60 Day Juice Fast?

[Terrie]

Once is a fluke, twice is the start of a pattern, and three sets the pattern. Anyone who doesn't respond to the second incident with "I have a problem, and will get help to address it." is in denial. It's doesn't have to be every time to be an issue.

[Witsec7]

What we've got is Chickey's husband hitting his toddler multiple times (not sure how many times "several" is) in less than a two year period, at least once with a heavy object, out of anger.

If I do the math, we have an adult male striking a child that is a year old with an object. Someone please correct me, I'd love to be wrong with regards to this assessment.

[Koala]

If I do the math, we have an adult male striking a child that is a year old with an object. Someone please correct me, I'd love to be wrong with regards to this assessment.

I believe she states he was 2 1/2 when he hit him with the golf club. I'm not sure how old he was the other times.

Honestly this whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach. I don't know what kind of fucked up society we live in when shit like this happens.

[itsnikki05]

I mean... there's nothing inherently wrong with their shake. Sounds like it's very healthy. Notsomuch as the only thing they eat.

[velly]

Koala, I appreciate your advice, but I know this was not to the level it seems. My husband is remorseful and regrets what he did. It hasn't happened again. When he gets angry, he leaves. I know this sounds like a cop-out, but I know my situation better than anyone.

My rapist felt total remorse too... every time he sexually molested me he felt HORRIBLE and cried and left. It stopped for a while and then I got raped. Just my two cents on your situation.

[ChickeyMonkey]

Mostly we're not all telling Chickey "Ditch him and never look back, right now", we're saying "Tell your husband that he needs to get help learning how to control his anger and discipline his child without resorting to violence, so he has the positive skills to prevent from doing something he's going to regret". And she's going "oh, no no no, that's not necessary". Why? Seriously, WHY? How is it a bad thing to tell people that there's help out there they can benefit from?

I've told him he needs to learn to parent a different way. He's open to that. I've gotten suggestions from the pediatrician and we will be looking at those resources. I have a feeling that no matter what I say, it won't be enough. I can't snap my fingers and have things happen instantly. If only that were possible, I'd have so many uses for that ability.

Yes, my husband has him on his own. When he gets in a tantrum my husband raises his voice and then lets the youngest sit there and cry. He goes in an area where he can still see him but isn't *right there*. Think kitchen and living room, where the kitchen looks into the living room.

Just FTR, I wasn't present when he hit him with the golf club handle. He was in the garage and I was in my room laying down. The youngest thought it would be fun to hit the oldest with the golf club and my husband grabbed it from him and smacked him on the leg with it, using his wrist, not pulling back and using full force. Was it the right thing to do? No. Is he willing to do something about it? Yes?

I've never been hit. Our oldest hasn't been hit. The youngest was 2.5 years old at the time, not 1 year old. He's 3 now.

The Pearls say not to hit in anger. So they wait until later to spank their kids? Or do they take a few minutes to calm down and then spank them? Either way seems just as horrifying as the other.

[Conuly]

The Pearls say not to hit in anger. So they wait until later to spank their kids? Or do they take a few minutes to calm down and then spank them? Either way seems just as horrifying as the other.

Oh, make no mistake, the Pearls are awful people and their advice is, or should be, downright criminal. But yes, even they claim to calm down first.

[ChickeyMonkey]

Oh, make no mistake, the Pearls are awful people and their advice is, or should be, downright criminal. But yes, even they claim to calm down first.

But why is spanking when you're not angry supposed to be any better than spanking when you *are* angry? Is it some Bible verse they quote? What's the thinking behind it?

[Witsec7]

But why is spanking when you're not angry supposed to be any better than spanking when you *are* angry? Is it some Bible verse they quote? What's the thinking behind it?

Let's get back on topic ok? You have a spouse who hits a child under the age of 3 with objects. (Not that age means a fucking thing right now.) Let's get back how you are not addressing the issues of physical violence against your child by your partner.

