Tag: tw: child abuse

vinegretteofconfusionandconflict:

There are a lot of reasons I was drawn to A Series of Unfortunate Events as a kid, and if I wanted to try and analyze them all I would have to write an entire anthology of books about the series and me and psychology and by the end of the day I would be very tired and you all would be very bored, so I’m not going to do that, but when I think about the series and probably the main reason why I’ve stuck with the series so long as a kid and now as a quasi-adult, what stands out to me is the beautiful way that Daniel Handler writes, portrays and deals with abuse.

There are a lot of messages that the series conveys across its thirteen volumes and even more in the companion pieces Handler has authored, but almost all of them come back to deal with abuse in some way, particularly child abuse. Even beyond just roundabout lessons that can be applied to child abuse, it actually depicts and deals with child abuse, a topic that is virtually nonexistent in middle grade literature even now as we start to become more aware of the topic. Children with harrowing backgrounds are common in the genre, but the difference between the Baudelaires and Harry Potter is that Snicket makes it very clear that what is happening to the Baudelaires is abuse and is wrong, whereas the Harry Potter series dismisses Harry being forced to live under the stairs as simply mean guardians and an abusive school teacher as a romantic pining for his lost love (don’t get me started on Snape discourse). A Series of Unfortunate Events tells children up front that abuse does happen and that that is what it is – abuse.

It showcases dozens of different varieties of abuse, physical, emotional, neglect, and it even hints at sexual with Olaf’s predatory behavior towards Violet. It shows different kinds of abusers, Mr. Poe, who does it out of genuine ignorance and an unwillingness to learn, and Count Olaf, who does it out of cruelty.

More than showing child abuse, it shows how people react to child abuse, either through internalizing it and believing that they are deserving of their fate, withdrawing from other people, or becoming distrusting of any and all adults to the point that they might miss out on people who could have possibly saved them if they had just trusted them. A Series of Unfortunate Events presents trauma in an accurate, non-sugar coated way to the audience that most needs to hear it.

As a seven year-old kid living with abusive parents, at the time I didn’t know why I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events so much, but I knew I loved it in a way I had never loved or related to a book before, and more than a decade later it still has a dramatic impact on my life. I was a cynic from a young age, and there’s something just draining about reading story after story of quick fixes and happy endings and stories where things go right when your life never seems to go right. I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events because the things that were happening to the Baudelaires, even though they took place in a fictional universe, were real. Handler never tried to pretend that life was great because it isn’t and if you’re a kid who has been taught by literature over and over that life is supposed to be great all the time and it’s great for everyone except you, that messes you up. A Series of Unfortunate Events told me it was okay to be messed up, and it told me that other people are messed up too, and the world is just as imperfect for everyone else as it was for me.

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teenagefrankzhang:

So my dad took away my laptop because I wouldn’t give him the password. I wasn’t even allowed to type it in, he demanded to know the password to my personal computer because he thinks I’m “ doing things I’m not supposed to do. ” My sister is not, and never has been, held to the same standard when it came to passwords on her own phone etc. But my parents always suspect me of being “up to something” and will randomly ask to use my computer/ know the password, and when I say no, they get mad at me. In the past, they have taken away my devices and looked through them, which cased me a lot of anxiety and is part of the reason I don’t like it when people use my computer or go through the camera roll on my phone. Even as I type this, I’m being asked what I’m doing. If you think parents demanding to know the passwords to their child’s personal devices is a breach of privacy please reblog

my parents do the same thing it’s torture

As a parent, you don’t get privacy until you are on your own. My house, my rules, my money, my decision.

Don’t like it?

Too bad.

I am the parent here. I’m not your friend. I’m your father.

Literally kids are not your prisoner??? There’s a difference between being protective and being controlling.

“You don’t get privacy until you’re an adult” like what the fuck. You’re one of those piece of shit parents that thinks taking away bedroom doors and making their kids hold sandwich board signs on busy roads is appropriate punishment aren’t you?
Children and teens are still fucking people and still deserve respect. If you can’t even respect your child how do you expect to teach them to respect others?

