Sorry beyond sorry for your personal hell. No one, especially no child, should ever be subjected to that.

Best wishes for healing and for some sense of peace, if you can ever find it.

I was spanked as a child, and had religious fundamentalist bullshit shoved down my throat from a very early age. I wasn't left with any physical scars, but the emotional scars will be with me for life.

That's the one that hit my mother right in her gut because it's what she said to her abusive father.

She never beat me after that. I'll give her credit for that. I was eight.

My dad hit us too. Often. He only stopped once I threatened him with calling the child abuse hotline (we had learned about it in school). I would've been 11 or 12 or so. He's mellowed in his old age and is a good grandfather for the most part (he knows if he ever laid a hand on my kids, he'd never see any of us again, I've told him that much) and even though he understands he was abusive, he still tries to excuse it. "I thought I was being nice, because my mom used a broom on me and I was only using an open hand on you" is his usual excuse (his dad NEVER ever hit him, and he couldn't take THAT lesson?)

I can't get over it. I think I had PTSD as a toddler - my earliest memory of him was him hitting me. Over and over again. I even remember why. He bought me some wax crayons and I was coloring with them. I pressed too hard on one, and it broke into 2. I thought, "Wow! now I have *2* crayons! Cool! If I break each one in half, I'll have DOUBLE the crayons!" And I broke each one in half. Of course, he figured I was just destroying things and that I "didn't appreciate what I was given". And when I told my mom about remembering it (as a teen) she said I couldn't have been more than 18 months old. WHO DOES THAT to a year old toddler? It wasn't as if he couldn't talk with me - I was talking in full sentences by then. It was so traumatic for me that I remember every detail! I remember HATING him when I was growing up. Crying every night because I ended up with HIM as a dad. Praying he'd die, then he wouldn't hit me anymore. Walking on eggshells because I wasn't sure what could get me in trouble - the rules changed daily depending on my dad's mood.

Yes, there was emotional abuse, but it was the 'spanking' that got me. It broke my trust forever in my parents. It made me resentful. It made me rebel full force once my dad couldn't hit me anymore (see third sentence). I drank a lot as a teen. I ended up with exactly the wrong spouse (who is now my ex - and is a sociopath). I have issues to this day because of it.

I have 4 kids. I've never, ever had to hit them. I swore to myself if I had kids, I'd never hit them, ever. And I haven't. And they don't hate me, (AFAIK, LOL, and yes, I've asked the teens) they don't want me dead, they are all honors students, all are incredibly well behaved (not my opinion - the opinion of teachers, the parents of their friends, my xMIL, my entire extended family which is dozens of people, their coaches, their dance instructors, their bosses...etc. People always tell me they love my kids.) All without a single 'spanking'. It's called parenting. There are so many resources out there that there is no longer any excuse to hit a child. None at all.

I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. I get it.

I don't remember the hitting, but I do remember being in my crib and my parents above me. She was crying after coming home and she was yelling at him that "you DO NOT beat a baby with a hairbrush!" I remember little red spots all over my legs from the bristles. My sister is exactly 18 months younger than I am, to the day, and she got the crib when she was born, so I had to be younger than that.

They both hit us, frequently. But when I asked my mother about the hair brush incident, she swore it never happened. I asked, if it never happened, how would a baby know that if you get hit with a brush it leaves red dots all over your legs?!!? She wouldn't answer that.

That is horrendous. Really. And for your mom to swear it never happened? ugh ugh ugh.

I think that's why my mom couldn't deny it - I remembered such incredible details...what my dad did to me afterwards, how long I sobbed, how she came in to comfort me in my crib and my dad yelled at her to get out of there and she left. As a mother, now, I don't understand how she could've let that happen. I'd have scooped up my baby and left. My mom wasn't super abusive physically - I think she only spanked me a few times and hit me in the face as a teen once and I know she knows what my dad did was wrong. She also has a weird relationship with my dad where they are entirely co-dependent and, in public, have a 'great' marriage, but in private constantly trash each other and try to get a 'one up' on the other - which is probably why my mom acknowledged the incident - she could use it against my dad later. So messed up.

I'm sorry both your parents hit you. I got good at playing my parents one against the other to avoid my dad's wrath. It would've sucked so much more if they were the same. hugs to you.

Mine didn't stop until he died in 1976.

However, my step-father was an awesome man who I love more than anything. He only spanked me once. We sat and cried togetger. I worked to never disappoint him again. I miss him because he died too ten years ago.

My mother and her sisters all married career Navy men during and after WWII.

I was fortunate in that my parents seldom disciplined me (and I was a pretty wild kid growing up in the 50s and 60s: sex, drugs and rock and roll).

However, my mother's two sisters and their children were subject to abuse (physical and mental) up until the time their husbands and fathers became old and weak and dependent on their wives and children. Suddenly they were all sweetness.

As a child I never feared my father but I didn't trust my uncles, they were hard drinking, serious men with sharp tongues. I felt strange when speaking to them in their old age, it was as if nothing had occurred and all was forgiven.

They're dead now and their families miss them and speak fondly of them but sometimes the truth appears in our conversations and it isn't nice. The scars are deep and are usually hidden but they are still there, waiting to surface.

Not fair he's still alive while my mom and real dad are dead.

Stubborn asshole will probably outlive me too. But I'm saving a bladder-full of grave juice just in case he doesn't.