My husband is 23 yrs old, we have a 2 yr old son. He was abused continuosly as a child.
After hearing time and time that victims of child abuse later become child abusers to there children.. he is worried. He doesnt abuse our son but there have been a few occasions where he has raised his voice or tapped his bottom if he misbehaved. My husband does not want to hurt our son but he is worried that he might "snap"… we do not believe in spanking or screaming at our child but when our son does something wrong my husband does not know how to react other than the way he was raised. What can he do to prevent himself from repeating what he was taught as a child?
My husband came from a very low income family, his siblings all come from different fathers, he’s never met his father (his father would call and promise to stop by and take him out but would never follow through). his childhood is filled with miserable memories of being forgotten about (his teachers would continuously take him home since nobody would be there to pick him up), he would be horribly beaten by his babysitters & mother when she was around (his mother was hardly home). He was an only child up until the age of 5 when he was given a sister, his new step father would beat his mother horribly and went onto kidnapping his sister… Years later there was a new man in mother’s life also an alcoholic and abuser.. my husband would watch in horror as his new step father would beat his new baby brother (only a few months old)…. As you can see his childhood is filled with constant abuse.
my husband would be beaten severly… not "spanking and yelling" I am merely stating that we do not want it to get as severe as it was for my husband when he was a child…
protective services was constantly at my husbands home while growing up and was taken out of that home and was sent to live with his grandmother because of the lack of food, the neglect and the beatings.
We do not spank, and hope to keep it that way. We always work as a team but when it comes down to punishing our child.. I take over because he does not know what to do (since he does not want to punish the way he was taught).
First, keep in mind that yes, most child abusers were abused themselves, but it is not exactly a given that someone who was abused will abuse their own children. The very fact that your husband is worried and conscious of it is a huge hint that he’s not the abusing kind.
It’s totally normal to raise your voice to a 2-year-old. Sometimes you have to, since they don’t have many reasoning skills and they must sometimes have a forceful break into their actions to get the point across. Even a swat on the backside, occasionally, isn’t abusive. I do get your point, though. Your husband doesn’t want to put himself in the position to snap. But unless he currently feels like he’s really holding in abusive tendancies, try to get him to understand that he’s in a safe environment (meaning he’s not exactly in the tempation to abuse).
Counseling would be really good for him, I think. With all the problems he had as a child, talking to a professional could help him work through some of it. Besides, the neglect is much easier to have be a repeat than the physical abuse, since physical abuse is a definate action, and neglect is a slow but serious problem that happens without you realizing it. Talking to someone could help him with all aspects of his past and the past’s influences on his parenting skills.
If he feels even a little pull to abuse, even though he keeps it in check, anger management classes and/or parenting classes may be helpful. I hope you both take this in the way I mean it, not in an insulting way. Most of us learn our parenting skills (good or bad) from our own parents. Since he didn’t have parents to learn good parenting skills from, he may be benefited by classes or workshops.