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While How I Met Your Mother is poking a bit of fun at Robin for her less than substantial childhood by dramatizing a lot of the details and making the whole deal into a comedic situation, Robin’s dad was still quite emotionally abusive. Child Welfare describes emotional abuse as “Emotional or psychological child abuse is a pattern of behavior that impairs a child's emotional development or sense of self-worth. This may include constant criticism, threats, or rejection, as well as withholding love, support, or guidance” (Child). It is talked about in another episode that Robin’s father was hoping for a boy and was disappointed, to say the least, that he got the opposite. Instead of coping in a healthy manner with the fact that he was given a daughter, he decided to force her into being something, or someone, she is not. Robin’s father never let her be herself, and the audience sees this, not just by him making her do what his vision of a “manly activity” is, this is also shown through small things such as her hair and her clothes, which, by some standards, are masculine. Robin’s father is essentially tearing Robin down by not letting her be who she is. Her father not letting her be feminine, as she was born to be, could have had a severe mental toll on her, more than what the audience sees as Robin is an adult, but as a child as well. With her father raising her as a boy, Robin could have well thought that her being, her gender, was a mistake, and whether verbally or nonverbally, Robin’s father essentially enforces that ideation. While the scene in itself was supposed to be comedic, the actual situation could have caused a lot more trauma to Robin than the show let on.