Look, I'm not saying that this isn't an awesome vision of perfect parenting, but what is up with comics like this? I'm definitely not advocating for traumatizing children, but this seems like a call-out of parents with less patience than a saint (so, most of them).
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this is how you break generational trauma
(01-24-2025, 09:21 PM)gorzek Wrote: [ -> ]this is how you break generational trauma
This is how fishing works
honestly, I don't understand the whole rationale of blowing the fuck up over some small mistake made with a thing that could be fixed or replaced. kid dropped a plate by accident? that's not something they did on purpose. Don't yell.
They threw it on the floor deliberately? then you yell or something, but a mistake doesn't warrant a beating.
Uhhh my dad yelled at me a lot and pulled my hair when I made mistakes like this growing up
I would never do such a thing to my kid. But because of what my dad did to me, I often had these obsessive thoughts where I pondered "What's the worst honest mistake someone can do to make someone stop being friends?" They used to be worse and now thankfully are less intense, but some 10-ish years ago I pondered over it a lot.
My wife (at the time my girlfriend) accidentally broke my Nintendo DS. We were at her brother's house and we were getting ready to leave when she offered to help by carrying a bunch of stuff. The stairs in his house are very narrow so she missed a step and dropped my Nintendo DS and it broke - snapped right in half between the two screens. When she came back up, she was deeply apologetic and I remember thinking to myself, "I'm oddly unaffected by this" because that was the very first time in our relationship where something like that happened. I reassured her it was alright - it was telling anyway that a simple fall (wasn't that high, didn't fall down the entire stairs just a couple steps) broke it that bad. I had subconsciously taken note of the fact that the system had been yellowing and a tiny corner had chipped from merely age. So I wasn't bothered by it at all and one day years later she bought me a new one. All was well. I think that was the first time I realized "Whew, I'm not like my dad. I can forgive and forget with accidents like these."
But I often question myself like "What's the worst honest mistake someone can do to make me genuinely upset?"
That made me think of my most prized possessions. For example, my handwritten stories when I was a kid. What if someone somehow accidentally led them to their demise? I understand that they are fantastical scenarios (i.e. somehow accidentally burning them or allowing a pet to tear them apart). So I ended up painstakingly scanning them page by page and saving them electronically, and also, in addition to that, transcribing them to Microsoft Word (because sometimes my childish handwriting is indecipherable to most).
And though I wasted time obsessing over it and taking preventative measures, at some point later I looked back and was like "You know, I don't think I would be that mad if it was an honest mistake. I still have my memories."
I think the worst "accident" I currently obsess over is "What if my parents accidentally kill our cat when taking care of her?" My parents are animal lovers but they took a moment to understand cats because they are used to dogs and birds. When we had them look over my wife's cat (whom she loved DEARLY) I was so paranoid about accidents happening that I typed up and printed out a couple pages explaining what they can or can't do. Because in my mind, I imagined a fantastical scenario where like my mom gave my wife's cat something to eat that was toxic, and then the cat died, and then oh no what would the relationship be like between my mom and my wife? How could they get past such an awkward, traumatic accident? Would my wife be able to forgive my mom? Would my mom ever move past it?
On the flipside, I also currently obsess about scenarios where my wife may accidentally break something super valuable at my parents' house, and if my dad would ever get as upset with her as he did with me. Like what if we are helping move stuff and my wife accidentally breaks a really valuable item or memory from my mom's past that is like super sensitive? While that hasn't happened, the closest thing like that was when we were at my uncle's house for Christmas. My dad's relationship with his brother is tenuous at best, so we were surprised when my uncle agreed to have Christmas at their place for the first since my wife and I got married. The dining room has a lot of potted plants behind the last chair. I typically sit there, and I'm used to maneuvering a certain way when I get up because of how many potted plants there are. When we were cleaning up after eating, my wife tried walking behind me to get some plates on the other side of the table. She tipped over a small circular ceramic table with a potted plant on it, and THE WHOLE THING TIPPED OVER AND BROKE. Not just the potted plant, but the ceramic table too.
I was MORTIFIED. I froze and all I could do was look at my dad's face to gauge what he really thought. I could tell he wanted to say something. I'm obviously used to reading his emotions and he seemed upset for a split second. But it wasn't his house, so he didn't say anything and instead my uncle was like "Ope, it's all right..." My wife of course apologized a thousand times. I was ready to combat my uncle and dad if they said something to her (i.e. You shouldn't have had that corner filled with so many plants! Nobody can hardly move there!) But thankfully - nothing of the sort happened. An hour later it was water under the bridge, but knowing my family my aunt and uncle might be miffed about it because they always talk about people behind their backs.
But yeah. This is the shit that happens in your head when you were physically abused as a kid for making mistakes. That and also lots of retaliatory anger/the need to be readily combative all the time.