My mother slapped me once. I was sixteen. I hit her back. Told her she could discipline me, but she would not disrespect me. She also once told me to go out and cut my own switch. I told her putting a saw in my hands at that point was probably the stupidest thing she could do. She tried throwing my stuff away. I made it clear I would destroy something of hers for everything of mine she damaged. She made a reasonable restriction and asked me to take a reasonable amount of responsibility, and I obeyed and cooperated.
My mother and I don't exactly have what anyone would call a 'healthy' relationship. We get along better now that she knows I won't put up with her bipolar idea of 'discipline'.
Her issue was she'd decide what mood she was going to be in before she got home. If she got home and was angry, there was nothing we could have done that would please her. She would find some excuse to be angry (even if she had to manufacture it out of thin air or dredge up something from the past) and we'd be in trouble. If she got home and was in a good mood, we could have burned the house down and she wouldn't care. The discipline was never about us, it was about her, and that's what made it abuse. All it taught us was not to bother trying to please her, we couldn't. Her wrath was preordained, so her rules were meaningless as they could neither induce it nor stave it off. And since her rules were for the most part arbitrary, it became easier for me to just not bother, go my own way, and essentially raise myself. My mother thinks I was in bed every night at 9pm. My mother never did figure out why I stored the ladder near my window when I cleaned the backyard. I have friends I've known since I was twelve years old that my mother has never met.
Every now and then she still gets a bug up her butt and try to get us under her thumb.
The daughter who called her on her crap and got out move 2000 miles away and has a happy, productive, reasonably successful life and a good outlook for the future.
The daughter who kept buying into the drama is now an alcoholic who may be permanently losing custody of her children.
And the daughter who got stuck under the thumb is a lazy couch potato with no work ethic and dropped out of high school, refuses to hold down a job, and managed to get her GED only to now be flunking out of college.
I spank my son. I make him stand in the corner. I make him clean up his messes. I try as hard as I can to be consistent with the rules. That's what works. Consistency. Clear rules, with clear punishments, that are not unreasonable.
