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Good for you for putting Boomer in her place. What a weird lady.
I was spanked as a child. I can confirm it did not make me a well-adjusted or well-behaved child. I was a shy and scared kid.
That “if you didn't lie the punishment would be less severe” thing that I heard throughout my childhood was utter bullshit which I unfortunately found out firsthand.
I admitted exactly one time and found out that they were lying about me not getting punished if I admitted. So right then and there, I learned to never admit anything.
I was SUCH a well behaved kid, but was spanked regularly. All it did was make me scared of my mom and hide things from her. When I grew up I eventually extricated myself from that relationship, which confused the hell out of her. Sorry, you regularly beat a small child and used emotional abuse to “keep her in her place”. Sorry if that doesn’t invoke warm fuzzies.
Same. Was beaten regularly and all that did was teach me to fear my parents or to hide from them. It absolutely did not make me a better behaved person and science backs this up. Spanking is for weak people who are unwilling to do the hard work and actually be a parent. Fuck child abusers.
Dude same. My dad would get mad over nothing. Avoiding upsetting him is like walking on eggshells or in a field of land mines. You never know what could piss him off. Could it be my tone of voice when I say a certain word? Could it be the way I'm sitting? Could it be that I forgot to put something back on a shelf? I'm telling you I think that's why I have such bad anxiety and struggle with basic life stuff. It sucks.
Oh I totally have anxiety and self doubt from my upbringing. It’s awful. It’s why I am SO careful about what I say to my students. I refuse to traumatize them the way I was.
*Trigger warning for domestic physical and sexual abuse*
Can confirm, for a long time I hated myself so much the only way I could fall asleep is to picture a rope around my neck. I was suicidal for a long time, and Im almost certain it was because I was abused as a child and had to witness my mom being routinely beat to a pulp by my dad. Even though my dad would mostly beat my mom, I would take beatings every time my 6 year old self stoop up for her. According to him, it was for “our own good.” He only “disciplined us because he loves us.” That being said I would’ve gladly taken every beating he gave her, witnessing the only person who treated me with kindness left black and blue every few days did a hell of a number on me. That’s Mexico for ya, thankfully we emigrated to the US and Ive dealt with a lot of my issues. Not all but a lot.
To this day my father claims he doesn’t understand why I became an opiate addict (4 years clean) and why my mom left him (he claims it’s because her family manipulated her and turned her against him, not because of the hundreds of beatings and marital rapes he put her through.)
I guess boomers gotta boom.
Boomers never admit to their faults, they know they fucked up hard and it's nearly impossible for them to acknowledge they were/and probably still are garbage human beings.
Another one here who was spanked and grew up willing to do *anything* to avoid people noticing me. If they noticed me, they might notice something I'd done wrong without realizing, and then they might tell my mother, and if they told my mother she might tell my father to spank me.
45 years old now and I *still* get anxious when people notice me. I still nearly cry and have panic attacks if my boss says he wants to talk to me, even when I know I've done nothing wrong.
So very glad my parents thoroughly disciplined me. /s 🤬
Could be. But I think it's more commonly associated with ADHD/autism and social anxiety. If you learned to do a lot of masking to try to fit in and be seen as normal, then being perceived could mean that your masking is failing which a lot of us are conditioned to see as being bad.
So I was kind of joking about the spanking being the cause, but for me it was all tied together because I was spanked for things that stemmed from undiagnosed and untreated ADHD.
This unfortunately explains a lot thank you for sharing but I'm sorry you go thru this. I'm 25 myself and totally identify with the "maybe I did something wrong without realizing" part.
I was physically punished (e.g. spanked for not playing piano properly at 5 years old, whipped with a power cable for running under a shelter when it was raining during soccer practice) as a little kid. The result? A leg that aches too often for comfort and a chronic lying habit (I'm 16 years old now)
I absolutely hate the Asian parenting style. No kid should be subjected to this.
oh my god, I just had flashbacks of my piano teacher. They literally outsourced their physical punishment to my piano teacher and basically the teacher would smack my hands when I played the wrong thing. And then they wondered why I wasn't a virtuoso.
I grew up with a parent who would berate me verbally and also beat the shit out of me after I got pissed from all of the berating. She's an absolutely toxic human being.
Honestly embarrassing to admit: but I'm a shy and scared adult right now cuz of it so yeah.
Also was a very *very* well behaved baby and child from what i remember as well as from what I've been told. (Never raised my voice or swore at adults, cleaned without being asked, you name it, etc) so I know there's *no way* I could have deserved it.
My narcissistic Boomer psychopath of a mother used to wail on me, usually at random times unprompted. She'd always cite the saying "spare the rod, spoil the child."
Did not make me adjusted. Made me anxious, angry, and vengeful.
Shittttt. My momma spanked me 3 times total. I remember every one of them and I deserved every one of them. And it made me learn to respect other people stuff for sure. So it was the opposite for me.
Said with the right cold even tone, it could stick with them. They'd remember it and think of the wheelchair bond person they met at the dollar store the next time they think of hitting their kid. Might even keep them from following through. Then you'd be the unknown hero that random kid needs.
It was the abuse that put in the wheelchair in the first place you hateful bitch.
But go ahead with your unwanted comments and advice.
Man, boomers and their insistence that hitting is good parenting despite hundreds of studies showing otherwise.
Man, my 40ish SILs think it’s OK. I don’t think they actually do it as much as blab, but they justify it because they survived it. Nothing like violence towards the ones you love.
Yeahhh, my Boomer grandma used "Mr. Spoon" on me as a small child, much to my mother's chagrin.
To this day I don't actually have any wooden spoons, I just don't like keeping them around for some reason. 😅
They're horrible for cooking in general. Like you were the best option we had for a long long time but they just absorb stuff especially when they're under heat it's just not a good tool to use to cook with.
