Threatening is emotional abuse

 Two days ago, I was at a convenience store. A woman was trying to get her young child to use the restroom. The child, who looked to be about five or six years old, insisted he didn’t have to go. The mother got visibly enraged and told him, “You better go in and try right now, before I start popping!” By “popping”, she meant she was going to physically hit him if he didn’t go to the bathroom. 

The importance of listening to kids when they verbalize their bathroom needs is a topic for another day, but her statement about “Popping” was actually a threat. If anyone told you or I they’d physically hit us if we didn’t have to go to the bathroom, we could press charges for threatening. Threatening a child is a Textbook form of emotional abuse 


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