When counting reasons you hate your sister-in-law, do the most egregious reasons move to the top? In other words, has this become reason number one I hate my sister-in-law or is this number 512 because it just comes latest on a long line of things that piss me off about her so much I about can’t stand it?
I guess it doesn’t matter.
She beats my four year old nephew with a belt.
I cannot tell you how strong my urge to drive over there and take a belt to her is.
I just hate that woman. I hate her so much that I cannot wait until the moment comes when I’m not hearing this shit second and third hand. Because the second he says that shit to me, I’m calling social services.
Hit a four year old with a belt. What the fuck is wrong with her?
I hope she dies.
Soon.
You’d think a mentally ill crack whore would only have a life expectancy of twenty-five, but I guess we can’t get that lucky.
Tiny Cat Pants 
An old man I knew once sat on a porch, killing flies with a rolled-up newspaper. He looked sidelong at me and said "You hit a youngun with a strop and they wind up stubborn as a mule." He also could have said that it fills a kid up with rage that leaks out a little at a time for the rest of their life. Or it takes a bite out of a kid like a mad dog and they go all stiff in the jaw to keep the helpless anger in their mouth. But given time, they will, in turn, go on to snap at others senselessly though they don’t even quite know why.Domestic violence — the gift that keeps on giving.
You can call social services anyway, for what it’s worth, even though you’re hearing it 2nd and 3rd hand. I filed an "anonymous" (they call it that, but it’s not so much) child abuse report once. Sometimes you just have to. Sorry to hear about this. I’ll drive you over there if you want to take a belt to her.
Hearing shit like that drives me insane. The kind of insane that makes me want to drive to their house and have a belt party on mom AND dad.Until I’m too tired to swing anymore.Either call the cops or tell them that you will call the cops if you hear of it happening again.Otherwise, you’re as guilty as they are.It is that simple.
How come there weren’t people like you around 30 years ago when I got spanked with one? Dang. Luckily, I didn’t have that happen too many times and oddly enough, looking back, I don’t see it as abusive. My dad wasn’t on crack either. Just a product of a different era. For the record, I have rarely as much as popped my kids on the behind.
Ah, Smiff, if I thought this was a simple matter of spanking, I wouldn’t be so sick about it.I think, if you’re going to punish your kids physically, it needs to be consistant. In other words, you punish to corret a behavior, not to just make them so afraid of you they don’t ever misbehave in your presense.But I know her and I know how she is and I think she’s just attempting to make him afraid of her so that he won’t bother her.Exador, you fucking hard ass. I’m glad your world works in such a way where the right thing to do is always clear and obvious and everyone’s moral culpability is so clear cut. But here in shades-of-gray land, it’s a little more difficult. For instance, I don’t keep in contact with my sister-in-law, because I think she’s a hateful evil bitch and I don’t want her to know where I live. So I don’t know where she lives or even by what name she’s currently living under.If she is, as she seems to be, inclined to leave the boy with my brother two states away from her, I’d rather not piss her off and have her vanish with the kid into whatever hell-hole life she’d lead.I’d like for him to live with his dad, because, though his dad is a jackass, his dad doesn’t attack him with objects. And I really don’t want to fuck up the chances of that happening.I’m not sure what the implications of any action I might take are.I did, however, tell my brother that, if I heard of anything like that happening again, I would have to report it to the police.But it makes it so much easier knowing that distraught, terrified aunt equals deranged abusive crack whore. I’ll sleep well tonight knowing you think I’m a monster.
You told your brother you’d go to the cops, hopefully with some lecturing included. That saves you from monster-status in my black/white world.Now the ball is in your brother’s court, to make sure that, either it never happens again, or he gets off his dead-ass and protects his kid by getting full custody.Simple
I used to work at the Y’s Domestic Violence Shelter in Nashville.All that violence does to children is A.) teaches them that this behavior is acceptable and then the cycle continues or B.) Takes chunks of their confidence away from then so when they are adults they have to either rebuild themselves or they end up leaving in so much fear of everythingI’m simplifying it, I realize that, but so much damage is done.I hate hearing stories like this. I really do. Kids need to be protected. Discipline and teaching lessons are one thing, violence is another.We shouldn’t teach our children to be afraid by beating them.Argh.
My grandfather got whipped (with a stick or a belt, I forget which) every week during his boyhood. "Because if [he] didn’t do something to deserve it this week, [he] would the next." I thought that his brothers got the same treatment, but their sons told me that it was only my grandfather, "because he always ran off to play when he should have been working." I know that he must have carried a lot of anger with him–my mother has stories about him and my grandmother fighting, complete with her (at 4′ 10") throwing frying pans at him. Yet somehow, by the time I came along, he had changed himself into the most loving, accepting person I have ever known. And he and my grandmother delighted in each other’s company. All without the benefit of psychotherapy, which his generation didn’t do much, and he certainly couldn’t have afforded.Which doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be concerned about your nephew, or hate you sister-in-law for beating him, or try to figure out the best thing to do to keep him away from her. It’s more a reminder that love coming from other places can give a kid the strength not to turn into a monster even though he’s got one for a parent.
Agreed that it’s not an irrevocable sentence to future psychosis, but it’s also not a good way to grow up. I come from a long line of beaters. My granddaddy was whupped with the guidelines of the mule he was plowing with for making crooked furrows. My father was laid out cold with a stick of stovewood to the head at the age of eight for opening a cupboard to get a slice of bread between meals. I was larrupped regularly with a belt and limber switches on general principles. In the family culture and in the place I grew up, no one thought it was abuse. My granddaddy was the old man I was talking about up top — he had just seen me get a beating and get cut up because the belt slipped and I had gotten it on the arm with the buckle end. That observation was the only regret (if you can construe it as a regret) that I ever heard the hard old bastard utter. My father also lived with regret and died trying to make amends for the scars he’d made. Being the astute sort, I work hard to manage the rage so that I don’t have to spend my old age wondering why my kid just doesn’t warm up to me. You’re doing the right thing to be an advocate when and where you can.
Very well said, Bridgett.Being an advocate on this starts from the ground up.It’s the only way, because in all honesty, we have to help people out who can’t help themselves, or at least that’s my philisophy. And not everyone can.Like children.
My mother in law threatens to call the cops on people she sees smacking their kids in the Kroger. I don’t know that she follows up on it, but, it bugs her. I’ve always found this interesting because of the stories Mr. Smiff has told of them getting good whuppings and some that even brought blood when they were kids. Maybe she feels guilty about it now and that’s how it’s channeled. Either way, I do hate that this is going on with your little nephews and that you can intervene in some way before it gets worse.
I hate my sister in law just because i stole a pen from her there she goes telling my brother she acts like she is 15 she is 30 i cant wait till they get divorce!!!!
You can blame yourself too, while you’re at, for not helping a desperate child who cannot help themselves. Talk about driving over there and serving up justice all you want. Unless you’re actually going to do it; or better yet, file a report child protective services you’re as big of a piece of shit as she is. Maybe bigger, considering that she’s likely not sober during these episodes while you clearly are.
Wow, Siri, that has to be some kind of record from “time self-appointed busy-body judge” to “time dethroned through own idiocy.” Points against you.
1. You didn’t notice you were commenting on a five year old post.
2. You believe that a sober person is more culpable for her actions than a non-sober person. Well, then, let’s all just get drunk and do drugs all the time, everyone, and then all the bad shit that happens is not our faults! See how stupid that is?
That’s why you suck at being a busybody.