This may not be a comfortable space for your right now, but YOU did open the door.

[Esther]

She does say she's addressing it, though. Hence the pediatrician's advice. I agree it would probably be best if her partner received some counselling for anger management, but I also don't think we can adequately judge exactly what kind of person this man is from what we've heard here. No, you shouldn't beat the shit out of your kid with a golf club - but thwapping it on the leg once does not automatically an abuser make. At least IMHO. I think smacking a kid in the face until its nose bleeds is FAR, FAR worse.

[ChickeyMonkey]

Let's get back on topic ok? You have a spouse who hits a child under the age of 3 with objects. (Not that age means a fucking thing right now.) Let's get back how you are not addressing the issues of physical violence against your child by your partner.

This may not be a comfortable space for your right now, but YOU did open the door.

On topic was about a 60 day juice fast.

How am I not addressing the issue? What do you want from me? You won't stop until you've heard what you want to hear.

If I open the door, I'm not allowed to shut the door? I'm not allowed to ask a question about another open door (the Pearls)? I'm only allowed to talk about what you want me to talk about until it's been said repeatedly?

[Witsec7]

She does say she's addressing it, though. Hence the pediatrician's advice. I agree it would probably be best if her partner received some counselling for anger management, but I also don't think we can adequately judge exactly what kind of person this man is from what we've heard here. No, you shouldn't beat the shit out of your kid with a golf club - but thwapping it on the leg once does not automatically an abuser make. At least IMHO. I think smacking a kid in the face until its nose bleeds is FAR, FAR worse.

It has been my experience, that anger mgmt. merely teaches abusers how to avoid prosecution. Long term therapy may offer some real results, unfortunately I'm not an optimist.

[Gizmola]

ETA: Grey Goose + A Bad Day = Inappropriate Overshare. Please ignore.

[Koala]

I've told him he needs to learn to parent a different way. He's open to that. I've gotten suggestions from the pediatrician and we will be looking at those resources. I have a feeling that no matter what I say, it won't be enough. I can't snap my fingers and have things happen instantly. If only that were possible, I'd have so many uses for that ability.

Yes, my husband has him on his own. When he gets in a tantrum my husband raises his voice and then lets the youngest sit there and cry. He goes in an area where he can still see him but isn't *right there*. Think kitchen and living room, where the kitchen looks into the living room.

Just FTR, I wasn't present when he hit him with the golf club handle. He was in the garage and I was in my room laying down. The youngest thought it would be fun to hit the oldest with the golf club and my husband grabbed it from him and smacked him on the leg with it, using his wrist, not pulling back and using full force. Was it the right thing to do? No. Is he willing to do something about it? Yes?

I've never been hit. Our oldest hasn't been hit. The youngest was 2.5 years old at the time, not 1 year old. He's 3 now.

The Pearls say not to hit in anger. So they wait until later to spank their kids? Or do they take a few minutes to calm down and then spank them? Either way seems just as horrifying as the other.

I am glad you say you are looking into getting your husband help. I'm not sure why it took you so long to say so, and I'm not sure I believe you told your pediatrician the extent of your husband's violence towards your son, but I hope it's true.

I do think that you are putting your son in a very dangerous situation by leaving him with your husband before he has received help and been "cleared" to be left alone with kids. I absolutely believe that if you listen people will tell you who they are. He (your husband) has done everything in his power to show you that he is not to be trusted around your son. It is your job to step up and protect him. I am honestly wondering what he would have to do for you to realize that he has a problem with violence and can't be trusted.

A tip on the golf club thing: Don't try to rationalize it. It makes you look crazy. The baby was 2. Your husband is a grown man. There is no way he could have hit him with a golf club that is going to make a normal person not go :o .

I don't know what the Pearls have to do with this, but if I were you I wouldn't be worried about them. You've got enough problems in your own frontyard. Yes what they and their followers do is horrifying, but what your husband has done to your son is horrifying as well.

[Koala]

I also don't think we can adequately judge exactly what kind of person this man is from what we've heard here.