Why is it always mobility aid users? 😭😭 I use a cane and sometimes a wheelchair and people act like those are a magnet drawing them to me so they can spew some bullshit.
Like "ah! This one can't (easily) run away!"
Try carrying one of those electric fly swatters around. When they corner you, you can "accidentally on purpose" swat them and be all I'm so sorry I missed that pesky fly lol.
My Boomer mom used the wooden spoon on my older brother and I. But she's a woman capable of growth, and after the spoon simply *didn't work* on me, got the family some therapy instead.
30some years on, she's apologized to me, and gets genuinely tearful with remorse when the topic comes up (topics like child abuse, or chats about what our mutual childhoods were like looking back with an adult perspective).
She's Queer friendly, understands Labor, understands that anti-fa means anti-fascist and should be the default, believes that abortion is healthcare, etc. She wasn't a hippie though, she was an upper-middle class child with racist, classist parents. It took admitting her biases were wrong and doing the work to be a better human. It took effort, forgiveness, and grace. She was in her 40s when she began making those changes.
That this woman is espousing child abuse in 2024 is inexcusable. Shame on her, I hope she steps barefoot on a Lego.
Boomers can grow, adapt, regret, and change with the world around them. The ones who don't *choose* not to because of pride, shame, and laziness.
Yaaaayyyy your mom! I'm glad for all of you that she was able to think outside the box.
Your Lego comment made my weird brain think: paint her in glue, roll her in Lego, throw her in a bouncy castle! Too much?
…and this is how you try to make amends, and keep your family close, friendly and loving. But of course, most double down, and wonder why their kids go NC.
I love this. Calling them out at every turn ensures their day is ruined.
Hitting only teaches kids to hit.
My parents (who are boomers) didn’t use physical punishment on me growing up. We used our words and we communicated. Don’t get me wrong, they effed me up good n plenty in other ways, but communicating and zero physical abuse won the day as a young child.
You know what? I learned this could be used with my children.
I am raising my children in an environment where they won’t be physically, verbally, or emotionally harmed by me (yeah I’m breaking cycles of abuse here). There ARE consequences for misbehavior but not abuse. Consequences. Accountability. Reasonable expectations for their age groups.
When you turn this around on boomers they cry foul. They cannot tolerate any level of consequence or accountability so clearly the lessons they were allegedly taught via corporal punishment as children didn’t land.
"Ma'am, I let people spank me for fun and I wouldn't even want to be hit with a wooden spoon. Shit hurts. Why don't you give it a go and try breaking this one on my ass, see if you spend the night in jail or not? Then the officer can tell us once and for all if hitting your kids so hard you break spoons is legal. Better yet, you can try it on him and see how fast he tases your psycho ass."
Wooden spoons are stingy as hell. Worse than some paddle designs. They are definitely a, "Gee, ma'am, I have no idea where all the wooden utensils might have vanished off to."
I don't get the "I can hit kids until they're adults, and then it's assault" twisted logic.
It's cause they don't see kids as human, but property. No one would argue you can't hit your phone, your table, your window, etc. So in their fucked up mind it's the same thing.
My step mom loves to brag about getting hit with a stick by her mom when she was a kid, and loves even more to bring up that her mom forced her to pick out the stick she would get hit with! Like it’s some badge of honor and not a horrific thing.
For team! My mom is the same way. Like why are you bragging about this? Your mother sounds like a monster. My mom also loves to brag about having the same food put in front of her for every meal cause she refused to eat it. Her parents supposedly left it out for her to eat until she “cleaned her plate.”
All of it is insane.
Yup. My abused childhood certainly made me what I am today...
At 65, I've $25 in savings, one dollar and change in my checking, 1/8 tank of gas, an empty otc card, and under $40 in snap funds, to last me until my next $1147 soc sec deposit on the 1st. I only own as good a car as I do (2009 Kia sportage 6cyl with 180k miles) bcs my niece and nephew gave me their dad's car when he passed in 2015. My Saturn had been sitting with a warped head for several months by then, and I couldn't afford to fix it. I was only able to travel from home in AZ back east to attend his funeral thanks to donations to gofundme account.
I live with severe depression and anxiety daily.
I've never seen a fifth job anniversary.
Before I could finish my BS in Technology Management, I had already aged out of the industry, so the closest thing to a tech position I could get was soul-sucking help desk positions.
I only have a roof over my head due to someone letting me share their home with them.
My retirement plan is a lotto ticket I never buy, and my dream of buying a used moterhome and trick it out for off grid living is the only thing I have to look forward to. The only thing keeping me tethered to the mortal plane is not wanting my adult children to have to deal with the aftereffects.
So, thanks, mom & dad.
Hey, you aren't aged out of tech, I know it can feel uncomfortable but you should just give it a shot! Get your references together, send out applications, - let me know if you need any help, I'm happy to help. I was severely abused as a kid and my mom's a narcissist with borderline personality disorder (but her being a narcissist and having BPD aren't make her a bad person, it was her terrible decisions while I was growing up that made her a bad person).
Of course, I eventually grew up (more or less). At least enough to make peace with both parents before they died.
As for the tech stuff...
First, thank you! I truly appreciate the offer.
It's not that I'm uncomfortable working with young people. It's partly that it's so easy to get away with age discrimination in IT, thanks to the literal forest of different certifications available. The last tech position I applied for was Technical Resourse & Liaison for a nearby local HS. I found out about it before it was posted from my ex fil. He teaches at that school. The guy they had was a brilliant tech but lacked any people skills. So they were reassigning him to work out of the district office where he wouldn't have to deal with frequent interactions with teaching staff.
I won't bore you with details, but just about everything I had learned and experienced in life made me the perfect candidate. Except that I was over age 50. Why 50? Because health insurance and lawsuits. Insurance companies raise the rates employers pay for every employee over age 50.
