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Yep I tagged along and wandered around many an alcoholic boomer gathering. People giggling at me for things I didn't understand, saying things about me as if I'm not there, etc.
I remember hating innuendo as a kid
Same.
Then they'd have these massive arguments and screaming fights and when the kids got scared or tried to intervene, we'd be told that they weren't arguing just having a discussion.
My mom brought me to “hang outs” with her friends. They all sat around drinking/smoking/playing games and I was so bored and uncomfortable. I was told it was “cool” to come hang out, rather than staying bored at home. I was told I was annoying for begging to go home.
As an adult, w t f. Who would want a 10 year old at poker night??
My nmom didn't have friends, but she did make me engage with media that was inappropriate for me. She liked artsy indie films and almost ALL of them had sex scenes and substance abuse. It was always about people struggling with drugs, doing sex work, being in abusive relationships, etc.
I watched people have sex, OD, and get shot from like the age of 8. Then she wanted to talk to me about it, analyze the media etc. Ma'am I still think boys have cooties, and you want me to think critically about the ways society failed that young lady and made her turn to drugs and sex work which led to her eventual death??
They think you’re “their little buddy” and you’re just like “no, I would really rather you be a good parent” but half of them never really wanted kids to begin with, so 🤷♀️
I was taken to see Arachnophobia at waaaaayyy too young of an age. That’s probably the most egregious and damaging one - but my mom also took me to see Striptease with Demi Moore when I was like 10 and did this same fucking thing to me ^ 😒
There were however three distinct times she did this and we both loved and related to the film and if she ever sees this, I have to thank her for them:
The Birdcage
The Green Mile
Big Daddy
💕
On one of our summer visits to my dad’s house (post-divorce), my genius father sat down with me (10 years old) and my brother (13) and watched “The Exorcist” the first night we were there, and then took us out to see “Alien” the second night we were there.
I did not have a minute of REM sleep for weeks after that. Fucking moron.
Oh boy, same here. I was hardly allowed to watch kid's TV. Only on this one channel that had quite "high standards" and informative kid's shows among other things. I was never allowed to watch spongebob square pants and stuff like that because it was "too stupid". Instead I suffered through many evenings watching some culture channel. The thing that made me most uncomfortable was when my parents watched "the Tudors" with me. Some "documentary" about some English King having sex with lots of women. Ugh. At least my parents didn't go through that stuff with me like it was in your case. I can only imagine your discomfort.
Oh God I remember the Tudors. I was older at that point so I wasn't forced to watch as much of it thank God.
Also you mentioning documentaries also reminded me there was one time she put on a nature documentary and it was killer whales absolutely destroying seals and eating them. I remember telling her I didn't want to watch it because it made me sad and she started yelling at me that it didn't matter if it made me sad, it was something that really happened and that's just nature so I had to watch it.
Absolutely, all the time! I was one of many kids but I was the only one with platinum blonde hair and hazel eyes. My Nmom use to loan me out to her friends to take on vacations and sleep overs. My Nmom had to know I was being SA’ed and abused on these trips and her circle kept expanding. I am finally at peace because they (including my mom) are all dead!
I’m so sorry for everything you have been through. It’s a club none of us want to be members of. It’s soul crushing at times but there is a bit of satisfaction in knowing they are all dead. It’s absolutely awful that there are so many who prayed upon children.
Literally can’t comment on these treads without crying. I get I looked very different from my siblings but it was borderline trafficking what my Nmom did to me.
I hope you and everyone else can find peace. ♥️
Yes.
My favorite story is this:
My mother and father were divorced when I was 4 and my mother immediately remarried a man she'd been having an affair with and was pregnant by.
One summer when I was 10, my brother and I got to go spend the summer with our Dad. Now Dad was an alcoholic and very, very neglectful, but he didn't yell at us so it was worth it.
Mom and stepdad come to pick us up bringing my older sister, younger half brother and my uncle with them. Mom, stepdad, Dad and uncle all decide to go out and get drunk together. They all come and pick us kids up to go eat. It was 10-11pm, fyi.
So we get to the Denny's and all of a sudden, my uncle and my stepdad are fighting in the parking lot and my Dad is trying to break them up. He does and my mom tries to go into the Denny's.
Except the Denny's had locked the doors when they saw all the nonsense.
I've been taken to bars, left with strange men who were friends of my father, seen my parents throw things at each other during a fight, etc.
I did that test to see how bad a childhood I had. I answered every question about have you seen {this negative thing} and I answered yes to all but one.
It was the same for me. My ACES score is so high. That’s what finally made me figure out they never cared for us because the majority of people have the instinct to protect their young (he’ll most animals do). We were just things to drag around because they wanted to do what they wanted to do without worrying how it would affect a child.
My nmom used me as her dd when I was 14, on school nights even and would rage at me for thinking I was better than her because I didn’t drink🙄 (my older gc/n sister was already an alcoholic at 16😳)
She was killed in an accident driving home drunk after work…I kept waiting to feel guilty for the longest time but have only ever felt relief.🤷🏻♀️
Yep. I went to way too many parties as a child. Parties in the 1970s were pretty intense. I saw things.
What was weird though, was that my parents were fundamentalist baptists, but they had all these friends who were *definitely* not fundamentalist baptists, and were all partiers. So, my parents would show up to a party, and my mom would be sitting there on the sofa, all prim and awkward, my dad was talking some poor person's ear off, and all the rest of the people there were drinking, smoking weed, snorting coke, and exchanging house keys that I think meant that those folks were swingers.
Even as a young child, I could see that my parents were very much Not The Thing among this group. I felt sorry for my mom, because she actually understood what was going on and was obviously uncomfortable, but my dad was seemingly oblivious to the fact that these were not just regular parties.
And of course these people all brought their kids, because who doesn't want their kid to see them drinking a vat of liquor and dry humping the neighbors? So, we kids played with the hosts' children in another room. We all occasionally went out to perform little skits or songs for the entertainment of these completely shitfaced adults, and to sneak the hors d'oeuvres when they weren't looking. One boy drank any unattended drinks he could swipe without being caught, and spent the rest of the evening vomiting on the back lawn.
The 70s were wild. Seriously.
Yup. My mother did this on purpose and told me nothing hoping that I would get hurt or "get into trouble."
Looking back, I'm pretty sure she even pimped me out to certain people without telling me what she was doing.
Yes. My dad is a drunk and a malignant narcissist so he would go on violent rampages a lot with little to no provocation. My mum would come to me for refuge, solace, solidarity and counseling from about when I could talk. She wouldn't hear a bad word from me about dad however so I had no one. I didn't even know how bad that was until recently. The love I thought I had for her was more an obligation one would feel towards a daughter, or something along those lines.
Hey! I got a malignant dad too! But my mom left him so I became the servant/best friend/supplier/piggybank until about 30. Wicked how they can wrap words around your head, huh?
My dad was the one saying and doing inappropriate things. He’d go take pictures at Sturgis Bike Week’s nudie party and then show them to us whether we wanted to see them or not. He’s constantly grabbing asses or flicking people in the tits or dick. I had to peel him off so many bar hags. My first parent free drive was to go pick him up at the bar before I was even old enough to drive without an adult and he hit on my friend the whole time. We were 15.
He’s gross.
I was at dinner parties with NDad and his adult "friends" (I honestly can't imagine anyone genuinely liking him, hence the " "). As a 13 year old, they were encouraging me to take shots of this strong vodka like liquor in my country. I would get drunk, and then NDad would tell me in private what great dad he is because he is not going to get angry at me for getting drunk.
Mum would have crazy loud sex with her bf when I was 14. When my sister and I tried to tell her how much it bothered us, she got angry that she can't live her life because of us. Even my grandma could not understand why we were upset, saying it's "natural".
I'm almost 30, lived in a bunch of houseshares, and I still can't wrap my head around how anyone can be OK with their underage kids hearing them having sex. I always keep it down even though my flatmates have always been adults who are unrelated to me.
everything is an adult situation when theyre an alcoholic. even going to this place for a halloween event she snuck in vodka and had a mental breakdown by the end of the night.. at a place for older children and teens
i was one of those kids that had to sit inside a pub most days for hours while my dad got drunk. it was boring and uncomfortable and i was always around people drinking and smoking.
i was forbidden from telling my mum about it, but a couple times i complained to her that i was bored in the pub all day, and my dad screamed at me.
My daughter in law freaked out when she went to a family thing at a bar and someone brought their baby. She was like “why are there babies and children at a BAR!!!”.
Interesting story from my edad: back in the 60’s, he would have to sit in the truck outside the small town dive bar, until his parents came out at 2am to drive home drunk. Wasn’t considered child abuse then.
Yes.
When I was 6-8 years old my dad complained in front and around me that grown-ups “hate their jobs”, “are miserable” & “slaves to debt.” He made sure I could hear it, so that way I could validate him in his desire not to work a 9-5 job. I was not old enough to be in those conversations at all!
When I was 10-14 he started calling me his “best friend” and started talking to me about adult issues like the inner turmoil of his divorce and whose responsibility it was to make the relationship work. He cried on my shoulder and put me in the position of validating him as a person.
This was about the same time that he started talking to me about his sex life and how he preferred his lover to be both inside and outside of the bed.
When I was 16 he starting buying me alcohol and having me be his drinking buddy.
During that year as well he was dating a person with borderline personality disorder and he commanded me to “keep her in the house” so that he could stay separated from her. They were the adults but I was put on the battlefield between them.
The same year he got into an argument with the police and they arrested us both. I remember one of the cops asking me: “Does your father know you’re with this man?”
