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

by Frank.L 29 Replies latest jw friends

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  Frank.L

  Did anyone have the same "experiences" growing up as some of us Italians/europeans did?...Of course our culture plays a part of who we have become in our later years and how we treat our children but pointedly im wondering if anyone raised as a Jehovahs witness regularly was hit, smacked, beaten, smashed, in inventive ways that begged u to laugh .....well what I mean is that the intresting thing that stands out is that growing up in this kind of enviornment made you Laugh Your Ass Off whenever we discussed these things privately AS IF they were normal. And they were SO NOT normal. One parent standing on one side smacking you and the other parent sitting on the other side of you ready to smack you when you wanted to get up from the dinner table and retreat to a safe place ..oh like say running OUTSIDE!! Sitting down to do the family bible study and being forced to sit through it getting smacked in the face if we wanted to get up..So many of our parents worked in construction and it seemed they took out their frustrations out on us when they came home from work. It came to the point when it all just seemed normal to get hit for any reason.

  .. I remember so many young JW teenagers going thru the same thing at our Hall in our preteen yrs. One elder who was SO very passive all the time and especially on the platform had a wonderful reputation for being understanding. But the "Italian" bastard in him came out soon enough when his daughter came to the meeting with a black eye ...soon the story got out she had been disobedient far too many times and so he had to let her have it !!!..This kind of behaviour was seen in our congregation as NORMAL. Pure and simple when u had enough u just beat ur kid with the belt til he got it right. If you dont "discipline" your child you dont love him/her. Talk is cheap. If you spare the rod you dont love your child. And OMG the Italian parents sure made the best out of those verses! One day a number of us in our early 20's were discussing this and we were all laughing it up as if it was Part of being a JW that being beaten was a rite of passage like the time ".J.Ventura's " father lovingly picked him up by the seat of his pants and threw him into the stove but the stove door wasn't open so after picking his son up from the floor he opened the stove door and then threw him in head first...ha ha ha ..We all laughed at this stuff as if it was normal. It was as if now we could do the same thing to our children IF we needed to because 1)we went thru it and we turned out ok and 2) the bible says its good to discipline ur kids.

  We never really heard these stories from our English JW friends. Our parents "disciplined" us cuz they loved us and the English JWs well who knew..but "abuse" was a word never ever used...Our mentality was so screwed up growing up that we made excuses for our parents.

  Of course times have changed and generations of parents no longer have the "im working on the farm all day and you better do as i say or else" attiutude our parents had brought over from thier countries.. Poverty bred anger- taken out on our parents from their parents- and was passed along part n parcel with our JW beliefs. Has parenting changed today in Kingdom Halls?.... I can tell you that I swore UP and Down that when i grew up and had children of my own I would never treat them like I was treated by my father. Yet what did I do when my 3 yr old was screaming cuz he couldnt sit still at the Kindgom Hall? I took him to the back and started to hit him. Why? Because it was Normal. You hit your screaming child in private in the back of the hall. After doing this 3 times to my son and looking at him saying but "daddy i love you, i love you" in other words "why r u hitting me?"....It hit me ..WHY was i hitting him? I found no good reason and I stopped hitting him altogether. I was digusted at my behaviour and modified it while I was a JW...So i guess Im wondering if anyone out there can relate to this "normal" upbringing. Did anyone out there see us Italians or other ethnic group as awkward and scary? and did anyone go through the same normal "discipline".?

  Frank.L..(formerly FedoreE)
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  serendipity

  Physical abuse was a regular feature in my home too, as well as in the homes of my friends (JW & Non JW). In Texas, corporal punishment is still allowed in some schools. It is just part of the culture, though seems to be diminishing - Thank God! Maybe English/American JWs were too embarrassed to talk openly about it. I know I didn't talk about the beatings I personally got until I was in my 30's. Welcome to JWD, Frank.
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  El Kabong

  I got it with the the wooden spoon from my very Italian Mother.
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  hillary_step

  I like to think in general terms as it makes life much easier and is embarrassingly accurate.

  Draw a line through the Italian boot around Rome. Everybody above that reasons with their children, everyone below reasons with a boot.....lol

  My mother was from the South, my father from the North. He tortured with the mind, and very occasionally when he was bored, with the belt. My mother beat the kids to relieve the stess in her life. She used her hands, saucepans, spoons, telegraph poles - the first thing she reached for, but loved us all dearly.

  If anybody came near to harming any of the children, they both united in a force of one that could fell a Panzer Division at a thousand yards.

  What can I say....they were Italians.

  HS
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  Frank.L

  She used her hands, saucepans, spoons, telegraph poles - the first thing she reached for, but loved us all dearly.

  Yeah i know but ."telegraph poles"..lol...u might explain that one..lol....my mom would line us up ready with either the wooden spoon or my dads belt but she would sometimes laugh while she was about to hit us..but not so my father. He was like death coming at you ....the belt,or his concrete hard hands and a face no one could love. He hit us cuz he loved us? He hit us cuz he didnt know any better and still doesnt. Of course they love us but that relgion holds their brains captive and they still cling to the same old personalities. Hit first ask questions later. on second thought " hit first ..any questions?" .lol...
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  bikerchic

  Now I know what to blame it on! My Italian heritage!!!!!

  Mama mia.....thatsa nota nice!
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  Frank.L

  Hey Biker chic.....i left u a message in ur box...i just saw ur a FA...lol....

  Thanks.....
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  memario

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

  mem
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  Bumble Bee

  My mother was a "hit first, ask questions" later type. The wooden spoon was her "weapon" of choice. I remember once I knew I was going to get it and hid the wooden spoon. When she couldn't find it she grabbed the next closest thing in the drawer, a metal spatula! OUCH!!! Last time I did that! (Her father was from England, but came to Canada as a young boy. From what I understand he never hit her growing up, but her mother did (at least a 2nd generation Canadian).

  My father never hit us. He was physically and emotionally abused as a child (very very horrific, the stories he told me). He made a decision early on he wasn't going to be like his father, and he wasn't. I could tell he'd struggle with it from time to time (I was a little bugger growing up) but he never ever reacted out of anger, never hit us, never even really yelled. He "reasoned" with us! lol Sometimes that was worse. lol I have to thank whatever "God" there is that he chose to break the cycle of abuse, and that's what hitting your child is, abuse.

  BB
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  memario

  I was a little bugger growing up

  were you now!! lol

  mem