Speak for yourself. She said her husband has hit her 2 year old with objects multiple times. That's all I need to know.

[Koala]

What do you want from me?

That's a fair question. I want you to insist your husband get help and not allow him to be around your children unsupervised until he does.

If I open the door, I'm not allowed to shut the door?

You can stop responding to us, but you can't stop us from discussing it. When you write a story like you wrote, folks are going to talk.

[Conuly]

Let me see if I have this straight, btw. I got caught up in one thing and forgot to focus on the details.

It's been, at most, 18 months since your husband last lashed out at the kiddo? And to your knowledge, it hasn't happened since?

18 months is, unfortunately, not an unheard of amount time for a "break" between cycles of abuse. Some abusers can go quite long periods... and it's not uncommon for an abusive parent to focus on one child to abuse while treating the others normally or, alternatively, to treat one child with special attention and care while abusing and neglecting the others. Saying "he's never hit any of the other kids" unfortunately is not sufficient to prove that it really was an isolated occurrence. A few isolated occurrences. Several isolated occurrences. Whatever.

[Witsec7]

I believe she states he was 2 1/2 when he hit him with the golf club. I'm not sure how old he was the other times.

Honestly this whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach. I don't know what kind of fucked up society we live in when shit like this happens.

IMHO its a fucked up mother, who defends the father in this case.

Excuse me while I vomit.

[Koala]

I think what I would like to see her explain is exactly what this man has to do to her baby before she takes some kind of action. How many instances of him hitting her child with an object is enough for her to either demand he get help or leave him. I am not going to lie, I would have filled charges and left him just as sure as I am sitting here.

The one thing I always knew about my mom is that she refused to let my father abuse me and she left when I became aware of his abuse towards her.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Wow.

I came late to this one.

I know if someone said this to me in real life, and then wallowed about taking some initiative in the situation, I wouldn't be trying to reason with them, I would be on the phone...

[GeoBQn]

It has been my experience, that anger mgmt. merely teaches abusers how to avoid prosecution. Long term therapy may offer some real results, unfortunately I'm not an optimist.

Anger management classes and couples therapy have been shown not to help domestic abusers--in many cases, they can make the abuse worse. The best way for abusers to get help is in a program specifically created for abusers. At least, that's what I've read about intimate partner violence, I'm not sure if their affect on child abusers has been studied.

[ChickeyMonkey]

I grew up in an emotionally abusive home with parents who were physically violent with each other though we were were not physically abused. My father had the hair trigger temper who would rant and scream and trash the house and curse and yell to the point where the police were called by our neighbors. He had absolutely no control over his temper at all. During these rages, which were triggered by a messy room of one of the kids, dinner being not hot enough, me leaving my yearbook on the kitchen table, my brothers and I playing too loudly, my mother not coming immediately the very moment he yelled for her, or, once, because my room was absolutely perfect down to folded socks in the drawers but my closet doors to my perfectly ordered closet were open, hence I was a "fucking lazy slob" - that time he dumped everything out of every drawer, tore everything off every hanger, turned over every piece of furniture and then slammed the door until it fell off its hinges and forbade me from leaving my room "even to piss" until it was perfect again at midnight on a school night - he noticed my transgression when he came in to check on us as he did before he went to bed each night. In nearly every instance my mother would try to stand up to him and start yelling at him and it always ended up with them throwing things at each other (I can't count the number of dinners ended up on the floor), hitting each other, calling each other "bastard, cocksucker, whore, bitch, asshole", my mother pushing my father down in the hallway, my father dragging my mother outside by her hair. Of course, my father made it very clear that the fault for all the arguments and drama lay with my brothers and me. If only we had cleaned the kitchen better, remembered to fill the ice trays, put away the clothes more neatly, hadn't looked at him with "that look", remembered to brush our teeth, hadn't made so much nose then none of it would've happened.