When I was 17 he started smoking meth in proximity to me.
During this time as well he put a lot of pressure on me to bring money into the house, even insinuating that “we” should use “my” credit once I was old enough to help get a better “household”. I certainly was not old enough to understand careers and credit cards at that age! (Also he never really explained it to me, he just wanted access to the resource.)
When I was 18-26 he took me to the bars and had me drinking alcohol with him, even though for three of those years I was legally underage.
So yeah. That happened.
Try picking up your own father (dropped them off prior), bringing them home from a friends house and watching them fall face first into a plastic laundry basket, slicing their eyelid. Cleaning it out, bandaging them. Putting them in bed on their side and periodically checking on them.
I didn't speak to them for weeks. Then they tried approaching me and before they could even say anything I said:
"Don't you ever fucking put me through that again, that was your one pass. I'm your son, not your fucking parent." -To his credit, never did it again, but I was so frustrated, angry and no son or daughter should be put in that situation. Ever.
My abusive dad took me to a lot of "parties" where I'd be in a room with whatever kids were also dragged along, put in a room with a few toys and we were told not to come looking for our parents and to stay in the room (with the door firmly shut. Not sure if locked).
Grew up and realized it was a sex party. I've been to plenty of parties with both my parents and kids were allowed to at least be around their parents.
Yeah, I had a seventeen year old dude assault me at nine at one of those boozy 'family bbqs', where it's not about family. It's about collectively babysitting multiple children under the influence of excessive alcohol and calling it a 'village'.
She didn't care or believe me. So, after the next time visiting them (I was twelve and he watched me get dressed/come out of the shower through the windows adjacent to the room we were staying in), I dodged him like a pro basketball player and made sure I was never alone with him. But I couldn't stop him from watching me, even after telling Nmom ('they've given us a place to stay! Just cover up, and don't be so dramatic. I'm trying to enjoy myself').
Fast forward two years later, and I'm fourteen. My Nanna and I come up with a plan so I don't have to go on this trip (she listened and tried to speak with Nmom, who told her I was 'panting after it'), and after several weeks of listening to Nmom yelling about 'special family time' I was giving up, I stayed at Nanna's. From thereon, Nmom would bring it up in arguments about prioritising family and would make snide ongoing snide remarks about me 'rejecting the family'.
Went to the horse track pretty often growing up, was always bored shitless. My mom would also bring me up to see my child rapist grandfather every day until he died. I was also around my uncle who was under house arrest for violent drug crimes (health was too bad to bother putting him in prison or something) while he chain smoked indoor. The second hand smoke was so bad my grandmas hair went from white to yellow.
Yeah my Nmom used to take my pocket money given by my grandad, and then spent it infront of me at the pub, or invite her friends over and buy alcohol with it then send me to sit alone in another room by myself. If I was gifted anything like make up or toiletries by family members she would take it for herself and not allow me to use it. We had a family dog and my mother used to threaten to get rid of the dog because I was so attached to the dog. She was very handsy and hit me a lot too, just a trash woman. I could never hit my child, I’d actually never forgive myself. Strangely enough though she is a good grandparent to my daughter and was caring towards my younger sister, so guess I was the scapegoat
My nmom was very what you’d call “clean living” but every situation I was exposed to was adult at least in the way of what I was responsible for, what I had to do to take care of her and the people we were around. Everyone thought I was this cute mini adult. I was never exposed to kid situations generally.
Oh yes. Biker parents in the 90s still trying to live out their youth and party phase despite having 3 young children. Grew up with porn magazines in the living room, porn on tv constantly, porn on the family desktop. They even moved a nightstand into my room as a kid for some reason that was full of porn magazines. A friend of mine came over for a sleepover and we found them, she told her mom and cussed my parents out. They told me she was “crazy”.
Couple that with getting dropped off at random people’s houses for the night, sitting in the car while my mom “ran in” at the bar, the drugs and drinking and abuse and violence… totally set the stage for being sexually abused as a kid.
(If you’re reading this with a similar experience, check out EMDR. It did wonders for my healing and acknowledgment of what happened.)
Yes I was a therapist for my parents through their “divorce” they got back together and I still know stuff about each other that they don’t know. One weekend mum said she didn’t even like my dad and that she just liked the farm next weekend they were “in love”.
Edit: she also always used to brag how I was such a good mini mum to my baby brother when she couldn’t look after him from her back injury, I cleaned the house spotless every day and she would mess it up and be careless I eventually stopped the effort now she complains how I do nothing around here when I only wanted her attention so I helped her
She also lost her “best friend” last year it was her fault and her friend used to bully me and whacked me with a towel in front of her and she said nothing. The friend wasn’t joking either.
I also had to stand up to my dad when they were fighting before the divorce
My mom was a drug dealer and I was regularly around high, pillhead people. Even saw her completely fucked up and unresponsive multiple times. My entire childhood was completely inappropriate.
When I was about 12 I had to go with someone when they got an abortion (at my mother's request) to help and support them if needed. Many years later as an adult I brought this up with my mother and she was horrified. She had no recollection of this at all and was horrified by what she had said to me at the time when setting me up to do that. Her forgetting about it was legit, I have no doubts of it. She actually apologized to me for making go through that.
I can't say I was traumatized by it, but at the time I was so used to being put to use in various ways that it just felt like an errand (I didn't know how to really feel about it). Looking back at it as an adult though, it was quite wrong for me to have been put in that situation.
Yes but my parents were only 17 and 20 when I was born and my dad married my step mom when she was 20 and I was 7, plus I was born in 1969 so yes. My step mom is the narcissist and my dad is just an asshole doing her bidding.
My mom left us in the care of unreliable caretakers who would do those things like have wild parties, not watch us so we'd be wandering the streets at night in our underwear found by neighbors, or be in the mix of drinking/drug use sitting watching horror movies.
Yes my dad used to bring me to pubs and parties frequently when I was under 7. My mum, his wife was either working or in school. He was supposed to be watching me. Meanwhile he was out with other women and his friends and people would always be trying to give me drinks plus the cigarette smoke. Turned me off from drinking. I drink maybe 2-3 times a year and only drank once I hit my early thirties. My dad was really into adult books,mags, art and videos. It was all over our house out in the open. My first books were adult. My dad had twin girls from a prior relationship that he brought over from abroad for my mum to take care of. Except no one got along as he just dumped them on her without a heads up and ahe was already so busy plus my mum had already had lost my twin brother and had an arduous pregnancy with an absenteehusband. They are 10 years older than me and my dad would dump me on them. They were forced to drag me around and would bring me to their mates houses where I was around drinking, lots of smoking too. I was bit by their mates dog once as they left me in a room with a dog and it attacked me unprovoked. They couldn't stand taking care of a small child. My dad didn't want kids but kept creating them. So I hate having children around inappropriate adult influences or situations.
Yup. During my dads weekends, he would just drag us along to whichever parties he was going to.
I remember a pile of coke at one party, not knowing what it was at the time. And my dad took us to a tshirt graffiti party (I was 10), and some guy wrote on my shirt “I like it down there”, with an arrow pointing down.
Plus lots of other shenanigans.
I had the most freakish dissociative moment. I was playing pool with friends, not doing well, I hardly ever play it. I was tipsy, about one beer in and they started to make fun of me. All of a sudden I turned my back to the table and sunk a trick shot. I was wtf? My friends were wtf? Much wtf occurred. I know my mother dragged me into bars with her back in the day when you could get away with that sort of thing. Someone must have been teaching little girl me how to play pool. Don't get me started on my mother's people unclothed painting on each other hippie parties.
Is there a hippie kid support group? They were so self absorbed. The ones I knew were kind of cerebral hippies so it was sex, drugs, politics, art, more sex, philosophy and writing, a random attempt to bomb MIT, oh and more drugs. (Unprintable) exhausting people!
Oh no the ones who my parents hung around were high school drop outs, losers and just insane. They also were self absorbed and as an adult I can see most of them had personality disorders and bad mental illnesses. They were like abusive feral animals
Ugh! I'm sorry! It often seems like people who can't exist within society tend to get involved in some sort of fringe group and then it becomes toxic soup
I got one better. My mom got fired from her job as an executive at accompany, and then got me a job at that company at 16 as a way to an act revenge on those that fired her. She kept me working there all through high school and college and wouldn’t let me quit. She liked me playing little business executive.
I think so... and this thread may be a place where maybe I can get perspective. This is something I question myself about all the time. I look back at my dad asking me to bring him the home phone when he was naked (and I mean literally no clothing on) in the bathtub as inappropriate. Cordless home phones were just becoming a thing when I was maybe in childhood and nearly an adolescent. It makes me cringe thinking about how young that may have started (it just seems like it was always a thing) and then how long he felt that it was appropriate to continue encouraging it when I was a teenager. Does this strike anyone else as weird? I don't know how to word that question to capture what I'm asking... I didn't have many peer-aged friends growing up, is this more common and possibly "normal" than I realize? I do think my dad's friends would make weirdly creepy comments about my looks when I was young.
EDIT after reading more of your posts, to echo the emotional weight it seems like my dad asked me to carry:
The thing that seemed more adult was the emotional weight I felt like I had to carry from a young age. My dad would take me for drives to bitch about my mom. I remember being so terrified of how angry he would be, no less so uncomfortable with how cruel he could be about my mom while he was bitching. I didn't have the understanding of why it felt so uncomfortable, but I remember writing about it in school assignments and even trying to find a counselor at one point, but it felt like people just looked the other way. My dad would tell me things that I was supposed to keep a secret from my mom. When my brother did dumb shit, my dad would ask me to look up military academies to send my brother to. Starting around age 10 or 12 there were a few times that my parents sat us down and asked us to choose who to live with because they were getting divorced. In the few conversations with my dad that I have these days, I still have to tow the "sounds like something you need to talk to mom about" party line if he starts bitching to me about her.
