Ok.. the word abuse is being thrown around alot. Let me tell you from someone who had such experiences as a child.
I was a good kid ..a very quiet, docile and shy kid. I had a very mean step mother which I lived with from about the age of 7 to 14 years old. My regular punishments included:
—cold showers
—tubs full of hot water
—hot sauce in the mouth
—having my body scrubbed raw
—spankings from wooden spoons (so hard that they often broke)
—bar of soap mashed in my teeth
—liquid dishsoap down my throat
—being dragged across the room by my hair
—punched, kicked, shoved down stairs.. etc.
.... the list gets much worse but I’m not going into that.
I never talked back… I never lied or stole anything. I was good. But my step mother was mentally unstable and she would blame me for anything and everything. And forget about crying or screaming because that made her punish you even worse.
What did these punishments do to me? You know, just her threats and insults were enough to instill the fear of death in me (and leave me with severe emotional scarring). There was no need for these physical punishments. I remember the pain of the cold showers…the numbness of my body afterwards. I remember the burning itch on my skin after the hot baths and scrub downs. The taste and illness of vomitting up soap and hot sauce. To this day….my scalp is overly sensitive.
You know what I don’t remember? Most of the reasons why these punishments happened. It taught me nothing but to be afraid of her. There were no life lessons there.
I have physical scars on my body from that woman.
This is much more severe than a mere spanking on the bottom.
And some of you wonder if that was abuse? Are you kidding me? You know how much psychological counselling I’ve been through? I’ve had so much counselling, I am way more qualified to be one myself than most counsellors out there.
There is absolutely NO reason anyone should ever do these things to a child. As they are just that, children. We are adults ..bigger/stronger and, supposedly, smarter.