AS A PARENT YOU DON’T GET PRIVACY UNTIL YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. If I suspect you’re doing drugs or talking to someone way older than you or sneaking out at night, your privacy becomes my business. You’re living under MY roof, and I bought that computer, that phone, and pay for the service that runs it. Sorry, Charlie. It’s my job as a parent to make sure you’re safe and I will exercise the UNALIENABLE right to invade your privacy.

The mindset parents have of “my house my rules / I bought you that phonecomputertabletetc so I can go through it” is a huge contributer to anxiety, depression, self harm, and suicide in kids and teens and if anyone is defending, condoning, or practicing that behavior I hope to god they get their kids taken away from them. Nobody deserves to grow up under an iron fist of emotional abuse.

dude it’s one thing to be looking out for your kid and another to be like “privacy doesn’t exist because you are vulnerable and i am in a position of power.

being overprotective of your kid is NOT going to help them. it’s fucking savage.

my mom let my sisters and i do whatever we wanted [obvs within reason] and punished us when we did bad shit and we came out just fine. we’re honest people and nothing fucked us up. my friend with overprotective and invasive parents? she sneaks out for a social life. she can’t let people touch her things without almost crying because her dad would confiscate her things as she was using them to make sure she wasn’t selling drugs or sexting. sometimes she compulsively lies about small things and admits to lying later because she knows it’s was stupid to do it in the first place and she developed OCD from her father reprimanding her for not being clean enough [even though she’s a spotless person] she will have anxiety attacks over being in a messy environment because of the panic her dad put into her while growing up. she’s almost twenty and you know what she did? she asked me to cover for her so she could go on a date. SHE IS TWENTY NEXT MONTH AND ASKED ME TO LIE TO HER PARENTS IF THEY ASKED ME WHERE SHE WAS. she was on a date!! dating! because she was afraid her dad would fucking ground her. the sad part is, he probably would have if he found out! they created an environment of distrust and she has to fight it to be able to hang out with people who weren’t even gonna get her in trouble.

yall wanna be like “privacy doesn’t exist for children and teens. no teens can be trusted.” but fact is, you’re gonna force your kid into being untrustworthy because you think it’s healthy to be controlling.

sorry. you’re a shitty parent. unless you have proof or grounds for violating privacy in order to keep your kid safe, you are abusive and controlling and a sack of shit for having 0 respect for your children.

My dad threatens to take my door away from me for having it closed. I’m a seventeen year old female, and he has threatened to take away my door.

when i was a teenager, i wasn’t allowed to have a cellphone, so my father would hand me a little bag of change and force me to call home from a payphone every single time i left somewhere and again when i arrived at the next place. that means if i went to the mall, i called when i got there. then if i wanted to go across the street to the Walmart i had to call and tell him so. then i had to call again when i got to the Walmart! if i had a bunch of stuff to do, i could go through the entire bag of change in one weekend – if i could even find enough payphones to call him from. his explanation for this lunacy was that he wanted to be able to find me anytime, anywhere. he also liked to randomly show up at my job to make sure i was there, and the first time i spent the night at my best friend’s after i got a car, he drove past the house no less than eight times, and called no less than four times. one of those calls was to ask where i was because my car wasn’t visible from the road – and when i explained the turnaround i was parked in was behind the house, he told me we’d “better not go anywhere or have friends over”. like, what the hell were we going to do? have a drunken orgy while my friend’s grandma was sitting in the next room? we ended up playing chess in the front parlor all night with all the lights on and the curtains open so he could see us if he drove by.

and what, exactly, did i do to deserve this? not a fucking thing. i didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t sneak out, didn’t do drugs, didn’t skip school, nothing. in 13 years of public school, i had one detention – for being late too many times. that’s it. i never did a single thing to make him think i was untrustworthy and i got stalked for it.

when i graduated high school, my father told me if i was going to go to art college on his dime, he was going to have a say in the classes i took and what i did with my free time – he even went so far as to tell me if he ever dropped by the campus, i’d better be in my dorm doing homework or in class, and if i got a grade he didn’t like, he was going to pull me out of school, bring me home, and basically keep me a prisoner with no phone, no tv, no visits with friends until i graduated from the local community college. faced with another four years of stalking and abuse, i moved out and worked in a factory until i could be considered an independent student, then went to the art college i’d always wanted to – on my terms.

my father died last May and i hadn’t talked to him for a year, hadn’t seen him for two, and before that i hadn’t had any communication with him at all for four.

the moral of the story for you “my house, my rules, you don’t get any rights” parents is: stop treating your children like shit or you’re going to die alone, and you’ll deserve it.