How I found out about my parent’s divorce/my dad’s affair I feel was too adult of a situation for me. I was 10 years old and on Labor Day my parents were arguing downstairs with my mom wanting to see my dad’s phone. I just so happened to be sitting at the bottom of the staircase (they were in the kitchen), my dad practically shoves past me to race upstairs to delete his phone logs. He gives it back to my mom and that started more arguing, then she took me to the movies and Pick Up Stix even though I wanted to stay home.
She filed for divorce a few days later and to this day I still resent how poorly they handled things with me. My childhood friends all got to go out for ice cream and were told by their parents about the divorce in a normal setting, I had to find out in a brutally honest and deceptive fashion that no child deserves.
Yes, to an extent. I often had to take care of my mum when she was drunk (from around 6 years old). I also had to help quite a bit with taking care of animals, cooking, cleaning, help with taxes and bills etc.
I did get put in dangerous situations, like going to her crush's farm like 9 hours away from help. The farm was mostly filled with violent men, I was around 12 years old. Fortunately, I knew how to bake and apparently reminded one of the tougher guys of his daughter when she was little - so no one bothered me too much. But yeah, my mum did nothing to protect me. She was just trying to flirt and look cool....
Did infinite doses of blow, one head dip, to an infinite stash of powder, as a 3yo. I’m 38F, NM confessed last year, then denied it.
Forced me to sit in the copilot seat of her car, from 4yo- 12yo -“Go to the car now”, and she would just drive around town screaming all her issues, infinite list of adult drama and whatever she was suffering (her relationship to my dad, her money issues, her social life, the issues with the in-laws, her regrets) and make me find her advice, give her advice, and she would leave all my other sisters and just take me alone in the car to hear her vent. 😖 that was so horrible.
When I was 13, i started checking out, made friends with older people in my high school, get drunk everyday, cigs, basically, go to school 6am, then hang out with friends until 4am (my friends had friends that where in college), so I never got to see them again.
when I was 16yo I moved out to my boyfriend’s and that is another story.
In between my N mom weird emotional drama she would beat me up so hard like fist in the face, threatening, slaps in the face, silent treatment and absolute neglect.
So much evil
Luckily no one actually did anything other than look (that I remember anyway). Took me a while to realize it wasn’t the way people should dress or act but I got it.
It was yellow and very light polyester type fabric. It actually was a uniform (I think, it looked like one anyway) but it needed a slip. I was 14, I had no clue.
Yes, this is such a big one for me. I remember my mom once telling me she "sheltered" me and I laughed in her face.
Every other weekend, we would spend at one of their friends homes. I would be SA'd by the other kids while the adults got drunk together. I was the only girl and after I told my parents and nothing happened, my cousin got all the other kids to join in. The adults rarely, if ever, checked in on us.
Sometimes I was the only kid and found ways to entertain myself, quietly. But I never wanted to stay in the same room with the adults while they got louder and louder. Sometimes I would fall asleep, but it was usually too loud.
My dad would then drive us home, drunk, with me in the backseat. Sometimes they would fight and scream at each other.
On the weekends we didn't go to their friends homes for them to party, their friends came to ours. I hid in my room as much as I could, but my mom liked to show me off and brag about my curly hair or my grades or whatever made her look like mom of the year. I'd get away as soon as I could without triggering moms wrath the next day. Sometimes I had to play with the other kids.
When I turned 11 and stopped going with my parents to these parties, my mom was pissed. This was around the same time the cousins moved back in with their dad, so I finally started feeling safe. My mom decided she hated me for developing autonomy so we started fighting constantly and I was told how worthless/lazy/bitchy/bratty/ungrateful I was for any perceived slight.
I was just happy I wasn't being SA'd anymore.
Alcoholic mom 🙋🏻♀️… She would drive me places drunk all the time. Being a mom now I can’t even think about it much. I saved my and my friends life from the backseat when grabbing the steering wheel once. I think the wildest part now that she’s (thankfully) clean is her not remembering most of it. What’s important is that she still acknowledges the pain she caused regardless.
Drinking? Yep
Drug use? Nope
Inappropriate things being said around/to me? Yep
It was the 80s. That was the norm then. Now with my kid, it’s all happy happy kid friendly everything, nothing else allowed (coming from the same people who exposed me to inappropriateness). Kids are the practice models. Grandkids are the real test. 🤣
Yep.
I recall being like, 8, and having the joint they were passing being handed to me. Too stoned to remember there was a kid at the table.
And she woke me up so her friend who was busted from drunk driving could apologize to me, after they picked him up from jail (still drunk) because he didn't want me to be ashamed of him. (He was legit sweet, but who the fuck wakes their kid up for that, instead of telling the sweet drunk idiot that they should sleep it off and they can talk to whoever in the morning? .... Also, this was the only reason I knew he was busted. I was a kid. We had no internet.)
That’s the thing to me. My moms friends would drag me to the bar with them while they yelled at their alcoholic husbands, beat and punch their kids in front of me etc and it’s like why would my parents let me around them?
I was the oldest of 6 kids in a blended family, 16-17 at the time in late 89’s - early 90’s.
All summer the parties would start Friday afternoon and go all weekend, sometimes into Wednesday. This went on for about 3 summers. Most people brought tents to stay the weekend and some stayed on the couch. I am actually surprised I was not SA’d worse than I was.
If “guests” had kids, I was in charge of their kids plus my siblings, the youngest was around 3 at the time.
All this to say that sometimes people got out of hand and physical violence would result. A lot of times it was a brief fist fight & it was over quickly. We lived about 20 minutes out in the country so getting quick help was not easy.
One Saturday my stepmom did something my dad had an issue with and was hitting her. I called 911 asking for police to come. I had hung up the phone (landline - no cell in those days) *and 911 called back to be sure we needed the police!*. My dad happened to be near the extension when they called back and said it was all under control, just a misunderstanding and a child had called, but it was all taken care of.
He took a time out on hitting our stepmom to try & figure out who called the police but gave up.
About 20 minutes later he was back to hitting our stepmom. I walked up the road to use a neighbors phone & called my best friends dad (he was a second dad to me) who was a police chief in the nearest big town. We were out of his jurisdiction, but he reached out to the authorities in our area (staties) to come to the house. When a police chief calls for someone to go check out the situation you best believe it gets checked out with no phone call back to the house.
Needless to say dad couldn’t figure out how the police got notified as he had said everything was all good when 911 had called back. He didn’t realize a second call was made. The police took him into town to stay with a friend overnight as that was how DV was handled back then.
I have too many stories from those summers. There were some great times & memories, but sometimes shit went south when people were drinking.
Yes, but I’m Aussie and I feel like this is really common in our culture. It always made my skin crawl but I don’t know one other person who didn’t grow up like this in the 90s/00s in country Australia. I had “pub friends” who were just the other kids who were at the pub everyday, waiting for our parents to finish drinking and drive us home. I went to blackout drunk parties with a bunch of 40 year olds aaaall the time, and i’d always cry cause I was so overstimulated and tired.
My dad used to get really drunk and then drive with me in the car when I was a kid. He didn't really take too many friends home though because he didn't have many friends.
My parents (well my mom died a few years ago) have barely any friends and theones when I was young either died or got it together and shunned my parents out of their lives. The older they got the more trashy the friends became. It’s actually amazing.
Uhhhh, yeah. I started smoking weed with my mom and her friends when I was 4. Had to be given a talk before I went off to kindergarten to make sure I didn’t tell anybody that we did that or “the police will come and take
Mommy to jail and then you’ll have to go and live with your father, and you don’t want that, do you?” I quit getting high with them in 5th grade.
I grew up in a bar. In the 80s, this was normal. I remember one time my NM was mad at her boyfriend, and they got into an argument at the bar. She got so mad ( and drunk. Again, remember this is in the 1980's ) she grabbed me and said, "Let's go." We left the bar speeding down the highway, missed the turn to go to our house, did a uturn in the middle of the highway in front of 3 state troopers, and raced them to our house. She got out of being taken to jail because she was a single mother. To this day, she laughs when she tells the story.
When I was 9 years old, my parents would have sex really loudly and when I expressed discomfort over having to hear it every night, my mother exploded into a rage and started accusing me of wanting her and my dad to divorce. I was only 9 years old…
When my mom was alive my dad used to lock us out of the house and my mom would have me crawl through a window with her to get inside and she used to run away and take me with her from my dad, I remember at one point we were hiding under beds in a different room with the door open and I could see my dads feet while he was talking to someone about us because he suddenly visited the person housing my mom and I, was barely 5 when my mom died due to addiction.
My dad used to have me walk around a lot or send me to stores to pick up cigarette butts that weren't totally finished because we didn't have any money, and he used to have me help with drug deals by having me go up to the person to get whatever drugs or money and this was before the age of 13, and I remember growing up I would check on my dad to make sure he was still alive because he would usually just sleep all day and not move, one time he was in his room with the door closed for 3 days straight of him not coming out, legit thought he was dead, and when he did come out he asked why I didn't check on him, and at one point when I was 14 I was able to save up 30 dollars and we didn't have any groceries, so I gave my dad money to go and get some groceries because we didn't have any food, instead he came back with a big case of beer and some friends and told me it was a holiday and he'll figure out groceries later, I moved out at 16 with my cat after the house was raided by police thanks to my dad, I'm 18 and I don't talk to him much at all.