Do you know who I blame for what I went through? Not my father, who was so damaged by his own upbringing he had no idea how to be a proper father (not making excuses - I know his history and I grew up with 8 aunts and uncles (his siblings) who were much, much worse). I blamed my mother. My mother who grew up with the most ideal, down-to-earth, proper, truly Christian parents on an idyllic Oklahoma farm who loved her unconditionally. I knew my grandparents and my grandfather lived his life to take care of only three things in his life: his land, his wife, his children. My mother knew what a functional family looked like. She was college educated. She worked in a stable job with Social Security with a good paycheck, good benefits. She was financially responsible. She had parents in Oklahoma with 500 acres and an empty caretaker's cottage (and my grandparents were not wealthy but well off in a frugal sort of way). She had many, many options for her three children. She could've purchased a home for us, gotten an apartment, taken us back to Oklahoma. She had none of the problems that cause problems for uneducated women with no support system.

My point in going on and on? Your husband has a problem, obviously, and is a problem. However, you're the one with the power. You have the knowledge and the power to affect change for your children. If you do nothing about it - whether it be demanding your husband get professional attention or leaving altogether - then you are just as culpable as my mother was. Believe me, your children will not look at the situation and think, "well, Daddy was bad for hitting us with remote controls and golf clubs but I can see how Mommy thought things would get better." They'll resent you ten times more than their father. Because you did nothing about it. You did not protect them.

My father (and my mother) apologized all the time. My father handed out twenty dollar bills after one of his rages like Willy Wonka handing out candy. I've talked to my mother and she has said all the same things you're saying now: he knew it was wrong. He tried to go to the garage, go for a drive, go to his office to cool off. He always swore it would never happen again. I've talked to my father who admits he was ashamed every single time. That every time he raged and destroyed our home he knew he couldn't do it again. But he did do it again. And again.

I anticipate you being horrified by what I've written. You should be. It was horrifying. But did you notice something? My father, even in his infinite fits of rage, never, ever, ever laid a hand on my brothers or me. Even my raging father who tore up my 6th grade yearbook, shattered all my china dolls, threw my dollhouse in the fireplace, and threw so many dishes that we never had a set more than a year - who hit and threw things at my mother - never, ever hit me. My point? There are lines that one doesn't cross with their children. Ever. And hitting them with a golf club is one of them. And seriously ask yourself, how is your husband so much better than my father?

How is mentally and emotionally terrorizing your kids so much better than hitting them? It's still traumatic. Your father did cross a line even if your don't think he did. He destroyed your things, your possessions, your living space, which when you're young means a lot. My husband hasn't done it again. He's controlling his anger when he gets angry. He is committed to getting help. He doesn't explode in a rage, attacking everything in sight.

You don't have to believe me. That's your prerogative.

As to the Pearls, I can ask a question about them no matter what my "front yard" looks like.

[Gizmola]

How is mentally and emotionally terrorizing your kids so much better than hitting them? It's still traumatic. Your father did cross a line even if your don't think he did. He destroyed your things, your possessions, your living space, which when you're young means a lot. My husband hasn't done it again. He's controlling his anger when he gets angry. He is committed to getting help. He doesn't explode in a rage, attacking everything in sight.

You don't have to believe me. That's your prerogative.

I had deleted the post because I thought it was too much and I'm running on Grey Goose. But even in my vodka haze I can understand that you missed the whole point.

1. I didn't say my father was better than your husband. The point is that your husband is no better than my father. Get the distinction?

2. You wrote "my husband hasn't done it again." How many times does he get to do it? You've admitted he's done it more than once. We've heard of a remote and of a golf club. How many times does he get to "not do it again?" My father always swore he'd never do it again, even after the twentieth time. Guess what? He did it.

3. No, your husband doesn't "explode in rage, attacking everything in sight." He just hits his baby son with a golf club and a remote control.

4. Did you miss the part that even my horrible father still never crossed the line to hit me or my brothers? Yet you have a husband who may not trash the house; he just hits your child with a golf club.

