I Finally Cracked Down On The Whole ‘why Don’t You Know This By Now’ And ‘you’re Too Stupid

I finally cracked down on the whole ‘why don’t you know this by now’ and ‘you’re too stupid to be independent’ issue with abusive parents so I’m going to break it down.

So lets make two things clear; first: Parents ARE responsible for TEACHING you basics of life, which includes survival, your rights, and basic knowledge that you don’t get in school, and second: Yelling at you for not knowing these things already, is not teaching, and they’re aware of that.

Abusive parents don’t care for their responsibility towards the children at all, but they are very interested in making you useful and appearing as great parents to everyone outside the family. So, if they’re teaching you anything, it’s only for the sake of you doing things for them. Hell, sometimes they’ll just tell you to 'pick it up by watching’ or 'figure it out on your own’ and give you dozens of responsibilities without even asking if you know how, or offering an explanation. Maybe they want you to do menial jobs, maybe you’re responsible for raising your siblings, or restocking groceries and cooking, maybe cleaning or cutting grass or carrying wood or caring for animals; it will be allowed for you to know these things but nothing outside of it, so you wouldn’t start thinking you’re actually competent. You will do all these things correctly and still be called stupid, lazy, worthless, and be reminded that you are nothing without them; all the things you don’t know or can’t do will be thrown into your face, you’re told you are incapable of learning them.

That’s how they get that nice balance of keeping you working for them but still completely in the dark about how to survive without them. The less you know the easier to keep you from leaving; they will sometimes even devalue things you learn at school, just to get your confidence down.

But then, in their infinite masterplan to keep you uninformed, they will forget that it must appear to other people as if you know things, or it will be suspicious; why didn’t they teach their child anything? They’re all pretty paranoid about being found out, so they have to make some counter-measures just in case. So then they gotta paint this picture of 'oh I did teach my child everything! But the child doesn’t listen! If they still don’t know something it’s their own fault!’ And they pre-emptively act as if they have already taught you everything, but you, dumb slob, retained nothing of it. And they need you to act guilty of this in front of other people too, so they’ll often yell at you 'How old are you? How do you already not know this?’ in front of others, as a display of their narrative. They’re saying 'oh we did teach the child and we say it constantly but the kid doesn’t listen even at this age!“

But what it does to you is actually gaslighting. Because you know you never heard this information from them before. They never even came close to comprehensively explaining anything to you. But the scenario playing out in front of you suggests they not only did, but you forgot, and if you try to defend yourself how will you convince anyone that you didn’t forget? It’s a not such a big deal to go fight them on it, but as it happens again and again, you start doubting your memory. Sometimes they even act surprised when you don’t know something, as if they spent days teaching it to you? You start getting worried that you’re missing out on all this vital info, but watch how even when they’re fake surprised you don’t know, they still don’t give you the info! They shame you for not paying attention and what you’re supposed to take from this is to pay attention in the future where they still just never fucking tell you anything relevant ever.

Because it’s just a show of charades to keep all the useful information that would help you to freedom safely hidden away from you, while having you look forgetful and guilty for any witnesses. It’s more likely you’ll learn something asking your neighbour who doesn’t have any stakes in keeping you uninformed.

Being treated like this for long term can make you doubt your own ability to learn, will make you worried that everyone knows more than you and ashamed for being stupid. It will not only discourage you from learning but make sure you have way less context for new knowledge you acquire; you will struggle to place new concepts without the basics and new information will feel arbitrary and irrelevant.

If you want to test if your parents are doing this, try telling them you’re reading resources for abuse; see how quick they are to either devalue or forbid it as a 'wrong and manipulative’, and likely throw a tantrum for good measure to make sure you don’t do it again. Now don’t really do it. If you could have imagined them reacting like this, then yes, they’re definitely aware they’re abusing you and ready to cover it up and isolate you from the information that would have helped you escape.

What you can do is slowly come to terms with the fact that no, you’re not stupid; nobody took the time to actually teach you. The information denied to you, is not actually intimidating and impossible to retain, it’s simply threatening to abusers, but you are capable of learning it. Once you do learn it, it will make sense they wanted to keep it away from you, in fact you will find out among the things they did tell you, there was a lot of guilt-inducing lies. You are not stupid for not knowing. You have had knowledge withheld from you, and then got gaslit into accepting responsibility for it.