My father didn’t do it to this extreme but he listened in on my calls, he constantly accused me of having sex or doing pot.

Guess what parents?

Most kids that got constantly accused of bullshit that I KNEW? INCLUDING MYSELF? Ended up doing those things because “Fuck it, might as well if they’re not going to believe me!”

For me, I had sex way before I planned to (19. I was planning on waiting til marriage). Why? Because fuck it, he acted like I was trying to be a whore all the damn time, I was going to do whatever I damn well pleased.

I moved out at age 19. I have never moved back in. I barely talk to him. I talk almost exclusively to my mom.

When I moved out he said I’d be pregnant by the end of the year.

I’m 30. I have no kids. I don’t plan on having kids. Ever. Because I watched every other person in my family have kids when they couldn’t afford them and I’m not doing that to a child.

When I lived with my parents I had nearly all A’s, I had an 8pm curfew at the age of 19, I was never allowed to leave town, leave state, anything like that for school trips or what have you. When I was in college I wasn’t allowed to go to any colleges more than 30 minutes away. My parents didn’t trust others and they instilled that in me and it took me YEARS to fix it.

My therapist pinned down exactly what that does to it a kid too. It’s isolating. You’re isolating your kid. You’re telling them you don’t trust them. You’re telling them you inherently think they’re bad.

And that has huge ramifications on your bond with them.

Hope you’re ready for it.

Dear Parents who approve of the lack of privacy until a certain age: You are engaging in child abuse. Emotional child abuse.

Preventing a child from having privacy is a punishable offense in the United States (many countries actually) and you can be penalized for it.

What is that?

  • Rejecting or ignoring: telling a child he or she is unwanted or unloved, showing little interest in child, not initiating or returning affection, not listening to the child, not validating the child’s feelings, breaking promises, cutting child off in conversation
  • Shaming or humiliating: calling a child names, criticizing, belittling, demeaning, berating, mocking, using language or taking action that takes aim at child’s feelings of self-worth
  • Terrorizing: accusing, blaming, insulting, punishing with or threatening abandonment, harm or death, setting a child up for failure, manipulating, taking advantage of a child’s weakness or reliance on adults, slandering; screaming; yelling
  • Isolating: keeping child from peers and positive activities, confining child to small area, forbidding play or other stimulating experiences
  • Corrupting: engaging child in criminal acts, telling lies to justify actions or ideas, encouraging misbehavior

If you are an abusive parent, you probably have one of these (if not all) of these red flags:

  • Routinely ignores, criticizes, yells at or blames child
  • Plays favorites with one sibling over another
  • Poor anger management or emotional self-regulation
  • Stormy relationships with other adults, disrespect for authority
  • History of violence or abuse
  • Untreated mental illness, alcoholism or substance abuse

Children who suffer from your abuse, experience these emotional and behavioral issues:

  • Habits like sucking, biting, rocking
  • Learning disabilities and developmental delays
  • Overly compliant or defensive
  • Extreme emotions, aggression, withdrawal
  • Anxieties, phobias, sleep disorders
  • Destructive or anti-social behaviors (violence, cruelty, vandalism, stealing, cheating, lying)
  • Behavior that is inappropriate for age (too adult, too infantile)
  • Suicidal thoughts and behaviors

In summary, there is no “my house, my rules”. If you actively promote this type of behavior as parents, you are committing a crime, and you can be fined and imprisoned for it, as well as having your kids taken away, which, if they are experiencing this behavior from you, shouldn’t be your kids to begin with.

Children are not your property, regardless of relation.

If you want to guarantee your children never consider you a part of their life or interact with you ever again, continuing these behaviors will absolutely do that. 

As someone who has a support group of nearly 80 kids ranging from the ages of 14 to 27, I can tell you so many horror stories of parental abuse and the shit it fucks up the kids with as a result. My wife experienced and survived her own form of parental abuse, as have I. 