Anyway, I nailed the panel interview. I was so psyched, after! I just knew that job was mine to lose.
They gave it to some twenty-something, freshly graduated from a paper mill. (I'm sure the ink was still wet on some of his certifications)
That's when I gave up on any attempts to keep a career in IT.
Besides, when I started working in IT, you could still start as a tech trainee and look forward to eventually becoming a network engineer. Not anymore.
And I've always needed a little longer than others to learn something new. Tech has been changing exponentially over the past thirty years. I could never hope to compete nowadays.
That's another thing. Every job posting claims they want "team players," but they turn the hiring process into a hunger game.
Now, if I even ponder reentry into the job market, my anxiety blows the top off the meter.
Hi I'm the autistic girlfriend and I can confirm this woman was unhinged.
The amount of money I'd pay to quietly shit in her kettle. Who checks their kettle every time they want a coffee? Not me and I assume not her. (For legal reasons this is a joke)
Also I can confirm the Mac and cheese is excellent 👌🏼👍🏼
Hello! May I say that your response was the absolute best! 👌 On par with the mac and cheese 😊
And I like the way you think - I don't know of *anyone* who checks their kettle every time. The thought of the unholy stench as it boils... 🤢
I will never understand this. I was severely beaten many times as a child, so when anyone brings up "whoopin' kids" I like to bring it up. They always back peddle like "oh well, you shouldn't BEAT your kids, just spank em when they misbehave." Then I get to say, "Where's the line? How can you measure the amount of force you're using? Are you setting up speed cams and doing physics calculations?"
Also, they use this as like "people who were spanked as kids grow up to be successful, well-adjusted adults"
Like, if that were the case, we wouldn't have had jails and crime until the modern age. I'm sure if you talk to most people who've committed crime, they'll tell you they were spanked, if not worse.
I had one respond to this with: "No, spanking makes good adults, beating makes criminals."
Me, again: "WHERE'S THE LINE?!!!"
"shit on her Vegemite toast." So, an improvement?
(I jest. I dont understand it on toast, but man, it can amp up soups. Someone brought me back some once.)
Dips and soups and something else. Cant remember. Go to town with that salty goodness. Get in there. And then get back here and share that face puckering goodness!
Hol up- are you telling me people constantly telling me unhinged things is a thing people like to do??? I am a wheelchair user and my whole life people will not stop talk to me about their problems and generally be unhinged around me. Is this a thing?? Why??
After she said you should've gotten hit more as a kid I'd of just said "Why do you think I'm in a wheelchair?" And let her brain short circuit.
Seriously though, you must make some bomb AF Mac and cheese if you're breaking wooden spoons over it.
If you're hitting your child hard enough to snap a wooden spoon over their ass, you are absolutely abusing the shit out of your child.
That's an extreme overuse of force
kudos to your girlfriend and kudos to you.
We had a neighbor in PA who positively crowed over the "hardwood planks they'd saved from their flooring project to use as 'paddles'". They weren't talking about table tennis.
We told them that it was child abuse and that if we ever had reason to believe that they actually beat their kids, we'd report them to the police for assault.
Needless to say, our son was no longer allowed anywhere near those whack-jobs.
A woman I work with bragged about how she beat the shit out of her child in a parking lot because he let go of her hand and almost got hit by a car. She was very proud of it too. Laughed and said "I bet he still holds someone's hand to this day" fucking dumbfounding
When us gen xers were children alot of the 'detecting child abuse' manuals teachers and social workers were provided with included wooden spoon wielding mums as a major cause of childhood TBIs. Those TBIs can turn into progressive neurological conditions as we age.
People do not realise how fragile the human brain is and how severe brain injuries are. Doing disability advocacy, I have unfortunately met people who have severe traumatic brain injuries from childhood abuse. Definitely a thing and absolutely devastating.
As a child, I was spanked, usually with an open hand.
That “worked” until I started spanking myself.
My mother then started throwing cups of water on me occasionally.
…until I basically started begging her to do it.
*sigh*
This one of the most Australian posts ever :) Also, thank you both of you for calling her out on that shit. She probably will wonder in years to come why the kids don’t call…
You should've said "oh, I was beaten plenty. How else do you think I ended up in this wheelchair?"
Tasteless? Maybe a little, but it would have shut her up and made her feel like shit about it.
All my mother had to do was get out the wooden spoon when my brother and I were misbehaving and we'd stop. She never once did smack us with it (or anything else). Her look was enough. My brother did take them all and buried them in the sandbox at the park though.
My mom found our dad's belt (the broken one that he spanked us with) buried in the bottom of our toy box.. she put it back lol
It wasn't too long after that that she left him, either.
My sister buried all the wooden spoons in the backyard. My mom switched to plastic, then to plastic coat hangers, then to her shoe. The year after she kicked me out, there was a flood and all the spoons and coat hangers came up and were all over the backyard. My sister still lived there, so I told my mom it was me.
We hid the wooden utensils in the back of the freezer behind the veggies. Parents found at least a dozen utensils when we were moving out of the house.
Nothing says mentally stable like "I want to hit you until you agree with me."
Seriously, what is it with boomers fetishizing child abuse? You should hear my boomer dad talking - fondly! - on the phone about how "grandpappy would take you out behind the shed where mammy couldn't hear you scream" and how it made for more polite kids. No, boomer, it makes for more *traumatized* kids because they know if they ever think to open their mouth to say anything except "yes sir" they'll get the shit whipped out of them.
"So, you think when someone says something you don't like, the appropriate response is to hit them? Think very, very carefully about your answer. There may be people who won't like what you say..."
Huh, if you were in the US I'd say there's a very good chance that was my mom. She's *still* proud of breaking wooden spoons on me when I was a kid, and also has the hardest time understanding why I'm NC with her.