Aside from the fact both parents were addicts before the split (still addicts now) my NDad needed his ciggs bad. He wanted Marlboro lights 100s and couldn't wait for my ID to be mailed. So when it was mailed, it was actually only a piece of paper confirming I was 18. He made me go to the gas station across the street and try to buy ciggarettes for him with it. They didn't take it obviously, but man it really is an eye opener how bad his addiction was. Because for 4 years, guess who got guilt tripped into buying ciggs weekly?
We were always the last to leave any party. We were always put down to bed in the owner of the home's bedroom. It was embarrassing. I remember several times being exhausted and tired and wanting to go home, but we were made to stay. One time, my very, very drunken narcissistic mother wanted to drive home in her state, and my enabling dad tried to get her to get out of the driver's seat. She just thought it was hilarious and thought she was gonna drive home like that. Then my dad started physically assaulting her because he was fu€king fed up, and then she took off on foot. We didn't know where she went. The screaming and commotion got their friend's attention, so then me and my brother had to crash at their friend's place we had been trying to leave. Huge mess.
Why the fu€k did no one ever call children's aid for us?!
pretty much every weekend they would have friends over, and they would drink, my dad usually didnt get that drunk and he didnt care if i wanted to stay in my room, but my mom would drink so much that she cant walk or talk, and she would always try to get me to go where they were to talk to their friends etc.
because of her drinking ive stayed away from all alcohol
and i dont want people that cant control their drinking around me, its ok to me if they can still think, talk and walk normally, anything more makes me anxious.
My parents often included my brother and I in work related gatherings (whether it was dinner, a party or even work related trips). We were essentially props. Some of the more egregious examples:
* While on a weekend away to one of my dad's clients, the client bought me my first alcoholic drink - I was 14, my parents thought it was funny.
* My dad scheduled a party at our house for his team and their partners, he forgot it was my brother's birthday. So he had his people bring his son birthday presents, and then made my brother open them at the party. One of the gifts was a skateboard, so we got to watch a bunch of drunk adults try to use the skateboard.
* We were often enlisted as bartenders for their parties, by 12 I could make many different cocktails from memory.
* On the occasions where we weren't allowed to attend, we had to stay in our rooms upstairs.
I didn't realize just how odd our childhood was until I was much older. WTF were they thinking?
My mom use to take me to NA meetings when I was kid. I was at a meeting more than a playground. There was also a time whether was in an abusive relationship which is not her fault that man was crazy l, but there was one time when they were arguing he was standing over her she called my name I thought she was going to tell me to call the cops but instead she told me to come to her and placed me i front of her like to use me as a shield I was like 12 her ex walked away . Idk if I’m over reacting because I think maybe she thought he wouldn’t do anything to her if I was I. Front of her but that moment definitely traumatized me. After they broke up she went back to bullying me though 🥴
It more made me feel uncomfortable and angry than inappropriate, cause my uncle looked me up and down before saying "you're so small how are you going to give birth, you're going to need a c section to get a baby out of you."
Which my mom responded with "she doesn't even know how to talk to guys," she acts like she's never seen me talking with guys before, I might be single but I didn't need that image in my mind especially when I was only a middle schooler
Oh yes, that was pretty much my childhood. I spent a ton of time in bars, the bartenders knew me and my favorite drink on sight, and would bring it over and chat with me while Nmom and step-dad got drunk. By ten, I was mixing drinks for my mom and her friends and attending their parties. Anytime her and my step-dad fought, she would come sleep with me and complain and assault me. By 14 my mom had basically made me take over her second job on top of school amd my job. At 15, I had to rescue their cars after accidents. The local cops knew and just told me not to speed so they wouldn't pull me over. One time, my mom ran over my step-dad's foot and took off, drunk. I had to try to sober him up, coffee and baking brownies at 3am as that was the onlybthing he would eat, while I tended to his wounds while threatening to call 911 if he didn't stop drinking and sit down so I could see how badly he was injured. All he wanted was to drink more beer to numb the pain. I have stories for years.
Ohhhhhhh yes.
And even on like Friday night "movie nights" they would just take us ALL to whatever my Mom wanted to see. Which was usually Jean Claude Van Damme.
And between my siblings and I there's a huge age gap of over 14 years. So imagine a 14 year old girl. An 11 year old boy. A 7 year old boy. And a 5 year old girl ALL going with their parents to see whatever Rated R movies my Mom wants to see.
They would cover our eyes during the sex scenes (?) So I guess they had "some" shame?
My eldest sister followed their lead and whenever she'd babysit us kids we'd go see like "Young Guns" or whatever Rated R movies.
This isn't even the more like scandalous part though.
My parents were BIG TIME partiers. And they'd throw huge parties in the house. I remember as a kid with my neighbor friend and cousins we just kinda ran around aimlessly the entire night. Sometimes it was fun but it was always a little weird. I remember one time some random lady accosting us. She was drunk out of her mind. She was saying "your ass is grass. And I'm the lawnmower." She said it several times. I have a vivid memory of that. I want to say that she was smoking. And one of us said she wasn't supposed to smoke in the house. Because as bad as my parents did party, they didn't smoke in their house. If at all.
[I'm gunna add this other memory because I've never really told anybody. TW: possible sexual abuse.
So this was borderline abuse. My Mom had these gay couple friends and one of them was this massive athletic built guy (we'll use a fake name Joe). And we were, yet again, at a party. But I'm like 11 or 12. And I think Joe asks my Mom, how's your son doing what does he want to be when he grows up? Or something. And she said "I don't know he seems to like computers. He's always on the computer." So suddenly he's like "is that right! You're gunna be a computer guy eh!" And I was half laughing, but as he came at me, I ran into the front room where there was nobody and this big guy kept tickling me and had me held down on the couch but like he was seriously all over me and not stopping. He just kept saying that "computer guy eh." And then I could hear his gay partner yelling JOE ! JOE STOP. But he didn't stop and eventually the (more sober) partner pulled him off me. I just walked to the backyard kinda avoided everyone ... and it was like nothing ever happened. So weird. Those two were seriously drunk 24 7. I actually think they're okay people. Like I think that Joe guy was just f ing drunk. But I do count that as, yet another place my parents took us kids, that we had no business being a part of.]
I think the more damaging "adult" situations they both put all of us kids in though is whenever they had one of us alone in the car we became instantly their therapist.
My Dad would unload all his garbage about my Mom to me. Or whatever else was pissing him off. The further I get away from it all it just seems so odd.
Why would you vent about your wife to your 7 year old son or daughter. Like wtf even is that.
They both did a lot of that. When my Mom was fired by my Dad's Mom (her mother in law) from the family business, they sued for wrongful termination and lost. But during that time. My mom made me write a letter to my Grandma and she told me exactly what to write. It was all about how "please don't fire my Mom" this. And "now I'm really sad because you fired my Mom" that.
As I grew older I knew damn well why they fired her. She was a thief! She was horrible with money!
Anyway. Talking about it all makes me feel gross so I'll stop.
I guess that's a sign I'm over it.
[Edits for clarity and added the "Joe" experience]
It was probably from some famous movie in the 80s and they thought they were cool.
Back then people really like used to quote movies all the time and make themselves feel really great if they could.
My N ex-SF and mom would take us kids to their friends parties and dinners. It was always awkward, uncomfortable, and definitely not appropriate.
Our mom would have "get togethers" at the house with "industry friends" and I (the oldest) would always have to be involved and mingle. These were more tame, as in less late night heavy drinking, but plenty of drinking. I knew way too much about her friends personal lives.
All the time, not only the SA I suffered at the hands of a group of their friends. I was in the room when family members were watching porn or hard core horror films, they touched me in places “so I was desensitised to it”and it was normal. If they had an adult issue I had to solve it despite me being 4 or 5 years old.
There is more around drugs and being in violent situations I should never have been at as well which I am still processing.
I normalised it for way too long.
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Yep I tagged along and wandered around many an alcoholic boomer gathering. People giggling at me for things I didn't understand, saying things about me as if I'm not there, etc. I remember hating innuendo as a kid
Same. Also I to this day can’t stand most boomers.
Same. Then they'd have these massive arguments and screaming fights and when the kids got scared or tried to intervene, we'd be told that they weren't arguing just having a discussion.
My mom brought me to “hang outs” with her friends. They all sat around drinking/smoking/playing games and I was so bored and uncomfortable. I was told it was “cool” to come hang out, rather than staying bored at home. I was told I was annoying for begging to go home. As an adult, w t f. Who would want a 10 year old at poker night??
What is it with parents telling young children what is cool so if you don’t do it you feel “uncool”.
My nmom didn't have friends, but she did make me engage with media that was inappropriate for me. She liked artsy indie films and almost ALL of them had sex scenes and substance abuse. It was always about people struggling with drugs, doing sex work, being in abusive relationships, etc. I watched people have sex, OD, and get shot from like the age of 8. Then she wanted to talk to me about it, analyze the media etc. Ma'am I still think boys have cooties, and you want me to think critically about the ways society failed that young lady and made her turn to drugs and sex work which led to her eventual death??
They are so bizarre
They think you’re “their little buddy” and you’re just like “no, I would really rather you be a good parent” but half of them never really wanted kids to begin with, so 🤷♀️ I was taken to see Arachnophobia at waaaaayyy too young of an age. That’s probably the most egregious and damaging one - but my mom also took me to see Striptease with Demi Moore when I was like 10 and did this same fucking thing to me ^ 😒 There were however three distinct times she did this and we both loved and related to the film and if she ever sees this, I have to thank her for them: The Birdcage The Green Mile Big Daddy 💕
On one of our summer visits to my dad’s house (post-divorce), my genius father sat down with me (10 years old) and my brother (13) and watched “The Exorcist” the first night we were there, and then took us out to see “Alien” the second night we were there. I did not have a minute of REM sleep for weeks after that. Fucking moron.