We do not tolerate it, and neither should your kids.

okay okay, you ready for a fucking story? because reading through this brought back memories that showcase just how shitty invading your kid’s privacy is!

okay so back when I was 12 (? i think. 7th grade for sure) I started experiencing symptoms of depression. So of course, because I thought it would help, I told my mom. She told me I was just “a hormonal teenager” and that I just needed to get over it. At this point I was suicidal and had expressed that, even at that age I knew that it wasn’t normal. not at all.

So I started isolating myself from my family. I’d only text my friends. That’s when they started going through my ipod because they believed I was “doing bad things”. So I set up a passcode because they were just unlocking and going through it every time I left the room. It stayed in my pocket until I got home, then under the bed. I wasn’t allowed to unlock it myself, they had to know the passcode. I’d go through 20 different passcodes a month because I didn’t want them looking through it. I didn’t even have anything to hide! They made me feel guilty, like I was doing something wrong for texting my friends. The most prominent memory of this is sitting in the chair next to the couch, crying from the anxiety they were forcing me through as they looked through everything. I had no privacy. I wasn’t allowed to have privacy. I no longer texted my friends. The little social interaction I got was from tumblr messages every so often.

My parents created instagram, tumblr etc. accounts so they could watch what i posted and when I posted it. I blocked them. This was he only place I had left to express myself and they were trying to take that away too. They found some app (no idea why this even exists) that allows you to fucking track what your kids do online. I changed the email on all of my social media. I stopped using it if they were in the room. I did everything I possibly could because I just wanted to have 1 fucking place I could express myself without them.

They’ve (as far as I know) stopped forcing their way into my shit. They still go through my texts if I leave it unlocked. They hover over me whenever I use the computer. They still threaten to take away my door.

And I just don’t care anymore. About anything. I skip class, I send nudes, I smoke etc. They’re gonna assume I’m doing it anyway, why shouldn’t I?

I spend my time telling my brother not to do anything I’ve done. Telling him to tell me if he feels bad, not our parents. Telling him not to do the stuff I still do. I tell him all this because I’m in ruins and I don’t want him to end up the same way.

“my house my rules” is my #1 tipoff that a parent may be abusive to their kids and was a huge scapegoat for my parents doing shit like taking my mattress and bedroom door away for getting a C in school. this shit is abusive and only serves to emotionally scar children and push them away from their parents even more.

I’m a parent and this 100% emotional abuse. If you don’t trust your kids, then they won’t trust you. It can be scary to let go then, online and in ‘rl’ but you have to if you want to have people, who at the end of the process of growing up, who are brave and confident in who they are

hey so as a mental health worker I can 100% confirm that the “no privacy until you’re an adult” mindset is abusive and causes trauma to the child which will take years and years to recover from, if ever. Controlling your child’s life in every aspect and not allowing them to become independent of you is abusive.

My dad continually threatens to take my door away. I am a 17 year old girl. He wants to take my door away. I asked why. He said it was advice he received from his marriage counselor.

A marriage counselor??????

I don’t think that’s the best person to take PARENTING advice from

You know when “My house, my rules” works? When it’s small things that fucking make sense and treat the other person like an actual person.

“My house, my rules” is don’t wear shoes indoors, or maybe put the cup here when you’re done washing it instead of there, and this day of the week is laundry day.

Somebody does not become your property just because they live under your roof, even if they are your child.

Crazy part about this, if these kids had a partner that did these things to them, (had to know passwords, looked up internet history, crept through text msgs, went through pics, kept tabs on where they are at all times, didn’t allow outings, just took away any basic means of privacy), these parents would flip shit.

They would call it what it is, abuse; emotional & mental abuse. They would do everything in their power to get their kid away from this person. They would see the toxicity of this behavior & not support it.

My thing is, parents are quick to call out other people’s behavior & neglect their own. They can see abuse in other people but cloak there’s as being a good parent. Well that’s the same thing an abusive partner says & does; claim to be good partners.

Privacy is a general right. It shouldn’t have to be granted & it shouldn’t be used as punishment. Ever.

Children need safe places, they need a domain where their individuality is shared with who they choose, not who the parent decides & not when they decide. This is your kid, not your fucking dog. Not a fucking pet who doesn’t even have a sense of what privacy is. 

Start treating children like actual human beings. Treat them with dignity & basic respect & sit back & be amazed by how much they share with you, how often they come to you when they’re in some kind of distress. See how much they respect you & your boundaries.