"Signs of un healthy, controlling parents; Over scrutinized your eating, appearance, hobbies, or social life, pressured you with perfect expectations or unattainable standards, forbade you from questioning or disagreeing with them, discouraged you from expressing anger, fear or sadness around them, violated your privacy, intimidated, manipulated or overpowered you, discouraged your efforts to experiment and think for yourself, gave you no say in household rules and responsibilities, seemed unaware of the pain they caused you or others, seemed unwilling to admit they were wrong." (Neuharth).
A second form of dysfunction in a family is abuse. This comes in several forms; verbal, physical, or sexual. Verbal abuse comes in to forms. One form is direct abuse which can have lasting affects especially when it comes from the children parents or guardian. It can be aimed at the children's basic value, capabilities, intelligence, or even his or her looks. The other form of abuse is the use of subtle put downs. It can be disguised as humor in jokes. Both types can be just as damaging. I often here the saying sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. I believe this statement to be false because words hurt a lot. Physical abuse's definition varies from person to person. Some people believe slapping your kid is physical abuse, while some others spank those naughty little baggers, just like my parents do. I guess it just depends on your family beliefs. For instance I believe that spanking your kids is a must. There is a limit; of course. Spanking and grounding is a way of controlling my kids. I want them to feel my power over them, but I do not want them to fear me. The last thing I want in my life is for my kids to fear me, it would make me feel like I failed as a parent. However there is a certain something inside that wants to strike that child and when u do it feels good to slap that back talking kid.