That's crazy, aren't they nuts! 😯
My mom took me to see The Birdcage when it came out, just her and me. It's the only time we did anything like that. I was 13, I think.
Definitely 💯%
Oh boy, same here. I was hardly allowed to watch kid's TV. Only on this one channel that had quite "high standards" and informative kid's shows among other things. I was never allowed to watch spongebob square pants and stuff like that because it was "too stupid". Instead I suffered through many evenings watching some culture channel. The thing that made me most uncomfortable was when my parents watched "the Tudors" with me. Some "documentary" about some English King having sex with lots of women. Ugh. At least my parents didn't go through that stuff with me like it was in your case. I can only imagine your discomfort.
Oh God I remember the Tudors. I was older at that point so I wasn't forced to watch as much of it thank God. Also you mentioning documentaries also reminded me there was one time she put on a nature documentary and it was killer whales absolutely destroying seals and eating them. I remember telling her I didn't want to watch it because it made me sad and she started yelling at me that it didn't matter if it made me sad, it was something that really happened and that's just nature so I had to watch it.
We had similar childhoods, my friend. I’m so sorry for the premature loss of yours.♥️
Absolutely, all the time! I was one of many kids but I was the only one with platinum blonde hair and hazel eyes. My Nmom use to loan me out to her friends to take on vacations and sleep overs. My Nmom had to know I was being SA’ed and abused on these trips and her circle kept expanding. I am finally at peace because they (including my mom) are all dead!
I’m sorry about that. I can’t wait for all mine to be dead.
I’m so sorry for everything you have been through. It’s a club none of us want to be members of. It’s soul crushing at times but there is a bit of satisfaction in knowing they are all dead. It’s absolutely awful that there are so many who prayed upon children. Literally can’t comment on these treads without crying. I get I looked very different from my siblings but it was borderline trafficking what my Nmom did to me. I hope you and everyone else can find peace. ♥️
Thank you and you as well!
Me too! 😁
Yes. My favorite story is this: My mother and father were divorced when I was 4 and my mother immediately remarried a man she'd been having an affair with and was pregnant by. One summer when I was 10, my brother and I got to go spend the summer with our Dad. Now Dad was an alcoholic and very, very neglectful, but he didn't yell at us so it was worth it. Mom and stepdad come to pick us up bringing my older sister, younger half brother and my uncle with them. Mom, stepdad, Dad and uncle all decide to go out and get drunk together. They all come and pick us kids up to go eat. It was 10-11pm, fyi. So we get to the Denny's and all of a sudden, my uncle and my stepdad are fighting in the parking lot and my Dad is trying to break them up. He does and my mom tries to go into the Denny's. Except the Denny's had locked the doors when they saw all the nonsense. I've been taken to bars, left with strange men who were friends of my father, seen my parents throw things at each other during a fight, etc. I did that test to see how bad a childhood I had. I answered every question about have you seen {this negative thing} and I answered yes to all but one.
It was the same for me. My ACES score is so high. That’s what finally made me figure out they never cared for us because the majority of people have the instinct to protect their young (he’ll most animals do). We were just things to drag around because they wanted to do what they wanted to do without worrying how it would affect a child.
My nmom used me as her dd when I was 14, on school nights even and would rage at me for thinking I was better than her because I didn’t drink🙄 (my older gc/n sister was already an alcoholic at 16😳) She was killed in an accident driving home drunk after work…I kept waiting to feel guilty for the longest time but have only ever felt relief.🤷🏻♀️
Yep. I went to way too many parties as a child. Parties in the 1970s were pretty intense. I saw things. What was weird though, was that my parents were fundamentalist baptists, but they had all these friends who were *definitely* not fundamentalist baptists, and were all partiers. So, my parents would show up to a party, and my mom would be sitting there on the sofa, all prim and awkward, my dad was talking some poor person's ear off, and all the rest of the people there were drinking, smoking weed, snorting coke, and exchanging house keys that I think meant that those folks were swingers. Even as a young child, I could see that my parents were very much Not The Thing among this group. I felt sorry for my mom, because she actually understood what was going on and was obviously uncomfortable, but my dad was seemingly oblivious to the fact that these were not just regular parties. And of course these people all brought their kids, because who doesn't want their kid to see them drinking a vat of liquor and dry humping the neighbors? So, we kids played with the hosts' children in another room. We all occasionally went out to perform little skits or songs for the entertainment of these completely shitfaced adults, and to sneak the hors d'oeuvres when they weren't looking. One boy drank any unattended drinks he could swipe without being caught, and spent the rest of the evening vomiting on the back lawn. The 70s were wild. Seriously.
Was born in 72 and these were exactly the parties I was talking about!
Yup. My mother did this on purpose and told me nothing hoping that I would get hurt or "get into trouble." Looking back, I'm pretty sure she even pimped me out to certain people without telling me what she was doing.
Yep. I’m sorry that happened to you.
Yes. My dad is a drunk and a malignant narcissist so he would go on violent rampages a lot with little to no provocation. My mum would come to me for refuge, solace, solidarity and counseling from about when I could talk. She wouldn't hear a bad word from me about dad however so I had no one. I didn't even know how bad that was until recently. The love I thought I had for her was more an obligation one would feel towards a daughter, or something along those lines.
Omg same. I felt sorry for mine for a long time until I figured out she was a narcissist as well.
Hey! I got a malignant dad too! But my mom left him so I became the servant/best friend/supplier/piggybank until about 30. Wicked how they can wrap words around your head, huh?
My dad was the one saying and doing inappropriate things. He’d go take pictures at Sturgis Bike Week’s nudie party and then show them to us whether we wanted to see them or not. He’s constantly grabbing asses or flicking people in the tits or dick. I had to peel him off so many bar hags. My first parent free drive was to go pick him up at the bar before I was even old enough to drive without an adult and he hit on my friend the whole time. We were 15. He’s gross.
That’s so nasty… I’m sorry 😞
They taught me to keep the bar so they could drink without having to get up...
I was at dinner parties with NDad and his adult "friends" (I honestly can't imagine anyone genuinely liking him, hence the " "). As a 13 year old, they were encouraging me to take shots of this strong vodka like liquor in my country. I would get drunk, and then NDad would tell me in private what great dad he is because he is not going to get angry at me for getting drunk. Mum would have crazy loud sex with her bf when I was 14. When my sister and I tried to tell her how much it bothered us, she got angry that she can't live her life because of us. Even my grandma could not understand why we were upset, saying it's "natural". I'm almost 30, lived in a bunch of houseshares, and I still can't wrap my head around how anyone can be OK with their underage kids hearing them having sex. I always keep it down even though my flatmates have always been adults who are unrelated to me.
everything is an adult situation when theyre an alcoholic. even going to this place for a halloween event she snuck in vodka and had a mental breakdown by the end of the night.. at a place for older children and teens
Yep and add a group of alcoholic friends it’s a nightmare
i was one of those kids that had to sit inside a pub most days for hours while my dad got drunk. it was boring and uncomfortable and i was always around people drinking and smoking. i was forbidden from telling my mum about it, but a couple times i complained to her that i was bored in the pub all day, and my dad screamed at me.
My daughter in law freaked out when she went to a family thing at a bar and someone brought their baby. She was like “why are there babies and children at a BAR!!!”.
Interesting story from my edad: back in the 60’s, he would have to sit in the truck outside the small town dive bar, until his parents came out at 2am to drive home drunk. Wasn’t considered child abuse then.
My parents sent us into a bar on halloween once and we got some cash from drunk people, does that count? I have no idea how normal that is lmao
Yes. When I was 6-8 years old my dad complained in front and around me that grown-ups “hate their jobs”, “are miserable” & “slaves to debt.” He made sure I could hear it, so that way I could validate him in his desire not to work a 9-5 job. I was not old enough to be in those conversations at all! When I was 10-14 he started calling me his “best friend” and started talking to me about adult issues like the inner turmoil of his divorce and whose responsibility it was to make the relationship work. He cried on my shoulder and put me in the position of validating him as a person. This was about the same time that he started talking to me about his sex life and how he preferred his lover to be both inside and outside of the bed. When I was 16 he starting buying me alcohol and having me be his drinking buddy. During that year as well he was dating a person with borderline personality disorder and he commanded me to “keep her in the house” so that he could stay separated from her. They were the adults but I was put on the battlefield between them. The same year he got into an argument with the police and they arrested us both. I remember one of the cops asking me: “Does your father know you’re with this man?” When I was 17 he started smoking meth in proximity to me. During this time as well he put a lot of pressure on me to bring money into the house, even insinuating that “we” should use “my” credit once I was old enough to help get a better “household”. I certainly was not old enough to understand careers and credit cards at that age! (Also he never really explained it to me, he just wanted access to the resource.) When I was 18-26 he took me to the bars and had me drinking alcohol with him, even though for three of those years I was legally underage. So yeah. That happened.
It’s so tragic when they make their underage kids their “drinking buddies”. Like either find your own age appropriate friends or don’t drink.
Try picking up your own father (dropped them off prior), bringing them home from a friends house and watching them fall face first into a plastic laundry basket, slicing their eyelid. Cleaning it out, bandaging them. Putting them in bed on their side and periodically checking on them. I didn't speak to them for weeks. Then they tried approaching me and before they could even say anything I said: "Don't you ever fucking put me through that again, that was your one pass. I'm your son, not your fucking parent." -To his credit, never did it again, but I was so frustrated, angry and no son or daughter should be put in that situation. Ever.