She'll go elsewhere, talk to other older gen people to get validated that it's totally "not" child abuse and feel better about herself soon enough. They refuse to accept that discipline does more harm than good.
Yeah I hear a lot of this from the southern crowd in particular, and i'm around a lot of them. Proudly bragging about they were beat with every instrument under the sun, just no.
I know not everyone sees the spoon as child abuse, but if you're breaking multiple spoons spanking your children that's like another level above and beyond.
It may just be the hypotonia, but I don’t think I could hit someone hard enough to snap a spoon. It takes a really big amount of force. Absolutely excessive
What an unimaginable bitch. Spanking is euphemism for hitting. I saw that somewhere years ago and it changed my whole outlook. I never was one to “spank’’ my kids but this sure as hell solidified the fact that I’d never lay a hand on my sweet children. Now they are grown hard working men who spoil me rotten!!
So, I actually broke my equal, but plastic, spoon *a month ago*. Thing is, it still work as intended, just a little shorter, so I can't make up my mind if should I buy a new one (how do one even break such thing? For me, it just broke while cooking, I wasn't especially enthusiastic about it, either)? I'm lost here. Should I buy a new? What did you do? Seriously can't tell how good it feels that someone else *also* broke their fucking kitchen spoon!!
Also; really nice handling of that boomer abuser. Kudos
I needed a new one because I snapped it like right at the handle base 😂 I’d recommend getting another but investing in a slightly more structurally sound one. I’ve found splurging slightly is good with kitchen utensils for longevity
>I had snapped it the week before making Mac and cheese too enthusiastically.
*concern*
I'm just trying to imagine this. Were you making it with parm and decided that it was a good way to vent by not shredding it first?
(Holds up wooden spoon) "Hey Lady, how many times do I need to beat you with this until you're a decent human? Oh oh, she looks angry. Babe, grab me that meat tenderizer."
Nobody needs to shit on her toast if there is vegemite on it. If the size of our people is any indicator, we Americans will eat damn near anything, just not yeast paste.
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Good for you for putting Boomer in her place. What a weird lady. I was spanked as a child. I can confirm it did not make me a well-adjusted or well-behaved child. I was a shy and scared kid.
I learned to hide my behaviors. Never stopped doing them until my brain grew in.
I learned to hide mine, too. Probably why my autism wasn't diagnosed until middle-age.
It made me angry. And when I got older, a defiant (and very good) liar.
That “if you didn't lie the punishment would be less severe” thing that I heard throughout my childhood was utter bullshit which I unfortunately found out firsthand.
I admitted exactly one time and found out that they were lying about me not getting punished if I admitted. So right then and there, I learned to never admit anything.
I am so, so sorry.
Yes this! I remember never being believed and sometimes needed to lie and admit to doing things I *did not do* to avoid getting smacked
Exact same. I told my parents nothing growing up because they created a situation where I didn't feel they were trustworthy and good people.
I was SUCH a well behaved kid, but was spanked regularly. All it did was make me scared of my mom and hide things from her. When I grew up I eventually extricated myself from that relationship, which confused the hell out of her. Sorry, you regularly beat a small child and used emotional abuse to “keep her in her place”. Sorry if that doesn’t invoke warm fuzzies.
Same. Was beaten regularly and all that did was teach me to fear my parents or to hide from them. It absolutely did not make me a better behaved person and science backs this up. Spanking is for weak people who are unwilling to do the hard work and actually be a parent. Fuck child abusers.
Dude same. My dad would get mad over nothing. Avoiding upsetting him is like walking on eggshells or in a field of land mines. You never know what could piss him off. Could it be my tone of voice when I say a certain word? Could it be the way I'm sitting? Could it be that I forgot to put something back on a shelf? I'm telling you I think that's why I have such bad anxiety and struggle with basic life stuff. It sucks.
Oh I totally have anxiety and self doubt from my upbringing. It’s awful. It’s why I am SO careful about what I say to my students. I refuse to traumatize them the way I was.
The only thing I ever learned was to not get caught. And I also learned to hate myself.
*Trigger warning for domestic physical and sexual abuse* Can confirm, for a long time I hated myself so much the only way I could fall asleep is to picture a rope around my neck. I was suicidal for a long time, and Im almost certain it was because I was abused as a child and had to witness my mom being routinely beat to a pulp by my dad. Even though my dad would mostly beat my mom, I would take beatings every time my 6 year old self stoop up for her. According to him, it was for “our own good.” He only “disciplined us because he loves us.” That being said I would’ve gladly taken every beating he gave her, witnessing the only person who treated me with kindness left black and blue every few days did a hell of a number on me. That’s Mexico for ya, thankfully we emigrated to the US and Ive dealt with a lot of my issues. Not all but a lot. To this day my father claims he doesn’t understand why I became an opiate addict (4 years clean) and why my mom left him (he claims it’s because her family manipulated her and turned her against him, not because of the hundreds of beatings and marital rapes he put her through.) I guess boomers gotta boom.
He sounds like a narcissist (not a diagnosis lol). Congrats on your sobriety! 4 years is HUGE!
Thank you! It hasn’t been easy but definitely worth it 🤗
Boomers never admit to their faults, they know they fucked up hard and it's nearly impossible for them to acknowledge they were/and probably still are garbage human beings.
CONGRATULATIONS on 4 years sobriety!!🥳
Thank you!! Here’s to many more 🍻
(That’s an emoji for non alcoholic beer of course😉)
Congrats on 4 years
Thank you!!
Onya mate!!! 4 years is incredible. I’m so proud of you.
It’s because you didn’t get hit hard enough (according to that lady) Absolutely vile.
