I realized when I was 9 and saw my best friend not get hit ever, then I asked more friends and found out that they didn’t either. None of them got the belt, the wooden spoon, choked, pushed down stairs or the verbal abuse either. I started running away at 10 but there was hardly any help and I was always brought home, then it would be worse. I got away from her when I was almost 17.

Mm, yes and no. It’s so much more complicated than that.
No because I knew as a child what to hide. So I did know what wasn’t normal, and what I wouldn’t see in other people’s homes.

I knew as a kid when some really wrong things were done to my siblings. I knew it was bad and shouldn’t be happening to them.
But I didn’t feel that same way for myself. It was and still is harder to recognize wrongdoing toward myself.


There were many things I didn’t know were even wrong until I was much older, or an adult.

There are still things I remember to this day and I’m surprised that it was another act of abuse that I had never looked at through the eyes of an adult before.

I don’t think I connected the word “abuse” to anything until I was a young adult in therapy.

No but my mom had a brain tumor. She was a good mom and would leave me lots of notes. Her tumor put pressure on her brain though and caused episodes like if I spilled on the floor or other things which made me constantly walking on glass.

I don't remember much about my childhood but I remembered my mom as perfect for a long time until I started remembering bits and pieces here and there. Took me awhile to figure out that was abuse in a way.

But it's kind of a double edged sword at the same time cos I couldn't exactly blame her as she had a tumor so it wasn't like I could do much about it. I know she didn't mean it most times.

With that said, with that experience I can totally see someone thinking abuse as normal. Deep down you feel like something is off or just odd but then you just shake it off thinking everyone does it or something.

I did not cry at my dad's funeral. The fear of his yelling and the lack of any comfort from anyone else has made me desire to be held and to be compassionate. If I cannot get that then I just go into isolation where I feel safe.

As a young adult, when I saw my parents come to the realization that it was abuse while raising my younger siblings. They hadn’t done it often, but in later years they actually apologized for having done it at all. It was how they were raised.

I think I knew as a very young child that I was being abused, I just didn't yet have the vocabulary to identify it as such. It was in fact normal in my neighborhood, typical post war blue collar working class paradigms practically required physical and emotional abuse of children.

It was more mentally abusive then physically. Although if I lost a fight at school with someone, my brothers would beat the snot out of me for losing before they went after the other guy. Then Dad would give us all a hiding for fighting.
Mum is a malignant narcissist, her gaslighting was truly next level and it really did a number on us. Drugs, suicidal, ran away from home.

But can't complain. Plenty of others had it much worse.

Every family in the neighborhood did it to their kids so yeah it seemed normal back then. I went out into the world of work and after starting my own life looked around and saw how almost nobody treated their kids like that. Somewhere between 35-40 it dawned on me. You do the best you can , make sense of it and move on with your life.

Yes. Absolutely. Baby boomer children were regularly beaten, humiliated. And I've heard people thank their parents for doing it rather than acknowledge it was an awful way to be treated.

I wasn’t hit much as a child but I was more naive and unaware of how crazy things really were. The abuse didn’t really get bad until I was 10 anyways.

Sooner than that . I was a teenager when I realized that ...

Yes... though it was only after her death that I realised that she was sexually abusing me.

I wasnt abused

My mum n dad made us listen to barbera Streisand and Marty robins LPs on Sunday mornings.. 😭

I never got so much as a light spankin' and my dad never ever hit mom... in fact, raised voices were a rare occurrence.

I knew as a small kid from books, music and tv

In my youth the belt was an accepted way of punishment, not considered abuse.

I watched them abuse each other.

Every month, when it came time to pay bills, they would argue. My father would make ridiculous suggestions in a perfectly reasonable tone, and make it sound like they were perfectly rational, and my mother would be yelling and screaming before long, because of the absolute stupіԁіtу.

An outside observer could have been forgiven for assuming that the abuse was completely one-sided, and came from my mother. But she was at her wit's end, because my father thought he was being clever, skipping bills for services we needed, asking if he could just miss one month on them. I think also he was one of those who would try to pay one credit card with another.

I never thought it was normal.

Never!

I’ve never nor remember being beaten ok

yep

No