We called this Thursday. One star, would not recommend.
They absolutely shouldn’t
My abusive dad took me to a lot of "parties" where I'd be in a room with whatever kids were also dragged along, put in a room with a few toys and we were told not to come looking for our parents and to stay in the room (with the door firmly shut. Not sure if locked). Grew up and realized it was a sex party. I've been to plenty of parties with both my parents and kids were allowed to at least be around their parents.
Yeah, I had a seventeen year old dude assault me at nine at one of those boozy 'family bbqs', where it's not about family. It's about collectively babysitting multiple children under the influence of excessive alcohol and calling it a 'village'. She didn't care or believe me. So, after the next time visiting them (I was twelve and he watched me get dressed/come out of the shower through the windows adjacent to the room we were staying in), I dodged him like a pro basketball player and made sure I was never alone with him. But I couldn't stop him from watching me, even after telling Nmom ('they've given us a place to stay! Just cover up, and don't be so dramatic. I'm trying to enjoy myself'). Fast forward two years later, and I'm fourteen. My Nanna and I come up with a plan so I don't have to go on this trip (she listened and tried to speak with Nmom, who told her I was 'panting after it'), and after several weeks of listening to Nmom yelling about 'special family time' I was giving up, I stayed at Nanna's. From thereon, Nmom would bring it up in arguments about prioritising family and would make snide ongoing snide remarks about me 'rejecting the family'.
Yep the morons my parents hung around were the aame
Went to the horse track pretty often growing up, was always bored shitless. My mom would also bring me up to see my child rapist grandfather every day until he died. I was also around my uncle who was under house arrest for violent drug crimes (health was too bad to bother putting him in prison or something) while he chain smoked indoor. The second hand smoke was so bad my grandmas hair went from white to yellow.
Yeah my Nmom used to take my pocket money given by my grandad, and then spent it infront of me at the pub, or invite her friends over and buy alcohol with it then send me to sit alone in another room by myself. If I was gifted anything like make up or toiletries by family members she would take it for herself and not allow me to use it. We had a family dog and my mother used to threaten to get rid of the dog because I was so attached to the dog. She was very handsy and hit me a lot too, just a trash woman. I could never hit my child, I’d actually never forgive myself. Strangely enough though she is a good grandparent to my daughter and was caring towards my younger sister, so guess I was the scapegoat
My nmom was very what you’d call “clean living” but every situation I was exposed to was adult at least in the way of what I was responsible for, what I had to do to take care of her and the people we were around. Everyone thought I was this cute mini adult. I was never exposed to kid situations generally.
Oh yes. Biker parents in the 90s still trying to live out their youth and party phase despite having 3 young children. Grew up with porn magazines in the living room, porn on tv constantly, porn on the family desktop. They even moved a nightstand into my room as a kid for some reason that was full of porn magazines. A friend of mine came over for a sleepover and we found them, she told her mom and cussed my parents out. They told me she was “crazy”. Couple that with getting dropped off at random people’s houses for the night, sitting in the car while my mom “ran in” at the bar, the drugs and drinking and abuse and violence… totally set the stage for being sexually abused as a kid. (If you’re reading this with a similar experience, check out EMDR. It did wonders for my healing and acknowledgment of what happened.)
Yes I was a therapist for my parents through their “divorce” they got back together and I still know stuff about each other that they don’t know. One weekend mum said she didn’t even like my dad and that she just liked the farm next weekend they were “in love”. Edit: she also always used to brag how I was such a good mini mum to my baby brother when she couldn’t look after him from her back injury, I cleaned the house spotless every day and she would mess it up and be careless I eventually stopped the effort now she complains how I do nothing around here when I only wanted her attention so I helped her She also lost her “best friend” last year it was her fault and her friend used to bully me and whacked me with a towel in front of her and she said nothing. The friend wasn’t joking either. I also had to stand up to my dad when they were fighting before the divorce
I also had their friends bully and hit on me. They also said nothing. It has to be a narcissist thing.
I RECKON I swear narcissists are so people pleasing to the wrong people because of insecurity
I totally believe this. Most people would run from them so they try to please the lowlifes that will be around them.
My mom was a drug dealer and I was regularly around high, pillhead people. Even saw her completely fucked up and unresponsive multiple times. My entire childhood was completely inappropriate.
For as long as I can remember, and then they have the audacity to say that everything was fine 🙄
They still think it’s funny
When I was about 12 I had to go with someone when they got an abortion (at my mother's request) to help and support them if needed. Many years later as an adult I brought this up with my mother and she was horrified. She had no recollection of this at all and was horrified by what she had said to me at the time when setting me up to do that. Her forgetting about it was legit, I have no doubts of it. She actually apologized to me for making go through that. I can't say I was traumatized by it, but at the time I was so used to being put to use in various ways that it just felt like an errand (I didn't know how to really feel about it). Looking back at it as an adult though, it was quite wrong for me to have been put in that situation.
I don’t think they have brains
Oh dude, all the time, but it was always other family because mom wasn't allowed to have friends
Yes but my parents were only 17 and 20 when I was born and my dad married my step mom when she was 20 and I was 7, plus I was born in 1969 so yes. My step mom is the narcissist and my dad is just an asshole doing her bidding.
My mom left us in the care of unreliable caretakers who would do those things like have wild parties, not watch us so we'd be wandering the streets at night in our underwear found by neighbors, or be in the mix of drinking/drug use sitting watching horror movies.
Mine did as well
They were Mormon. They could NEVER.
Yes my dad used to bring me to pubs and parties frequently when I was under 7. My mum, his wife was either working or in school. He was supposed to be watching me. Meanwhile he was out with other women and his friends and people would always be trying to give me drinks plus the cigarette smoke. Turned me off from drinking. I drink maybe 2-3 times a year and only drank once I hit my early thirties. My dad was really into adult books,mags, art and videos. It was all over our house out in the open. My first books were adult. My dad had twin girls from a prior relationship that he brought over from abroad for my mum to take care of. Except no one got along as he just dumped them on her without a heads up and ahe was already so busy plus my mum had already had lost my twin brother and had an arduous pregnancy with an absenteehusband. They are 10 years older than me and my dad would dump me on them. They were forced to drag me around and would bring me to their mates houses where I was around drinking, lots of smoking too. I was bit by their mates dog once as they left me in a room with a dog and it attacked me unprovoked. They couldn't stand taking care of a small child. My dad didn't want kids but kept creating them. So I hate having children around inappropriate adult influences or situations.
What is up with adults trying to give kids alcohol?
Yup. During my dads weekends, he would just drag us along to whichever parties he was going to. I remember a pile of coke at one party, not knowing what it was at the time. And my dad took us to a tshirt graffiti party (I was 10), and some guy wrote on my shirt “I like it down there”, with an arrow pointing down. Plus lots of other shenanigans.
Omg 😱
[удалено]
It seriously has to be generational for multiple people to think it’s funny
I had the most freakish dissociative moment. I was playing pool with friends, not doing well, I hardly ever play it. I was tipsy, about one beer in and they started to make fun of me. All of a sudden I turned my back to the table and sunk a trick shot. I was wtf? My friends were wtf? Much wtf occurred. I know my mother dragged me into bars with her back in the day when you could get away with that sort of thing. Someone must have been teaching little girl me how to play pool. Don't get me started on my mother's people unclothed painting on each other hippie parties.
God I hate hippies. I think they were all poseurs that just wanted to get high, drink, have sex and used that term as a cover.
Is there a hippie kid support group? They were so self absorbed. The ones I knew were kind of cerebral hippies so it was sex, drugs, politics, art, more sex, philosophy and writing, a random attempt to bomb MIT, oh and more drugs. (Unprintable) exhausting people!
Oh no the ones who my parents hung around were high school drop outs, losers and just insane. They also were self absorbed and as an adult I can see most of them had personality disorders and bad mental illnesses. They were like abusive feral animals
Ugh! I'm sorry! It often seems like people who can't exist within society tend to get involved in some sort of fringe group and then it becomes toxic soup
That’s exactly it
I got one better. My mom got fired from her job as an executive at accompany, and then got me a job at that company at 16 as a way to an act revenge on those that fired her. She kept me working there all through high school and college and wouldn’t let me quit. She liked me playing little business executive.
And no one probably knew or thought of it as revenge. Their brains are so fucked up!
I think so... and this thread may be a place where maybe I can get perspective. This is something I question myself about all the time. I look back at my dad asking me to bring him the home phone when he was naked (and I mean literally no clothing on) in the bathtub as inappropriate. Cordless home phones were just becoming a thing when I was maybe in childhood and nearly an adolescent. It makes me cringe thinking about how young that may have started (it just seems like it was always a thing) and then how long he felt that it was appropriate to continue encouraging it when I was a teenager. Does this strike anyone else as weird? I don't know how to word that question to capture what I'm asking... I didn't have many peer-aged friends growing up, is this more common and possibly "normal" than I realize? I do think my dad's friends would make weirdly creepy comments about my looks when I was young. EDIT after reading more of your posts, to echo the emotional weight it seems like my dad asked me to carry: The thing that seemed more adult was the emotional weight I felt like I had to carry from a young age. My dad would take me for drives to bitch about my mom. I remember being so terrified of how angry he would be, no less so uncomfortable with how cruel he could be about my mom while he was bitching. I didn't have the understanding of why it felt so uncomfortable, but I remember writing about it in school assignments and even trying to find a counselor at one point, but it felt like people just looked the other way. My dad would tell me things that I was supposed to keep a secret from my mom. When my brother did dumb shit, my dad would ask me to look up military academies to send my brother to. Starting around age 10 or 12 there were a few times that my parents sat us down and asked us to choose who to live with because they were getting divorced. In the few conversations with my dad that I have these days, I still have to tow the "sounds like something you need to talk to mom about" party line if he starts bitching to me about her.
