little more serious? Yeah they do that too) instead of physically abusive and is that really much of an accomplishment?? “Oh I didn’t hit you but I turned my disappointment that this situation didn’t go as I planed and turned it into YOUR fault and YOU’RE why I can’t have nice things like the rodeo.” Hear that your whole childhood and tell me it’s not potentially damaging, similar to how being hit by your parent is. Both are saying with words or actions, ‘YOU are the problem, I could have had a nice day if it wasn’t for YOU’, the hitting version with the added trauma. The parent isn’t reflecting on how nice the rest of the day was, not thinking about how a child being a child and having a moment ruined their whole day and that’s an over reaction, they’re placing all the blame on a child and sulking about it. Yes, SULKING. That’s exactly what they’re doing.
If a parent or any adult is doing this, they need to grow the fuck up. Children are developing. Excitement can turn into tantrums, bad behavior, over excitement like yelling and rough housing, very quickly. That’s part of development. It’s the parent’s JOB to teach them to control themselves by explaining to them what the problem is, by teaching coping mechanisms to deal with stuff that’s causing too much strong emotion that could end up causing problems. They learn through what they’re shown. When you react like that they learn nothing or worse, they think they’ve ruined something nice and if you KEEP giving that kind of lesson take-away to a child they could turn that into low-self esteem or even self hate. Like, ‘I ruined these nice things we all liked, I suck, I’m bad, I ruin everything.’ Maybe it’s hard to understand that line of thought, but again, children are still developing, their brains work differently.
So anyway don’t fucking take it out on your kids when something doesn’t go your way on a nice family day. It happens. It doesn’t negate the good parts of the day. Grow up.
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