orangememesicle:

One thing that really gets me about today’s society is how emotional/psychological child abuse is normalized and even celebrated.

I’ve noticed a phenomenon of parents getting together and talking about how they’re such a Mean Mom or Mean Dad and how they’re raising their children to be respectful. They talk about destroying their children’s possessions, isolating them, humiliating them, and/or publicly shaming them.

And when these people hear about, say, a parent smashing a kid’s phone for not cleaning their room or burning their possessions or filming a punishment or embarrassing moment and putting it up on social media, they commend the parents for “teaching the kids a lesson”.

Why the fuck do we, as a society, think this is okay?

It doesn’t teach kids valuable life lessons, it teaches them to be scared of repercussions. It’s bullying and child abuse and for some reason, people think that’s commendable.

Whenever I hear people saying “haha I bet that 14 year old learned a lesson”, it instantly makes me suspicious of them. I will instantly think of you as either a potential child abuser or a child abuse enabler.

As a survivor of psychological abuse, people dismissing this behavior as “harmless life lessons” makes me wonder if it really was abuse. If I deserved it. If I really deserved to have my pet’s life threatened because I was a liar.

It’s not cute. It’s not “good parenting”. It’s intimidating, shaming, and traumatizing your child into compliance.