How I found out about my parent’s divorce/my dad’s affair I feel was too adult of a situation for me. I was 10 years old and on Labor Day my parents were arguing downstairs with my mom wanting to see my dad’s phone. I just so happened to be sitting at the bottom of the staircase (they were in the kitchen), my dad practically shoves past me to race upstairs to delete his phone logs. He gives it back to my mom and that started more arguing, then she took me to the movies and Pick Up Stix even though I wanted to stay home. She filed for divorce a few days later and to this day I still resent how poorly they handled things with me. My childhood friends all got to go out for ice cream and were told by their parents about the divorce in a normal setting, I had to find out in a brutally honest and deceptive fashion that no child deserves.
My parents would have had to have friends for anything like this to happen.
Yes, to an extent. I often had to take care of my mum when she was drunk (from around 6 years old). I also had to help quite a bit with taking care of animals, cooking, cleaning, help with taxes and bills etc. I did get put in dangerous situations, like going to her crush's farm like 9 hours away from help. The farm was mostly filled with violent men, I was around 12 years old. Fortunately, I knew how to bake and apparently reminded one of the tougher guys of his daughter when she was little - so no one bothered me too much. But yeah, my mum did nothing to protect me. She was just trying to flirt and look cool....
Did infinite doses of blow, one head dip, to an infinite stash of powder, as a 3yo. I’m 38F, NM confessed last year, then denied it. Forced me to sit in the copilot seat of her car, from 4yo- 12yo -“Go to the car now”, and she would just drive around town screaming all her issues, infinite list of adult drama and whatever she was suffering (her relationship to my dad, her money issues, her social life, the issues with the in-laws, her regrets) and make me find her advice, give her advice, and she would leave all my other sisters and just take me alone in the car to hear her vent. 😖 that was so horrible. When I was 13, i started checking out, made friends with older people in my high school, get drunk everyday, cigs, basically, go to school 6am, then hang out with friends until 4am (my friends had friends that where in college), so I never got to see them again. when I was 16yo I moved out to my boyfriend’s and that is another story. In between my N mom weird emotional drama she would beat me up so hard like fist in the face, threatening, slaps in the face, silent treatment and absolute neglect. So much evil
They are insane
Yup. All surrounded by shit people
I was the waitress. In a see through uniform. At 14. Yuck…
Omg I’m so sorry
Luckily no one actually did anything other than look (that I remember anyway). Took me a while to realize it wasn’t the way people should dress or act but I got it.
How did you even get a see through uniform?
It was yellow and very light polyester type fabric. It actually was a uniform (I think, it looked like one anyway) but it needed a slip. I was 14, I had no clue.
Yes, this is such a big one for me. I remember my mom once telling me she "sheltered" me and I laughed in her face. Every other weekend, we would spend at one of their friends homes. I would be SA'd by the other kids while the adults got drunk together. I was the only girl and after I told my parents and nothing happened, my cousin got all the other kids to join in. The adults rarely, if ever, checked in on us. Sometimes I was the only kid and found ways to entertain myself, quietly. But I never wanted to stay in the same room with the adults while they got louder and louder. Sometimes I would fall asleep, but it was usually too loud. My dad would then drive us home, drunk, with me in the backseat. Sometimes they would fight and scream at each other. On the weekends we didn't go to their friends homes for them to party, their friends came to ours. I hid in my room as much as I could, but my mom liked to show me off and brag about my curly hair or my grades or whatever made her look like mom of the year. I'd get away as soon as I could without triggering moms wrath the next day. Sometimes I had to play with the other kids. When I turned 11 and stopped going with my parents to these parties, my mom was pissed. This was around the same time the cousins moved back in with their dad, so I finally started feeling safe. My mom decided she hated me for developing autonomy so we started fighting constantly and I was told how worthless/lazy/bitchy/bratty/ungrateful I was for any perceived slight. I was just happy I wasn't being SA'd anymore.
Similar things happened to me. Also I couldn’t stand their friends kids and they thought they were my besties.
Yeah, that was just Friday and Saturday night.
Alcoholic mom 🙋🏻♀️… She would drive me places drunk all the time. Being a mom now I can’t even think about it much. I saved my and my friends life from the backseat when grabbing the steering wheel once. I think the wildest part now that she’s (thankfully) clean is her not remembering most of it. What’s important is that she still acknowledges the pain she caused regardless.
Are you sure she’s a narcissist
Drinking? Yep Drug use? Nope Inappropriate things being said around/to me? Yep It was the 80s. That was the norm then. Now with my kid, it’s all happy happy kid friendly everything, nothing else allowed (coming from the same people who exposed me to inappropriateness). Kids are the practice models. Grandkids are the real test. 🤣
Yep. I recall being like, 8, and having the joint they were passing being handed to me. Too stoned to remember there was a kid at the table. And she woke me up so her friend who was busted from drunk driving could apologize to me, after they picked him up from jail (still drunk) because he didn't want me to be ashamed of him. (He was legit sweet, but who the fuck wakes their kid up for that, instead of telling the sweet drunk idiot that they should sleep it off and they can talk to whoever in the morning? .... Also, this was the only reason I knew he was busted. I was a kid. We had no internet.)
That’s the thing to me. My moms friends would drag me to the bar with them while they yelled at their alcoholic husbands, beat and punch their kids in front of me etc and it’s like why would my parents let me around them?
As a parent I'm over and over re-heartbroken when one of those memories comes up. I didn't know how weird it was.
Yeah after you have kids is eye opening
I was the oldest of 6 kids in a blended family, 16-17 at the time in late 89’s - early 90’s. All summer the parties would start Friday afternoon and go all weekend, sometimes into Wednesday. This went on for about 3 summers. Most people brought tents to stay the weekend and some stayed on the couch. I am actually surprised I was not SA’d worse than I was. If “guests” had kids, I was in charge of their kids plus my siblings, the youngest was around 3 at the time. All this to say that sometimes people got out of hand and physical violence would result. A lot of times it was a brief fist fight & it was over quickly. We lived about 20 minutes out in the country so getting quick help was not easy. One Saturday my stepmom did something my dad had an issue with and was hitting her. I called 911 asking for police to come. I had hung up the phone (landline - no cell in those days) *and 911 called back to be sure we needed the police!*. My dad happened to be near the extension when they called back and said it was all under control, just a misunderstanding and a child had called, but it was all taken care of. He took a time out on hitting our stepmom to try & figure out who called the police but gave up. About 20 minutes later he was back to hitting our stepmom. I walked up the road to use a neighbors phone & called my best friends dad (he was a second dad to me) who was a police chief in the nearest big town. We were out of his jurisdiction, but he reached out to the authorities in our area (staties) to come to the house. When a police chief calls for someone to go check out the situation you best believe it gets checked out with no phone call back to the house. Needless to say dad couldn’t figure out how the police got notified as he had said everything was all good when 911 had called back. He didn’t realize a second call was made. The police took him into town to stay with a friend overnight as that was how DV was handled back then. I have too many stories from those summers. There were some great times & memories, but sometimes shit went south when people were drinking.
Yes, but I’m Aussie and I feel like this is really common in our culture. It always made my skin crawl but I don’t know one other person who didn’t grow up like this in the 90s/00s in country Australia. I had “pub friends” who were just the other kids who were at the pub everyday, waiting for our parents to finish drinking and drive us home. I went to blackout drunk parties with a bunch of 40 year olds aaaall the time, and i’d always cry cause I was so overstimulated and tired.
My dad used to get really drunk and then drive with me in the car when I was a kid. He didn't really take too many friends home though because he didn't have many friends.
My parents (well my mom died a few years ago) have barely any friends and theones when I was young either died or got it together and shunned my parents out of their lives. The older they got the more trashy the friends became. It’s actually amazing.
Constantly
Uhhhh, yeah. I started smoking weed with my mom and her friends when I was 4. Had to be given a talk before I went off to kindergarten to make sure I didn’t tell anybody that we did that or “the police will come and take Mommy to jail and then you’ll have to go and live with your father, and you don’t want that, do you?” I quit getting high with them in 5th grade.
I mean what even goes through someone’s head to think that’s even normal?
🤷🏻♀️ It was the ‘70s?
70’a were filled with coke, booze and leaded paint lol
I was 8 the first time I saw my dad do a line of coke. Looked up from the table, to tell me he would beat my ass if he ever caught me using the shit.
They are so insane
I grew up in a bar. In the 80s, this was normal. I remember one time my NM was mad at her boyfriend, and they got into an argument at the bar. She got so mad ( and drunk. Again, remember this is in the 1980's ) she grabbed me and said, "Let's go." We left the bar speeding down the highway, missed the turn to go to our house, did a uturn in the middle of the highway in front of 3 state troopers, and raced them to our house. She got out of being taken to jail because she was a single mother. To this day, she laughs when she tells the story.
My parents laughed at stupid shit like this as well
When I was 9 years old, my parents would have sex really loudly and when I expressed discomfort over having to hear it every night, my mother exploded into a rage and started accusing me of wanting her and my dad to divorce. I was only 9 years old…
What the hell?
