At a young age Dave had to learn how to play games with his mother as a sort of survival tactic to stay alive in his household.
Besides telling her child that she hated him and wished him dead Dave's mother put him through tremendous physical pain and abuse. From a young child till the fifth grade Dave Pelzer had been made to sleep away from the family in the basement in a small army cot. He was starved for days and days on end. His mother longed for any time to severely beat him, it made her day, she would think of morbid things all day to do to him when he got home from school. Among many other things, Dave Pelzer was; stabbed, made to drink ammonia, bleach, and dishwashing detergent, made to sit in a bathroom for hours with many chemicals creating a small gas chamber, put in freezing cold water for hours with just his nose sticking out of the tub, burnt on an open fire on the stove, and made to eat