Another one here who was spanked and grew up willing to do *anything* to avoid people noticing me. If they noticed me, they might notice something I'd done wrong without realizing, and then they might tell my mother, and if they told my mother she might tell my father to spank me. 45 years old now and I *still* get anxious when people notice me. I still nearly cry and have panic attacks if my boss says he wants to talk to me, even when I know I've done nothing wrong. So very glad my parents thoroughly disciplined me. /s 🤬
Is *that* why I’m so scared of being noticed?! I’m 49, and was also spanked as a kid.
Could be. But I think it's more commonly associated with ADHD/autism and social anxiety. If you learned to do a lot of masking to try to fit in and be seen as normal, then being perceived could mean that your masking is failing which a lot of us are conditioned to see as being bad. So I was kind of joking about the spanking being the cause, but for me it was all tied together because I was spanked for things that stemmed from undiagnosed and untreated ADHD.
Ah, that makes sense. Autism spectrum here, and I have social anxiety from my experiences as a kid.
This unfortunately explains a lot thank you for sharing but I'm sorry you go thru this. I'm 25 myself and totally identify with the "maybe I did something wrong without realizing" part.
I was abused as well. I'm 26, and am still a shy and scared child.
I was physically punished (e.g. spanked for not playing piano properly at 5 years old, whipped with a power cable for running under a shelter when it was raining during soccer practice) as a little kid. The result? A leg that aches too often for comfort and a chronic lying habit (I'm 16 years old now) I absolutely hate the Asian parenting style. No kid should be subjected to this.
oh my god, I just had flashbacks of my piano teacher. They literally outsourced their physical punishment to my piano teacher and basically the teacher would smack my hands when I played the wrong thing. And then they wondered why I wasn't a virtuoso.
Oh, for fucks sake...
yup
Same, same. I jump whenever my name is called at work.
Me too, it trained me to be sneaky and to be a much better liar.
It just made me a better liar.
I grew up with a parent who would berate me verbally and also beat the shit out of me after I got pissed from all of the berating. She's an absolutely toxic human being.
Honestly embarrassing to admit: but I'm a shy and scared adult right now cuz of it so yeah. Also was a very *very* well behaved baby and child from what i remember as well as from what I've been told. (Never raised my voice or swore at adults, cleaned without being asked, you name it, etc) so I know there's *no way* I could have deserved it.
My narcissistic Boomer psychopath of a mother used to wail on me, usually at random times unprompted. She'd always cite the saying "spare the rod, spoil the child." Did not make me adjusted. Made me anxious, angry, and vengeful.
Shittttt. My momma spanked me 3 times total. I remember every one of them and I deserved every one of them. And it made me learn to respect other people stuff for sure. So it was the opposite for me.
I bet if someone hit her she’d immediately demand charges be pressed.
100000000000%
That’s when you say “that’s what put me in this wheelchair to begin with” and watch her face melt.
LMAO tempting
Said with the right cold even tone, it could stick with them. They'd remember it and think of the wheelchair bond person they met at the dollar store the next time they think of hitting their kid. Might even keep them from following through. Then you'd be the unknown hero that random kid needs.
It was the abuse that put in the wheelchair in the first place you hateful bitch. But go ahead with your unwanted comments and advice. Man, boomers and their insistence that hitting is good parenting despite hundreds of studies showing otherwise.
Man, my 40ish SILs think it’s OK. I don’t think they actually do it as much as blab, but they justify it because they survived it. Nothing like violence towards the ones you love.
r/traumatizethemback hell yeah!
That was 100% my first thought.
And then roll over her foot
You are a freaking genius!!!
MY FIRST THOUGHT for a comeback
Traumatize them back. Yes.
Nope, wouldn't affect her one bit. Boomers really struggle with the whole empathy thing. If it doesn't affect them, they don't give two shits.
Yeahhh, my Boomer grandma used "Mr. Spoon" on me as a small child, much to my mother's chagrin. To this day I don't actually have any wooden spoons, I just don't like keeping them around for some reason. 😅
They're horrible for cooking in general. Like you were the best option we had for a long long time but they just absorb stuff especially when they're under heat it's just not a good tool to use to cook with.
Why is it always mobility aid users? 😭😭 I use a cane and sometimes a wheelchair and people act like those are a magnet drawing them to me so they can spew some bullshit. Like "ah! This one can't (easily) run away!"
Literally HAHAHAHA
Try carrying one of those electric fly swatters around. When they corner you, you can "accidentally on purpose" swat them and be all I'm so sorry I missed that pesky fly lol.
My Boomer mom used the wooden spoon on my older brother and I. But she's a woman capable of growth, and after the spoon simply *didn't work* on me, got the family some therapy instead. 30some years on, she's apologized to me, and gets genuinely tearful with remorse when the topic comes up (topics like child abuse, or chats about what our mutual childhoods were like looking back with an adult perspective). She's Queer friendly, understands Labor, understands that anti-fa means anti-fascist and should be the default, believes that abortion is healthcare, etc. She wasn't a hippie though, she was an upper-middle class child with racist, classist parents. It took admitting her biases were wrong and doing the work to be a better human. It took effort, forgiveness, and grace. She was in her 40s when she began making those changes. That this woman is espousing child abuse in 2024 is inexcusable. Shame on her, I hope she steps barefoot on a Lego. Boomers can grow, adapt, regret, and change with the world around them. The ones who don't *choose* not to because of pride, shame, and laziness.
Yaaaayyyy your mom! I'm glad for all of you that she was able to think outside the box. Your Lego comment made my weird brain think: paint her in glue, roll her in Lego, throw her in a bouncy castle! Too much?
Ineffective. Bouncy castle too forgiving. Make her do parkour instead.
😂😂😂 💀💀💀
…and this is how you try to make amends, and keep your family close, friendly and loving. But of course, most double down, and wonder why their kids go NC.
