In this dream I was an adult as was my older sister.
I watched a movie with my sister but she kept talking so I got up to look for headphones for myself. I couldn’t find any. I went to the bedroom to look around but still couldn’t find any. I started cleaning the room instead and rearranging things. I began to pull family photos off the wall. One photo was of the sister sitting with my cousins and some family friends. Most of the photos I pulled down actually exist. They hung by silver thumbtack sloppy on a cork board. As I did my sister came in and asked me to get back to the movie with her. I told her I couldn’t hear because of her racket and needed my headphones. She said I’d never find them so I told her I’d just watch it later and that she needs to leave my DVD’s alone.
She walked out of the room. Seconds later the mother walked in. The room was now my grandparents game room in the basement with several children sitting at tables. The mother had “the stick” in her hand when she came in half dressed. All she had on was a slip pulled up under her arms. I said to her, “What did I do now.” I don’t remember her reply. It was something to the effect of, “Does it matter?” I asked if she was really upset that I told my sister she can’t watch my DVD. The mother said she was told a different version. She said my sister told her she couldn’t watch the DVD because I’d rather watch it with my gay lover. As my mother told me the version she was given my sister slinked out of the room. The mother brought her back and leaned her against the pool table. I got up and grabbed the dowel rod. I asked her if it was really necessary for her to whip my sister in front of all of us? It took a few times to get her to go to another room but finally she did. She hit my sister the whole way there. After a few swipes I was livid so I ran up stairs and burst in the middle room to stop the mother. When I got in there the mother was exhausted from hitting the sister so hard. After all she just whipped her from the basement, up a flight of stairs and into the middle room. By the time I got up there she’d been hitting her a bit so she was tired but still not ready to stop. I snatched the dowel rod from her hands and told her it was enough. I ran outside and broke it over my knee then tossed it into the street. My mother shouted back I’d have to replace it with my own money. The kids inside the house cheered because the mother’s power was gone…….
Spanking:
This is one of the only dreams I’ve had where I took a weapon out of my mother’s hand and broke it over my knee. What I’m about to say about spanking doesn’t apply to my mother. She beat her children and worse so this doesn’t apply to her or the audience she wanted.
After I woke I remember thinking, why do parents whip kids in front of one another? Is it really necessary to whip the child while their sibling looks on?I don’t believe it is. I think it’s cruel for the one being punished and for the one watching. I know a lot of survivors won’t agree with my thoughts on spanking but here they are……. I personally am not against spanking. I think it can be done correctly. I don’t think doing it with an audience is correct. I also think most of the time spanking has to do with a frustrated parent rather the actions of a child…. this might explain why a parent would be willing to subject an innocent person to the cries of another. They’re frustrated and not thinking about how the other child feels about seeing his brother or sister in pain. Truly loving parents can’t really expect this to not be damaging. Imagine the helpless feeling of an onlooker with you standing over their sibling smacking them a few times. The moment is about your frustration not about correcting the child. If your own emotions weren’t running high it would occur to you to go somewhere without an audience. I don’t think spanking alone is abusive. I think when you add in other factors it can be. People that love their kids are on both sides of the fence. Parents who love their kids don’t spank. Parents who love their kids spank correctly. Spanking may often be about the parent’s frustration but it doesn’t mean that frustration is abuse.
Feelings upon waking: Freaked out. I couldn’t believe I had this dream just before going to a physical exam. Great!!! I was tearful, jumpy, nervous. The day was difficult and anxious. The exam went okay because I gave myself permission to cry. I didn’t force myself to give him my hands or let him touch my feet. I think the biggest help was when I just let myself cry. I did not want to be there but I had to so I did the best I could. The doctor was informed of my situation so he did quite well with it. I was so happy I didn’t have a female doctor. Man that would have been really bad. The doc said my Lupus, RA and Fibro need to be treated more aggressively and that it doesn’t make any sense for me to live in this kind of pain. He referred me back to my current doctor. We’ll see……
Austin
Dream and Thoughts on Spanking-Wednesday, February 25, 2009 – 12:50PM EST
Glad the physical exam went well.
As far as spanking, I’ve gone round and round and round on spanking my children. There’s no easy answer, that’s for sure. And my opinions changed a whole lot when I had childre thn I’m sure they’ll change again as time goes on.
I do agree whoelheartedly that spanking ought not be done in front of others. I remember my dad saying, “Do you want me to pull your pants down and spank you right here in front of everyone?” It was embarrassing and mortifying. Even to just be asked that question, let alone spanked. I also remember my mom spanking me once – I know she did more than that, but I only remember 1x. It was the time she sat her chair down in the kitchen and made my sister and I line up and decide who would be spanked first. Sister and I argued about it. I won the argument. Sister was spanked first. It was worse standing there watching her get spanked than it was getting my own.
It’s funny you should mention your mother making you and your sister decide who should be spanked first. Last Tuesday in therapy we talked about how sadistic it was for my mother to have me and my sister choose what our punishment was. In this way we participated. While watching a siblings harmed the way your mother set it up and my mother did they made us participants in the abuse. Why would a mother make her children decide who will be punished first then have the one who goes second stand and watch? I know first hand the guilt from that stays well into adulthood. I remember standing in front of my mother pleading my case only to watch as my mother abused her. It should have been me under that dowel rod but it wasn’t…not physically anyway.
If a child is to be punished by an adult why should that child choose or take part in the punishment? Why should others be allowed to look on? The only reason our mother’s did that was out of cruelty for everyone involved. I’m sorry this happened to you too. I really am. (shakes head in sadness)
Austin
I don’t think spanking should be done in front of an audience, nor done out of anger.
I’ve never forgotten the time, shortly after my stepdad moved in, when I burst into the master bedroom to tell my mother something (the door was partially open), and there was my stepdad in his birthday suit. My mother screamed at me to get out, and I could hear her telling him to go spank me, and to use the belt. She also told him to pull down my pants. Oddly enough, he didn’t (pull down my pants.)
My mother was absolutely irate. I still don’t know what that was all about or why she didn’t administer the spanking herself.
I think there are times when you have to spank your children if nothing else gets through to them. I used to spank my kids when they were little, but never out of retaliation and always with a sinking heart. To this day they laugh at my efforts to discipline them in this way: apparently I never really spanked them hard enough for it to hurt. I suppose I was leery of repeating the abuses I’d suffered as a child.
Another time my mother beat me with a belt for getting lost on the way home.
Interesting though that she never spanked my eldest brother when she caught him molesting me…
I spanked my middle children when they were small. I wish I hadn’t. I’m glad the truth of the cruelty of it got through to me and I abandoned that barbaric practice. It was wrong. Little children have no other way to see it other than as a great big grown-up hitting them. I think it’s sick that we are programmed to think it’s okay to hit children, but then we tell them that it’s wrong to hit people. I think it’s sick that spanking teaches children that it is okay to be hit by someone who loves you. I have told my children in no uncertain terms that I was wrong and that they should not ever have been spanked. I’m glad they got to hear the truth of their feelings validated while they were still little children.
I understand this subject if very sensitive for survivors.
I know my take on spanking isn’t popular with survivors and even some non-survivors but I’m okay with others when they express their strong opposing beliefs.
I hear you loud and clear that you think it’s barbaric. That didn’t fall on Deaf ears but it also doesn’t jibe with my belief system. Even still, your opposing beliefs are welcome here.
Austin