Picture the scene. It’s 7pm. Your child is running around the house, screaming his or her little socks off. Clothes are being swung around the head and they are teasing their sibling every time they run past.
It is late in the day, you have just returned from work, the lunches still need to be made, dinner to be cleaned up, showers taken, books read and lights out.
The whole exercise is a few hours and you just want to get it done. You have already had enough for the day.
The screaming lunatic running around your home has other ideas. You can tell they are in one of their moods. You feel your stress levels rising.
Tonight you tell yourself you are going to be calm. There will be no shouting. You think of the mindfulness apps you have downloaded. You take yourself to your happy place and zone out for a few seconds. Refocused, you come back to the moment and calmly tell the child to stop running around and to step into the shower.
You receive no acknowledgement except the sound of a manic laugh. His partner-in-crime is now also jumping up and down on the couch.
You think of watermelon smoothies in Thailand and massages on the beach. And you repeat yourself. This time more forcefully.
There is still no response. So you target the sensible one.
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This reminds me of when I was a little girl and my Dad did this to me. It made a HUGE impression on me and to this day I remain angry, shocked, and traumatised. It destroyed my adoring trust in my father. I have not trusted him since that day. He locked me out in our back garden in the dark because I had been getting hyper and defiant and refused to tidy up some Duplo or Lego blocks that I had left all over the floor. I was absolutely terrified because my home was my sanctuary and being suddenly thrust out of it was a horrible thing. I had never before been banished from my home by my own parent. Normally if I was naughty they just smacked me or sent me to my bedroom. I was terrified that my Dad (who was meant to be a person who loved me) had suddenly turned into a nasty man who did things that terrified me and hurt me (i.e. thrusting me out of our sanctuary). I was terrified at being shut out alone in the garden because I was afraid of the dark, and also because I had a very overactive imagination and it was midsummer and my parents had been telling me stories about fairies coming to dance in the "fairy ring" of daisies that had been growing on our lawn. The fairies that I had been fondly imagining were nice friendly little creatures suddenly terrified me now that I was out there alone in the dark and I began to fear that they were like monsters that would come out of the shadowy darkness and harm me. It was not unlike the scene in "Jane Eyre" where the poor little girl is locked up in a room that she fears is haunted. I screamed and wept and wailed so loudly that the next door neighbours came out of their own back door and leaned over the wall in concern and took me into their arms and rescued me into their own house. But then they insisted on carrying me back round to my front door and ringing on the doorbell and handing my over to my dad and telling him in tender concern "your poor little daughter seems to have been accidentally locked out". My dad did lots of fake nodding and smiling and agreeing with them. He didn't tell them that he had locked me out deliberately. I was terrified that he would just take me straight out to the back garden and lock me out again. I don't think he did because I think as soon as I was back in the house I ran away from him in panic and went to tell my Mum what he had done and plead with her not to let him lock me out a second time. DO NOT LOCK YOUR CHILDREN OUT. THEY WILL REMEMBER IT FOREVER AND IT IS A FORM OF VERY CRUEL ABUSE.
You're a goddamned monster. they should have thrown YOU in a pen. God bless your little boy, I hope he's alright. I have a kid that was locked out of the house by his abusive mother- for HOURS at the age of 12- for not sitting still in church. She's in the pen and he's safe with me. He still gets punished- time outs, spankings if needed, groundings, but I would never lock this poor boy out of his home. He's been through enough.
Shame.