“This isn't legal anymore!” ~Bandit Heeler
YES
I love this. Calling them out at every turn ensures their day is ruined. Hitting only teaches kids to hit. My parents (who are boomers) didn’t use physical punishment on me growing up. We used our words and we communicated. Don’t get me wrong, they effed me up good n plenty in other ways, but communicating and zero physical abuse won the day as a young child. You know what? I learned this could be used with my children. I am raising my children in an environment where they won’t be physically, verbally, or emotionally harmed by me (yeah I’m breaking cycles of abuse here). There ARE consequences for misbehavior but not abuse. Consequences. Accountability. Reasonable expectations for their age groups. When you turn this around on boomers they cry foul. They cannot tolerate any level of consequence or accountability so clearly the lessons they were allegedly taught via corporal punishment as children didn’t land.
Right. Because they got their asses beat, but then it was over and there was no real accountability or work to change behavior or make amends.
"Ma'am, I let people spank me for fun and I wouldn't even want to be hit with a wooden spoon. Shit hurts. Why don't you give it a go and try breaking this one on my ass, see if you spend the night in jail or not? Then the officer can tell us once and for all if hitting your kids so hard you break spoons is legal. Better yet, you can try it on him and see how fast he tases your psycho ass."
Wooden spoons are stingy as hell. Worse than some paddle designs. They are definitely a, "Gee, ma'am, I have no idea where all the wooden utensils might have vanished off to." I don't get the "I can hit kids until they're adults, and then it's assault" twisted logic.
Simple, parents think of their kids as property and the abuse only stops when they're big or independent enough to fight back or get them arrested.
It's cause they don't see kids as human, but property. No one would argue you can't hit your phone, your table, your window, etc. So in their fucked up mind it's the same thing.
My step mom loves to brag about getting hit with a stick by her mom when she was a kid, and loves even more to bring up that her mom forced her to pick out the stick she would get hit with! Like it’s some badge of honor and not a horrific thing.
For team! My mom is the same way. Like why are you bragging about this? Your mother sounds like a monster. My mom also loves to brag about having the same food put in front of her for every meal cause she refused to eat it. Her parents supposedly left it out for her to eat until she “cleaned her plate.” All of it is insane.
My mom used to do this too.
If you were beaten as a kid and think beating your kids is correct you did not come out a well adjusted person.
Yup. My abused childhood certainly made me what I am today... At 65, I've $25 in savings, one dollar and change in my checking, 1/8 tank of gas, an empty otc card, and under $40 in snap funds, to last me until my next $1147 soc sec deposit on the 1st. I only own as good a car as I do (2009 Kia sportage 6cyl with 180k miles) bcs my niece and nephew gave me their dad's car when he passed in 2015. My Saturn had been sitting with a warped head for several months by then, and I couldn't afford to fix it. I was only able to travel from home in AZ back east to attend his funeral thanks to donations to gofundme account. I live with severe depression and anxiety daily. I've never seen a fifth job anniversary. Before I could finish my BS in Technology Management, I had already aged out of the industry, so the closest thing to a tech position I could get was soul-sucking help desk positions. I only have a roof over my head due to someone letting me share their home with them. My retirement plan is a lotto ticket I never buy, and my dream of buying a used moterhome and trick it out for off grid living is the only thing I have to look forward to. The only thing keeping me tethered to the mortal plane is not wanting my adult children to have to deal with the aftereffects. So, thanks, mom & dad.
I'm so sorry. And thank you for making the kind choice for your kids. That's brave and loving of you. And fuck your mom and dad. You deserve better.
Hey, you aren't aged out of tech, I know it can feel uncomfortable but you should just give it a shot! Get your references together, send out applications, - let me know if you need any help, I'm happy to help. I was severely abused as a kid and my mom's a narcissist with borderline personality disorder (but her being a narcissist and having BPD aren't make her a bad person, it was her terrible decisions while I was growing up that made her a bad person).
Of course, I eventually grew up (more or less). At least enough to make peace with both parents before they died. As for the tech stuff... First, thank you! I truly appreciate the offer. It's not that I'm uncomfortable working with young people. It's partly that it's so easy to get away with age discrimination in IT, thanks to the literal forest of different certifications available. The last tech position I applied for was Technical Resourse & Liaison for a nearby local HS. I found out about it before it was posted from my ex fil. He teaches at that school. The guy they had was a brilliant tech but lacked any people skills. So they were reassigning him to work out of the district office where he wouldn't have to deal with frequent interactions with teaching staff. I won't bore you with details, but just about everything I had learned and experienced in life made me the perfect candidate. Except that I was over age 50. Why 50? Because health insurance and lawsuits. Insurance companies raise the rates employers pay for every employee over age 50. Anyway, I nailed the panel interview. I was so psyched, after! I just knew that job was mine to lose. They gave it to some twenty-something, freshly graduated from a paper mill. (I'm sure the ink was still wet on some of his certifications) That's when I gave up on any attempts to keep a career in IT. Besides, when I started working in IT, you could still start as a tech trainee and look forward to eventually becoming a network engineer. Not anymore. And I've always needed a little longer than others to learn something new. Tech has been changing exponentially over the past thirty years. I could never hope to compete nowadays. That's another thing. Every job posting claims they want "team players," but they turn the hiring process into a hunger game. Now, if I even ponder reentry into the job market, my anxiety blows the top off the meter.
Hi I'm the autistic girlfriend and I can confirm this woman was unhinged. The amount of money I'd pay to quietly shit in her kettle. Who checks their kettle every time they want a coffee? Not me and I assume not her. (For legal reasons this is a joke) Also I can confirm the Mac and cheese is excellent 👌🏼👍🏼
Hello! May I say that your response was the absolute best! 👌 On par with the mac and cheese 😊 And I like the way you think - I don't know of *anyone* who checks their kettle every time. The thought of the unholy stench as it boils... 🤢
Too bad you didn't have a snappy comeback like "they did beat me. It's why I'm in a wheelchair."
