articles
China Elevator Stories
"He Sometimes Also Hits Us"
My son tells me about how his grandfather treats him and his brother.
04/08/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
My ex-husband is a rather neglectful parent, as well as quite irresponsible. He has placed our children in his father’s care from Monday to Friday on schooldays, and has not looked after them on weekends either—instead, he has left them unsupervised at his place for eight hours straight, two days a week, without being home himself. They are 8 and 11 years old, with my older son having only recently turned 11.
In the past, he used to hand our children over to his parents and wasn’t really involved, either. I imagine it must have been like this for a very long time, because they cook for themselves and do a lot of other things on their own that most children their age certainly haven’t learned to do.
Now, they are still lacking a lot of knowledge when it comes to safety, but already know how to put out one fire or another—which makes me think this is something they’ve had to do regularly. Especially my younger son knows how to put out a fire in the kitchen and has practical experience with it. If he has a normal (small) wound, he simply disinfects it and puts on a plaster by himself.
Recently, he baked a chocolate cake that looked rather… professional.
Children this age should never be left at home unsupervised while their parent is out working (or—who knows—dating yet another 18-year-old, or whatever else he considers more important than his children and their survival), showing no consideration for them at all and putting their lives at extreme risk.
I’ve been testing their safety knowledge a little at home, just to find out whether they were really as capable of keeping themselves safe as they claimed. Naturally, they weren’t! Some grown-up must have told them they were already able to do everything like adults, and that they didn’t need a grown-up to look after their safety—which, in fact, puts children at even greater risk. This grown-up… well, we all know that narcissists don’t actually care about their children. They simply want to take them away from the other parent without raising them, teaching them anything, or properly looking after them. They avoid doing any of the real, hard work because they’re usually too spoiled to do so—at least, the more severe kinds of narcissists are!
They then go on to claim that you are the one who doesn’t look after the children properly, that you don’t care about them, and so on.
Anyway, their grandfather has reportedly shouted at them and hit them regularly, as you can hear in the voice message below. I recorded it because the abuse is constantly being denied by my ex-husband, minimized as “not so bad,” and the abuser is being painted as a saint (as always). Meanwhile, the children are still being sent back to a place—and to stay with a person—they should not be around. My ex-husband did the same with his mother, who got to decide everything and was certainly abusive and unfit as a caretaker, yet he still gaslit everyone into believing otherwise. The things I saw… and the people who didn’t believe me… well, it was simply horrific to experience that so many were in denial, that no one dared to call abuse what it was, and that people continued enabling and protecting the abusers.
Here’s the recording (I changed it from video to voice only, to protect my son’s privacy; translated from Chinese into English by me):
Him (crying): “He scolds us.”
Me: “I see. Your grandfather scolds you? What does he say? If you want to go outside, he scolds you?”
Him: “No, for example he says I am not studying hard enough.”
Me: “What does he say to you in that case? Does he scold you every time, often?”
Him: “…” (I didn’t understand what he meant to say here).
Me: “But he only scolds you and doesn’t hit you, right?”
Him: “No, he sometimes also hits us.”
Me: “I see. He sometimes also hits you. Where does he hit you? On the leg, or on the hand—where does he hit you?”
Him: “Everywhere.”
Me: “Not always in the same spot. I understand.”
When we were still married, my ex-husband told me his dad had hit him frequently as a child, and we already know this kind of pattern often repeats in the next generation. That’s why I always spoke out against putting our children in his parents’ care. Naturally, he ignored this and did it anyway—as is common for people who refuse to take any accountability.
Have you ever had to deal with someone who placed your children in someone else’s care without asking for your consent?