I'm 34 and only coming to realize in the last couple months that my childhood was not normal.

I'd say the overall theme of my relationship with my parents as a kid was their attitude of "you are not up to our standards so we are going to mentally and physically abuse you until you are" of course it didn't help

I always felt like "I'm not meeting their standards so I totally deserve this" and was jealous of my friends whose parents were totally understanding of their children's faults and saw their mistakes as a learning experiences rather than a "gotcha" moment, it was so perplexing to see my friends living basically the same life as me and be accepted by their parents where mine were not, but I still felt like i must be doing something wrong that my friends weren't.

I think I did know deep down that my childhood wasn't fair, but I thought it was justified because "hey, I'm 12 and I'm not that 12 year old that was on TV for getting early acceptance to Harvard so i could be doing better..."