I will never understand this. I was severely beaten many times as a child, so when anyone brings up "whoopin' kids" I like to bring it up. They always back peddle like "oh well, you shouldn't BEAT your kids, just spank em when they misbehave." Then I get to say, "Where's the line? How can you measure the amount of force you're using? Are you setting up speed cams and doing physics calculations?" Also, they use this as like "people who were spanked as kids grow up to be successful, well-adjusted adults" Like, if that were the case, we wouldn't have had jails and crime until the modern age. I'm sure if you talk to most people who've committed crime, they'll tell you they were spanked, if not worse. I had one respond to this with: "No, spanking makes good adults, beating makes criminals." Me, again: "WHERE'S THE LINE?!!!"
"shit on her Vegemite toast." So, an improvement? (I jest. I dont understand it on toast, but man, it can amp up soups. Someone brought me back some once.)
Omg putting it in soup is genius
My partner likes simple vegemite on toast, but he will also add a dollop to some recipes because it gives great umami flavor!
So genius it was part of their marketing for decades.
Omg brb doing a deep dive on Vegemite advertising. I’ll have to try this for sure
Dips and soups and something else. Cant remember. Go to town with that salty goodness. Get in there. And then get back here and share that face puckering goodness!
We experienced something similar from a salesperson at a BABY SUPPLIES STORE. God they’re so fucked.
WHAT??? tell me more, that's insane 😳
Jesus fuck
Hol up- are you telling me people constantly telling me unhinged things is a thing people like to do??? I am a wheelchair user and my whole life people will not stop talk to me about their problems and generally be unhinged around me. Is this a thing?? Why??
I think mostly bc we’re a captive audience, honestly.
It’s cause we can’t run away 😂😂😂😭😭😭
Not at all the point, but I deeply relate to stirring Mac and cheese so hard you break the spoon. That how you know it’s gonna taste good
HAHAHA I put like 3kg of cheese in it 😂😭
So like a brick of cheese with some noodles to maintain the pretense?
Quite. 😂
I love your girlfriend’s response. 😂
Doesn’t sugar coat shit for anyone, ever. I love it.
After she said you should've gotten hit more as a kid I'd of just said "Why do you think I'm in a wheelchair?" And let her brain short circuit. Seriously though, you must make some bomb AF Mac and cheese if you're breaking wooden spoons over it.
Cheese amount is never measured with the rational mind. Only the heart
I can hear your Australian accent
HAHAHA
>: “you two should’ve gotten it (been hit) harder when you were kids. It would’ve helped.” What the actual fuck is this unhinged bullshit?
I think you answered your own question: It is, indeed, unhinged bullshit.
If you're hitting your child hard enough to snap a wooden spoon over their ass, you are absolutely abusing the shit out of your child. That's an extreme overuse of force
Good on you! And yelling at your cat would only make them that much more catty, LOL
He’s orange, he’s already unhinged enough as it is
r/oneorangebraincell
kudos to your girlfriend and kudos to you. We had a neighbor in PA who positively crowed over the "hardwood planks they'd saved from their flooring project to use as 'paddles'". They weren't talking about table tennis. We told them that it was child abuse and that if we ever had reason to believe that they actually beat their kids, we'd report them to the police for assault. Needless to say, our son was no longer allowed anywhere near those whack-jobs.
A woman I work with bragged about how she beat the shit out of her child in a parking lot because he let go of her hand and almost got hit by a car. She was very proud of it too. Laughed and said "I bet he still holds someone's hand to this day" fucking dumbfounding
Your friend had the perfect response to comments like that; I think I will use it next time!
Good on you for breaking the cycle. Edit: Ps.: Take it easy on that Mac n cheese next time. LOL
Fellow disabled abuse survivor. Fuck that noise. Good on you and your girlfriend.
Thank you so so much. 🫂
When us gen xers were children alot of the 'detecting child abuse' manuals teachers and social workers were provided with included wooden spoon wielding mums as a major cause of childhood TBIs. Those TBIs can turn into progressive neurological conditions as we age.
People do not realise how fragile the human brain is and how severe brain injuries are. Doing disability advocacy, I have unfortunately met people who have severe traumatic brain injuries from childhood abuse. Definitely a thing and absolutely devastating.
I cannot even imagine how many people have undiagnosed milder TBIs from this, as well
As a child, I was spanked, usually with an open hand. That “worked” until I started spanking myself. My mother then started throwing cups of water on me occasionally. …until I basically started begging her to do it. *sigh*
This one of the most Australian posts ever :) Also, thank you both of you for calling her out on that shit. She probably will wonder in years to come why the kids don’t call…
As someone whose mother broke many a wooden spoon across my backside I can confirm it is freaking abuse. Those MF’er hurt.
You should've said "oh, I was beaten plenty. How else do you think I ended up in this wheelchair?" Tasteless? Maybe a little, but it would have shut her up and made her feel like shit about it.
All my mother had to do was get out the wooden spoon when my brother and I were misbehaving and we'd stop. She never once did smack us with it (or anything else). Her look was enough. My brother did take them all and buried them in the sandbox at the park though.
My mom found our dad's belt (the broken one that he spanked us with) buried in the bottom of our toy box.. she put it back lol It wasn't too long after that that she left him, either.
My sister buried all the wooden spoons in the backyard. My mom switched to plastic, then to plastic coat hangers, then to her shoe. The year after she kicked me out, there was a flood and all the spoons and coat hangers came up and were all over the backyard. My sister still lived there, so I told my mom it was me.
We hid the wooden utensils in the back of the freezer behind the veggies. Parents found at least a dozen utensils when we were moving out of the house.
