Italian JWs growing up with the belt! Can you relate?

by Frank.L 29 Replies latest jw friends

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  Frank.L

  My parents where the complete opposite. They didn't give two squirts of cat piss about us

  Im trying to wrap my brain around that notion...whats worse getting the Christ beaten out of you because your parents "care so much" or having parents who were completley detached from you emotionally not caring a rats ass.......hummmmm.....Hard choice...On the one hand im sure we would of taken full advantage of my parents no caring and ended up in jail ..Thats for sure. Which means I think u did very well for urself considering the circumstances....Hard both ways esp in the Borg...But we survived.
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  tula

  

  I really think it's just an Italian thing. I dated an Italian and when he took me to his parents home for dinner, the mother bitc-- slapped his father several times. Once for not sitting up straight, and again for eating too slow, for making a mess dropping spaghetti off his fork. I asked my friend before I came if his parents were twurlers...you know with the spoon and fork for spaghetti, but they were not. Anyway the whole evening was comical to me. The food was tasty but how can you eating wondering if someone if about to slap you for something. I left hoping that one of them would learn the Heimleich maneuver...just in case.

  But really, I think it is just an Italian thing.

  
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  restrangled

  No Italian background here.

  From the Midwest in the US.. English, Irish, French and Scotish heratige. Hit just as much and witnessed as much in our KH....most were German.

  I've posted about this before, but because you are asking......

  Seems like we were beat to hell at any given trigger by my father and mother.....she claims she was the easy one to this day, but I remember some pretty awful stuff from her. She banged me and my brothers head together really hard in front of the furnace.....I felt kind of dizzy for days...I was very little. She also slapped my face so hard at an assembly I couldn't hear the rest of the sessions...(maybe a blessing in disguise)

  I use to stay overnight at a friends house, and the Father would beat their mother so bad I saw the bruises on her neck, arms and back. The elders were called in they asked her what she was doing to irritate him. My dad was one of those elders. (Why in the hell was I allowed to spend the night at an abusers house I'll never know)

  At the same time when I would stay overnight the Father would come in and beat the youngest daughter with a belt if we stayed up late giggling which disturbed him. We tried to be quiet but usually ended up having a visit from him. You could hear the belt whipping through the air hitting her back and legs as she lay whimpering in the bed across from us....I never thought twice about it. (That little girl never made a sound louder than a whimper)....but today she is on disability due to alcoholism. The sister I use to sleep with, my best friend, committed suicide about 10 years ago.

  When I look back on all the whippings in my own family and the other JW families.....it seems incredible. The beatings that went on at the hall were insane.....paddles hanging in the bathrooms. NUFF SAID>

  r.
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  Gregor

  My mother administered most of the corporal punishment. Usually with a belt folded in half so it made a lot of noise. Sometimes she would take a green switch from a tree and strip the leavs off. This manufacturing process just added to the anticipation of the switching on my bare legs. She would grab me by the arm and I would run in a circle away from the switch, around and around. Sometimes this would strike me as funny and I would laugh. Wrong move.
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  OUTLAW

  ..Alot of JW kids got the "Sh*t" beat out them..Nothing to do with race or nationality.....I got got at least 2 "Black-Eye`s".....From my "MOM!"....LOL!!...OUTLAW
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  sspo

  How about being beaten with a rubber hose and having a frozen steak thrown at you and a few knives but it never bothered me because i always felt i deserved it because i was a pain in the a$$ to them

  Don't forget their parents did the same things to them and they felt it was the best way to keep kids in line.

  mannaggia che schifo
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  restrangled

  Spare the Rod spoil the child....

  words I think we all lived by.

  r.
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  nvrgnbk

  No Italian background. I was hit with a leather belt frequently, sometimes the buckle. My mother used whatever she could find. My brother helped me to recall a beating from her with a plastic baseball bat that I had blocked from memory. I forgave them. Not for them. For me. My relationship with my son was my chance to make the abusive behavior a thing of the past. I have been very successful with that up until this moment. It was good seeing you in TO, Frank.L.
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  cognizant dissident

  I do not think it is an Italian thing. I've known plenty of Germans and Brits and Irish and Scottish and Indians and Asians that also beat their children. It is not a JW thing either. Many of them weren't witnesses. Our parents beat us because their parents beat them, not because they are Witnesses. It is a time honored tradition, that has been passed down for millenium and transcends cultural and relgious barriers.

  It will stop when enough people who were beat as children decide there is a better way to raise children and break the cycle. There are many families who do not beat or spank their children. They are still in the miniority, less than 20%. I haven't noticed their children are any worse behaved then children who are spanked. Sometimes, they are better behaved. There is still a long way to go!

  Cog
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  Both my parents are Italian. Father from Caserta and mother from Abruzzi. Both always used corporal punishment on us but rarely ever the belt. My father always used his hands and also had a sort of code where he'd never hit us in the face, but a slap to the head was fair game.

  My mother would use her hands but more often than not she'd use a fly swatter. Okay that sounds funny, and it was nothing compared to what the other preteens bragged about being hit with. I always was being told how I probably wouldn't have cut it in their homes. I'm thankful really that while my parents did hit us, I can honestly say they tried in their own ways not to exaggerate, or at least to be a bit different from their own parents who always beat the living daylights out of them. The swatter still stung like hell on bare legs and arms though. It wasn't funny either when the plastic swatter part of it fell off and she kept hitting a few times more with the metal rod part of it.

  Edit: Someone mentioned knives. I'm going to say that incidents with knives were rare among the group I grew up with it happened.