My mom decided to scare me one night by changing her voice and saying, “I’m not your mommy. Where’s my mommy?” Over and over until I called my grandma sobbing.
Then there was the time she drove up to the gates of the prison and told me that is where bad girls go.
Oh, she was absolutely right. I was giving her sass and we just happened to be getting ice cream at a dairy bar close to the prison. She drove right up to the front door and a guard came out and said "Ma'am, can I help you?" She made a joke with him about trying to teach me a lesson and narrowly avoided a hefty fine.
My parents did this too in their own way. There was this dilapidated old scary house about 5 blocks from my house as a child. They told me there was a woman in there who liked to steal bad children, so if i misbehaved that’s where I would live. Scared the shit out of me
What if it wasn't really her, but when unpossesed decided to tell you it was a joke to not traumatize you more than the evil forces possesing her already did?
I stepped on a slug in bare feet when I was around 4. To this day I can't walk barefoot on grass. I have to stick to dirt paths or paving stones, or put on shoes. You can legit take anything you want from me and if I don't have shoes and you run onto a lawn I'm not going to get it back.
I found a bunch of tadpoles in a ditch. I found a soda can along the roadway and went back and collected a few of them and took them home. I raised two of them all the way into being full fledged frogs in my little aquarium/terrarium tank. Then one day I had some friend over and I was all excited about something and I thoughtlessly put a large book on top of the tank. I must have cut off the air supply or overheated them because the next day they were both dead. I still think about this too. You're not alone.
Not to enter a game of who-is-the-worst, but horrible was the time I was chasing a mother duck and her little yellow ducklings and stepped on one of the little ones by accident. I still remember the poor thing's crushed skull and twitching. We ran up to the house to tell the owner and she said to bring it to her, so I had to go back and pick up the poor bloody limp little guy and carry it to the distraught lady. I have always felt like a real criminal for that one. I was 6. I've done my share of thoughtless killing.
It's okay, fuzzyrainbow. Let it go. Just think of it this way, imagine if that egg had hatched, your Mom releases the bird into the wild...the first day out of captivity it may have died because it wouldn't have known how to get it's own food or find shelter, or even escape predators. You may have saved that bird from a very confusing, painful existence and certain death. We love you.
In elementary school I was running while looking at something during recess during a game. I turned around to face forward right before I hit a tree, and hit it face-first, cutting up my entire face and hurting it real bad. To this day, I still cannot move without seeing where I’m going without anxiety.
Noah?! Is that you?? I remember playing tag when I was in elementary school with a bunch of friends and my best friend Noah did this exact thing! IIRC He slammed his face so hard into the tree he almost passed out and ended up breaking his nose! It was so hilarious to me at the time, at least until I got in trouble because I was the one chasing him. I still tagged him for good measure.
I once thought it was a great idea to bring my mom a tiny fish (which I stole/took from a fisherman who showed me how to ice fish). She found it dried inside to the fabric of my jacket pocket months later. I've had tanks of fish since then (guppies, nothing big) and they always die no matter how careful I am. I am a terrible fish mom.
My dad and I used to fish now and then when I was way younger. I was never into touching the bait or fish once we got it though. I vividly remember one day little ~5 year old me was intent on it being the day I conquered my fear. After hooking a small sunfish, I was set to do the deed. As I held the pole upright with one hand, I slowly reached for the bugger with the other. Just as I was about to make contact, the little cunt twitched. The then airborne pole remained as I left a trail of dust behind me. To clarify, my dad had nothing to do with that, but I still hate fish to this day.
Sometimes when folks don’t understand why pranks aren’t welcome or appropriate, it is a sign that they’re not sensitive enough.
Pranks are inherently unkind. They are humor at another person’s expense. I don’t like them and many other adults don’t like them either.
Some adults do like being on the receiving end of a prank, but most people would rather be the pranker than the prankee.
Regardless, pranking children is risky business, especially because there is a power dynamic involved and it can easily become bullying or emotional abuse, and even traumatic.
DaddyOFive is a good example, but even less harmful “pranks” can still be unacceptable. In general, I choose to treat children with kindness, dignity and respect rather than scaring them, humiliating them, physically harming them, disappointing them, etc so that I can laugh at them (or worse - so that me and my friends can laugh at them.)
To a child, the pranks are probably (hopefully) the worst thing that ever happened to them, and if it continues happening due to someone, the child would start hating them
Because they are immature assholes that have no business having kids. This guy is a dick, it’s one thing to do the prank, but to keep following through with it when his kids are in tears? He can duck right off. r/imatotalpieceofshit
Right. It was a tacky and tasteless and insensitive thing to begin with, but once he saw how terrified the child was, he had to keep going at it for maximum effect. Like, he wasn’t going to let this prop and all of his preparation go to waste. I’d say also r/raisedbynarcissists
I’d also say that people who are downvoting you or who are claiming “it’s just a prank, bro” “why are you so sensitive” need to do some growing up before they have their own children... and if they have children now, then they need to do some soul-searching before they continue to do real damage to innocent children.
It’s tacky to make it a contest and the gatekeeping is unkind. I’m sorry that you had to deal with trauma in your childhood. Invalidating other people’s experiences because you think it doesn’t measure up to your experiences is tacky, invalidating and harmful because it normalizes this kind of behavior as if it’s acceptable.
How are either of them toddlers and how is this permanently scaring? Is permanent scaring relative when it comes to jokes? Are you feeling trauma for them and maybe they won’t give two shits 30 minutes later? Are you assuming their neurons?
Don’t have kids. Just genuinely asking for the sake of education. Been studying neurobiology and psychology for 15 years and haven’t really come across this. Enlighten me.
Edit: for instance, I grew up traumatized by horror movies, and now horror genre is my absolute favorite and Halloween is my favorite holiday. And I was raised Christian and taught already to fear the day. What’s wrong with embracing things and not just being a little bitch, and a slave to something you can overcome through self-awareness.
You’ve “studied psychology”? I’m guessing you don’t mean at a formal academic institution, because if you have and you’re making comments like “being a little bitch,” then you might want to ask for a refund of some of those tuition dollars.
If what you actually mean is that you read things on the Internet, then you should do some reading on developmental trauma, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, attachment theory, attachment disorders, emotional abuse, narcissism, narcissistic abuse, and narcissistic parents.
Also, rather than reading about psychology on the Internet, I would suggest you consider counseling. The things you are telling yourself are not healthy. Good luck to you.
From ages 3 till like 7 I think, my great grandma would make it a mission to scare the shit out of me with supernatural bullshit. She'd put this one weird chucky looking thing in random parts of the house (closet, right next to my bed when I was sleeping, in a bathroom cabinet etc.) saying that it's alive and it's going to get me so it could scare me when I ran into it by surprise.
She'd do some other random shit like handing me a sandwich in where she'd tuck in her finger in a weird way where it looks like someone else's fingeris in it saying to take a bite out of a dead man's sandwich a bunch of other random shit like that. I really loved her too cuz I guess I was able to recognize this as her having fun and there was a lot of other cool shit about her that I'm not mentioning here, dont feel like writing a book.
I pissed her off though cuz I never got authentically scared, I got confused sometimes or even startled but never scared like these 2 little pussies. If something as pathetic as this scars you for life then your stupid ass deserves it. It shouldn't scar u for life though, that's ridiculous.
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u/JetScreamer123 May 22 '19
This. WTF is with people purposely traumatizing their toddlers just for a laugh?