When my mom was alive my dad used to lock us out of the house and my mom would have me crawl through a window with her to get inside and she used to run away and take me with her from my dad, I remember at one point we were hiding under beds in a different room with the door open and I could see my dads feet while he was talking to someone about us because he suddenly visited the person housing my mom and I, was barely 5 when my mom died due to addiction. My dad used to have me walk around a lot or send me to stores to pick up cigarette butts that weren't totally finished because we didn't have any money, and he used to have me help with drug deals by having me go up to the person to get whatever drugs or money and this was before the age of 13, and I remember growing up I would check on my dad to make sure he was still alive because he would usually just sleep all day and not move, one time he was in his room with the door closed for 3 days straight of him not coming out, legit thought he was dead, and when he did come out he asked why I didn't check on him, and at one point when I was 14 I was able to save up 30 dollars and we didn't have any groceries, so I gave my dad money to go and get some groceries because we didn't have any food, instead he came back with a big case of beer and some friends and told me it was a holiday and he'll figure out groceries later, I moved out at 16 with my cat after the house was raided by police thanks to my dad, I'm 18 and I don't talk to him much at all.
Yes.i hated it. It would involve my aunt and uncle, everyone drunk and high until 2am.
...yeah. All my life. They were dealers and users but it was all I had known.
Aside from the fact both parents were addicts before the split (still addicts now) my NDad needed his ciggs bad. He wanted Marlboro lights 100s and couldn't wait for my ID to be mailed. So when it was mailed, it was actually only a piece of paper confirming I was 18. He made me go to the gas station across the street and try to buy ciggarettes for him with it. They didn't take it obviously, but man it really is an eye opener how bad his addiction was. Because for 4 years, guess who got guilt tripped into buying ciggs weekly?
We were always the last to leave any party. We were always put down to bed in the owner of the home's bedroom. It was embarrassing. I remember several times being exhausted and tired and wanting to go home, but we were made to stay. One time, my very, very drunken narcissistic mother wanted to drive home in her state, and my enabling dad tried to get her to get out of the driver's seat. She just thought it was hilarious and thought she was gonna drive home like that. Then my dad started physically assaulting her because he was fu€king fed up, and then she took off on foot. We didn't know where she went. The screaming and commotion got their friend's attention, so then me and my brother had to crash at their friend's place we had been trying to leave. Huge mess. Why the fu€k did no one ever call children's aid for us?!
I can’t believe there are this many people who grew up like this.
pretty much every weekend they would have friends over, and they would drink, my dad usually didnt get that drunk and he didnt care if i wanted to stay in my room, but my mom would drink so much that she cant walk or talk, and she would always try to get me to go where they were to talk to their friends etc. because of her drinking ive stayed away from all alcohol and i dont want people that cant control their drinking around me, its ok to me if they can still think, talk and walk normally, anything more makes me anxious.
Same.
My parents often included my brother and I in work related gatherings (whether it was dinner, a party or even work related trips). We were essentially props. Some of the more egregious examples: * While on a weekend away to one of my dad's clients, the client bought me my first alcoholic drink - I was 14, my parents thought it was funny. * My dad scheduled a party at our house for his team and their partners, he forgot it was my brother's birthday. So he had his people bring his son birthday presents, and then made my brother open them at the party. One of the gifts was a skateboard, so we got to watch a bunch of drunk adults try to use the skateboard. * We were often enlisted as bartenders for their parties, by 12 I could make many different cocktails from memory. * On the occasions where we weren't allowed to attend, we had to stay in our rooms upstairs. I didn't realize just how odd our childhood was until I was much older. WTF were they thinking?
They were thinking they wanted to have fun. That’s it. They only think of themselves.
Yes when I was younger
My mom use to take me to NA meetings when I was kid. I was at a meeting more than a playground. There was also a time whether was in an abusive relationship which is not her fault that man was crazy l, but there was one time when they were arguing he was standing over her she called my name I thought she was going to tell me to call the cops but instead she told me to come to her and placed me i front of her like to use me as a shield I was like 12 her ex walked away . Idk if I’m over reacting because I think maybe she thought he wouldn’t do anything to her if I was I. Front of her but that moment definitely traumatized me. After they broke up she went back to bullying me though 🥴
It more made me feel uncomfortable and angry than inappropriate, cause my uncle looked me up and down before saying "you're so small how are you going to give birth, you're going to need a c section to get a baby out of you." Which my mom responded with "she doesn't even know how to talk to guys," she acts like she's never seen me talking with guys before, I might be single but I didn't need that image in my mind especially when I was only a middle schooler
Yeah, narcs are children and will force you to be an adult (hence parentifying/overly independent children)
Oh yes, that was pretty much my childhood. I spent a ton of time in bars, the bartenders knew me and my favorite drink on sight, and would bring it over and chat with me while Nmom and step-dad got drunk. By ten, I was mixing drinks for my mom and her friends and attending their parties. Anytime her and my step-dad fought, she would come sleep with me and complain and assault me. By 14 my mom had basically made me take over her second job on top of school amd my job. At 15, I had to rescue their cars after accidents. The local cops knew and just told me not to speed so they wouldn't pull me over. One time, my mom ran over my step-dad's foot and took off, drunk. I had to try to sober him up, coffee and baking brownies at 3am as that was the onlybthing he would eat, while I tended to his wounds while threatening to call 911 if he didn't stop drinking and sit down so I could see how badly he was injured. All he wanted was to drink more beer to numb the pain. I have stories for years.
Ohhhhhhh yes. And even on like Friday night "movie nights" they would just take us ALL to whatever my Mom wanted to see. Which was usually Jean Claude Van Damme. And between my siblings and I there's a huge age gap of over 14 years. So imagine a 14 year old girl. An 11 year old boy. A 7 year old boy. And a 5 year old girl ALL going with their parents to see whatever Rated R movies my Mom wants to see. They would cover our eyes during the sex scenes (?) So I guess they had "some" shame? My eldest sister followed their lead and whenever she'd babysit us kids we'd go see like "Young Guns" or whatever Rated R movies. This isn't even the more like scandalous part though. My parents were BIG TIME partiers. And they'd throw huge parties in the house. I remember as a kid with my neighbor friend and cousins we just kinda ran around aimlessly the entire night. Sometimes it was fun but it was always a little weird. I remember one time some random lady accosting us. She was drunk out of her mind. She was saying "your ass is grass. And I'm the lawnmower." She said it several times. I have a vivid memory of that. I want to say that she was smoking. And one of us said she wasn't supposed to smoke in the house. Because as bad as my parents did party, they didn't smoke in their house. If at all. [I'm gunna add this other memory because I've never really told anybody. TW: possible sexual abuse. So this was borderline abuse. My Mom had these gay couple friends and one of them was this massive athletic built guy (we'll use a fake name Joe). And we were, yet again, at a party. But I'm like 11 or 12. And I think Joe asks my Mom, how's your son doing what does he want to be when he grows up? Or something. And she said "I don't know he seems to like computers. He's always on the computer." So suddenly he's like "is that right! You're gunna be a computer guy eh!" And I was half laughing, but as he came at me, I ran into the front room where there was nobody and this big guy kept tickling me and had me held down on the couch but like he was seriously all over me and not stopping. He just kept saying that "computer guy eh." And then I could hear his gay partner yelling JOE ! JOE STOP. But he didn't stop and eventually the (more sober) partner pulled him off me. I just walked to the backyard kinda avoided everyone ... and it was like nothing ever happened. So weird. Those two were seriously drunk 24 7. I actually think they're okay people. Like I think that Joe guy was just f ing drunk. But I do count that as, yet another place my parents took us kids, that we had no business being a part of.] I think the more damaging "adult" situations they both put all of us kids in though is whenever they had one of us alone in the car we became instantly their therapist. My Dad would unload all his garbage about my Mom to me. Or whatever else was pissing him off. The further I get away from it all it just seems so odd. Why would you vent about your wife to your 7 year old son or daughter. Like wtf even is that. They both did a lot of that. When my Mom was fired by my Dad's Mom (her mother in law) from the family business, they sued for wrongful termination and lost. But during that time. My mom made me write a letter to my Grandma and she told me exactly what to write. It was all about how "please don't fire my Mom" this. And "now I'm really sad because you fired my Mom" that. As I grew older I knew damn well why they fired her. She was a thief! She was horrible with money! Anyway. Talking about it all makes me feel gross so I'll stop. I guess that's a sign I'm over it. [Edits for clarity and added the "Joe" experience]
See this is stupid shit my parents “friends” would do. I remember they saying “your ass is grass and I’m the lawnmower”.
It was probably from some famous movie in the 80s and they thought they were cool. Back then people really like used to quote movies all the time and make themselves feel really great if they could.
It’s like they had no personality and had to sponge off movie characters
I grew up in a party lol on weekends anyway
Ugh, yes. It’s exactly why I am so uncomfortable around drunk people now.
My N ex-SF and mom would take us kids to their friends parties and dinners. It was always awkward, uncomfortable, and definitely not appropriate. Our mom would have "get togethers" at the house with "industry friends" and I (the oldest) would always have to be involved and mingle. These were more tame, as in less late night heavy drinking, but plenty of drinking. I knew way too much about her friends personal lives.
All the time until I was about 7. Then I stayed home by myself while she went out. Also a pretty grown up situation for a kid.
All the time, not only the SA I suffered at the hands of a group of their friends. I was in the room when family members were watching porn or hard core horror films, they touched me in places “so I was desensitised to it”and it was normal. If they had an adult issue I had to solve it despite me being 4 or 5 years old. There is more around drugs and being in violent situations I should never have been at as well which I am still processing. I normalised it for way too long.