5. You convienently glossed over a big portion - I do not blame my father alone. I hold my mother MORE culpable than my father because SHE had the knowledge and tools to change the situation in a way my mentally disturbed father could not. Did you just decide to ignore the point, which was that one day your child will come to you and blame YOU for not doing anything?

6. Uncontrollable anger is dangerous in a parent. The fact that your husband has to physically leave to control himself IS A PROBLEM. Why you keep acting like it isn't a problem IS A PROBLEM.

You may not like what Grey Goose and I have to say but I really wished that my mother had admitted to someone else what was happening in our family if that meant she'd have wised up and done something about it. And you've been on FJ long enough to know that we're not the type to listen to even the hint of child abuse and go "but he said he was sorry so it's okie-dokie" - what did you think was going to happen when you posted about your husband hitting your child SEVERAL times with OBJECTS?

[Koala]

How is mentally and emotionally terrorizing your kids so much better than hitting them? It's still traumatic. Your father did cross a line even if your don't think he did. He destroyed your things, your possessions, your living space, which when you're young means a lot. My husband hasn't done it again. He's controlling his anger when he gets angry. He is committed to getting help. He doesn't explode in a rage, attacking everything in sight.

You don't have to believe me. That's your prerogative.

As to the Pearls, I can ask a question about them no matter what my "front yard" looks like.

You have a real problem if that's all you got out of what Gizmola wrote. People here are trying to talk some sense into you. It is not every day you see a mother so blase about her husband abusing her child.

You say your husband doesn't "explode in a rage". Really? What do you call hitting a 2 year old several times with various objects? If he's committed to getting help then when does he plan to get it? When was the last time he hit your son? According to your post your son was 2.5 when his father hit him with a golf club. According to your subsequent post he is now 3. Assuming everything you are saying is true he has had 6 months to seek help. When exactly does he plan on getting this help he's so committed to? *If* he hasn't hit him since the golf club incident he has still only gone 6 months without hitting him. What makes you confident that he will not hit him again? He hasn't received any help. All you have is his word and his past behavior which has included multiple acts of violence towards a 2 year old.

You can comment on the Pearls all day long, but it won't deflect attention from the negligence you are displaying in this situation. Despite what is said about the ladies of FJ (and men) there are people here who care about children. There are those of us who are literally heartbroken over what your husband has put your son through and I for one and very concerned that it's only a matter of time before he hurts him again.

What does he have to do for you to consider this a pattern of abuse? How many more times does he have to pick up an object and strike your child for you to get help? Real help. Not plans for help that 6 months later still haven't panned out.

Please know that people here do care. That's why those of us that are speaking up are putting ourselves out there. No one wants to see a child hurt.

[ChickeyMonkey]

Let me see if I have this straight, btw. I got caught up in one thing and forgot to focus on the details.

It's been, at most, 18 months since your husband last lashed out at the kiddo? And to your knowledge, it hasn't happened since?

18 months is, unfortunately, not an unheard of amount time for a "break" between cycles of abuse. Some abusers can go quite long periods... and it's not uncommon for an abusive parent to focus on one child to abuse while treating the others normally or, alternatively, to treat one child with special attention and care while abusing and neglecting the others. Saying "he's never hit any of the other kids" unfortunately is not sufficient to prove that it really was an isolated occurrence. A few isolated occurrences. Several isolated occurrences. Whatever.

I know abusive parents can focus on one kid for the abuse and ignore the rest. That would be my brother and his dad.

What *is* sufficient proof to show it was an isolated incident? That's an honest question. All I'm hearing is that once is enough to brand a person an abuser for life.

I don't think I was wallowing about taking action.

No, Gizmola, I got your point. I don't think you understand that your father *did* cross a line just as you say my husband did.

How is leaving the room to calm down somehow translate into he has to leave the room to control his anger? Isn't that one of the suggestions given as advice for parents? I think you think that every time my husband gets upset he gets into a dangerous rage. That's not true.