And kids? Please understand that parents who CARE scream at their kids like this dad did because they CARE. If this guy were a bad dad, he’d have laughed and taken photos. Also, his “give me the shirt” was typical manic parent behavior. I got a call from the ski club director while my kid was still supposed to be on the slopes. My first words were something inane like, “Are you all having fun?” I knew in my heart that this call was NOT going to be good news, but I couldn’t quite face it, you know? Fortunately, Mama Buzz had only sprained, not broken her arm, so that part did turn out good.
polination.blog 
Ugh, that father sounded just like mine… it gave me flashbacks to all the times he chewed me out and did his best to make me feel like a worthless piece of excrement. (For the record, I never did anything anywhere near as stupid or dangerous as what that kid did, but my father managed to find fault with almost everything I did or said anyway.) I understand the father being upset with the kid for doing something foolish, but he certainly didn’t handle it very well.
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I think I reacted to hearing myself going off on one of my kids when I was really just freaking out with worry and not knowing what to do. My parents didn’t yell or hit; when my mother was mad, she got very, very quiet. My father rarely got angry, but he’d been beaten as a child, so the few times I saw him start to lose it, I also saw him pull himself back from that emotion very sharply.
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Isn’t it weird how different people react to the same situation? My father was also an abused child, but he responded to it totally differently from your father.
To this day, whenever anyone yells at me for anything, no matter how stupid or trivial, it makes me revert to my childhood — I become that same scared little girl, just cowering in the corner, thinking that my life was a mistake and that the world would be a better place if I had never been born.
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I get yah, Blue.
We men have a hard time figuring it out, though. Chalk it up to stupid, I guess. But when you’re raised (or trained) to take shouted, abusive orders on the heaving deck of a ship in the pouring rain and think nothing of it except that you must go do what you’re ordered or people might die, it’s the greatest mystery to have your wife or daughter shrink before you when you bark at her over some small thing. And then refuse to do what you ask until you change your attitude. At first, it looks like the most extreme impudence and childishness, and it can certainly lead to great anger and disappointment.
This was a huge stumbling block for Gruntessa and I when we married. Eventually, I realized that she’d been traumatized by her father, and every shout brought her back to the scared little girl, just like you described, Bob. I did change, because I loved her, and as she grew more secure, her bravery increased and the trauma faded to the point where we could work together as a good team. I believe now that I was very foolish and ill-prepared for marriage, but I also think that American girls are even more poorly prepared, as a rule. We have 40 years of feminism to tell us what women need. What do girls get? At best, they only ‘get’ that guys want sex. But that’s only a small part of what men expect and need in marriage. It’s a wonder any marriage survives!
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