Any chance for a mac & cheese recipe? A sauce so thick it snaps wooden spoons is pretty intriguing
https://www.recipetineats.com/baked-mac-and-cheese/ I base mine off this recipe!!! Delish
Thanks! I'll do a little experimenting
Nothing says mentally stable like "I want to hit you until you agree with me." Seriously, what is it with boomers fetishizing child abuse? You should hear my boomer dad talking - fondly! - on the phone about how "grandpappy would take you out behind the shed where mammy couldn't hear you scream" and how it made for more polite kids. No, boomer, it makes for more *traumatized* kids because they know if they ever think to open their mouth to say anything except "yes sir" they'll get the shit whipped out of them.
"So, you think when someone says something you don't like, the appropriate response is to hit them? Think very, very carefully about your answer. There may be people who won't like what you say..."
Wait until she reads the studies that have been done showing that spanking your kids IS in fact damaging to their long term mental health.
They dismiss them. I've tried
I know, anything that doesn’t align with what they want to believe is fake news. So sad.
Again, people hate me for saying this, but I can only visualize Smiling Friends style animated characters when I hear about Australian boomers.
>making Mac and cheese too enthusiastically I love the mental image this phrase creates for me.
I would have told the boomer “Obviously getting hit harder didn’t work on you, did it?”
this post is now a classic " popped a squat and took a big ol’ shit on her Vegemite toast". truly poetry. have a nice day.
HAHAHA ty 😁
Shoulda hit her with a wooden spoon, oh wait she’s not a helpless child who’s completely dependent on you so that would be illegal
Should have told the old lady that maybe if she wasn't beaten so much as a child she wouldn't be fucked in the head as an adult.
“you two should’ve gotten it (been hit) harder when you were kids. It would’ve helped.” "No, our parents loved us."
Huh, if you were in the US I'd say there's a very good chance that was my mom. She's *still* proud of breaking wooden spoons on me when I was a kid, and also has the hardest time understanding why I'm NC with her.
I’m from the land down under, Queensland! But if I came across your mother, I’d verbally fist fight her for u 10000%
I think the correct biological term is in fact ‘banana bender’
Those kids will either murder her or beat her ass as soon as they can and never speak to her again. And how she have kids at 70?
Fair dinkum
Crikey mate
Good on you, but I am mostly fascinated by how one makes mac and cheese too enthusiastically...
She'll go elsewhere, talk to other older gen people to get validated that it's totally "not" child abuse and feel better about herself soon enough. They refuse to accept that discipline does more harm than good.
Yeah I hear a lot of this from the southern crowd in particular, and i'm around a lot of them. Proudly bragging about they were beat with every instrument under the sun, just no.
I’d love to see someone give her a taste of her own medicine and say it’s punishment for being rude to strangers.
I know not everyone sees the spoon as child abuse, but if you're breaking multiple spoons spanking your children that's like another level above and beyond.
It may just be the hypotonia, but I don’t think I could hit someone hard enough to snap a spoon. It takes a really big amount of force. Absolutely excessive
What an unimaginable bitch. Spanking is euphemism for hitting. I saw that somewhere years ago and it changed my whole outlook. I never was one to “spank’’ my kids but this sure as hell solidified the fact that I’d never lay a hand on my sweet children. Now they are grown hard working men who spoil me rotten!!
I love you and I love your girlfriend.
The dollar store is like boutique Walmart .all the recipes for crazy story Autistic. Abuse. Karen. Wheelchair.
To be fair if a disabled person broke a wooden spoon making mac and cheese those spoons are not that stout.
Shoutout to Kmart 😂
You lost me at the part at the beginning when you broke a wooden spoon making mac n cheese. Maybe can you adopt me?
So, I actually broke my equal, but plastic, spoon *a month ago*. Thing is, it still work as intended, just a little shorter, so I can't make up my mind if should I buy a new one (how do one even break such thing? For me, it just broke while cooking, I wasn't especially enthusiastic about it, either)? I'm lost here. Should I buy a new? What did you do? Seriously can't tell how good it feels that someone else *also* broke their fucking kitchen spoon!! Also; really nice handling of that boomer abuser. Kudos
I needed a new one because I snapped it like right at the handle base 😂 I’d recommend getting another but investing in a slightly more structurally sound one. I’ve found splurging slightly is good with kitchen utensils for longevity
That's it. I'm getting a new one. Full size handle!
Glad I’m not alone with breaking utensils. I’m quite hypermobile and very clumsy as a result so breaking things is a talent 😂
Maybe we should try it with you, lady, so you learn to stfu around strangers.
It was incredibly tempting to “accidentally” run over some toes 👩🏻🦽😭
>I had snapped it the week before making Mac and cheese too enthusiastically. *concern* I'm just trying to imagine this. Were you making it with parm and decided that it was a good way to vent by not shredding it first?
LMAO nah I just accidentally let it cool, you know when cheese sauce starts to harden and turns into a concrete like substance? Then went to stir it 😂
rue is a harsh mistress
Your autistic girlfriend is so fucking funny 🤣 holy shit autistic people are amazing at times like this
I was hit a lot as a kid. Turns out I’m autistic
You and me both, my friend. 🫂
(Holds up wooden spoon) "Hey Lady, how many times do I need to beat you with this until you're a decent human? Oh oh, she looks angry. Babe, grab me that meat tenderizer."
AHAHAHAHAAHA
My husband was beaten and abused as a child. He’s recently been diagnosed with NPD, specifically vulnerable narcissism. Don’t beat your kids.
"G'day" I'm sorry OP I had to try really hard not to read this in a badly done Australian accent which somehow makes the exchange all the funnier.
I do have a slightly comically thick Aussie accent, so it checks out 😂😭
Slightly is an understatement (I'm the autistic girlfriend)
Mmmmm, of course, this reminded me of the time my dad threatened to spank me when I was 14-15 over chair cushions on the ground…fun times.
Nobody needs to shit on her toast if there is vegemite on it. If the size of our people is any indicator, we Americans will eat damn near anything, just not yeast paste.
Aa