The thread about childhood disappointments reminded me of a revelation that came to me about ten or so years ago.
For most of my adult life, I though I had a perfectly normal childhood with perfectly normal parents. I even stated this emphatically when I was in marriage counseling for my first marriage.
It wasn’t until much later that I began to realize how truly screwed up my parents really were. My mother was 20 when she had me. She is the product of two alchoholics and while she doesn’t have a drinking problem, she never showed her children any signs of affection. No hugging, kissing, or touching. My father has yet to say I love you to any of his three children as well as show any signs of physical affection. We were hit out of anger, not for punishment but to relieve mom’s frustration when we were too loud or annoyed her. No discussions occurred between my parents regarding appropriate punishment and most of the punishments were extreme. (Such as a party I had planned for months I had to cancel due to a ripped tee shirt that I mentioned in the other thread or being hit with a wooden spoon if we spilled a drink). They also permitted me to date a 24 year old man when I was 16 years old as long as he got me home by curfew. While I know people have had far worse childhoods than I had, they are usually aware when it is happening that something is amiss.
Perhaps it took me having my own children and wanting to do right by them which made me realize how strange my parents parenting was or perhaps it was talking to others about their childhoods and how nice they sounded that made me realize how my childhood wasn’t the best.
My parents are still alive and they do help me out by watching my daughter at times and although they aren’t permitted to hit her, they still over react to accidents and being disturbed.
Has anyone else had a childhood they thought was pretty normal but as they grew older, glaring parental inadequacies surfaced when you were out on your own and/or became a parent yourself?
I also just thought of another one that was pretty screwed up. My mother always told us that my younger sister was her favorite because she was the middle child as was my mother and therefore, will always be a little more special to her. That seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
I grew up with a narcissistic parent. What I perceived as “normal” was far, far from it. For example, I never had normal teenage rebellion, I was the model of the compliant and sacrificial child. It was only those “bad” kids rebelled against their parents rules and talked back and stayed out past curfew, etc. I tried to be the model child, I had no idea that not experiencing normal teenage rebellion was critical to my being able to fully separate from my mother.
I really never realized how great my parents were until I read a lot of threads here about other people’s horrible childhoods. I mean, mine was far from perfect, but my parents were doing the best they knew how to do and they loved (and still love) the hell out of me. I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity to realize that while they’re still around so I can tell them.
I guess I’m just the opposite of the OP. I had a family that looks better and better in retrospect, even though we sure didn’t seem (or feel) like the Brady Bunch at the time.
My father died when I was 9, and I often clashed with the man my mother married a few years later… but I have to admit, he was ALWAYS good to my Mom, and despite his occasionally overbearing personality, I can see now that very few people try harder to do right by everyone they know.
As it is, my Mom has 4 grown sons who all still love her and all still speak to her. That’s no small thing!
I totally understand. I grew up thinking that my mother was an exceptionally strong woman. Once she passed away I started thinking about it. She was a passive doormat that never ever stood up for herself and demanded that she be treated better. She didn’t stand up for herself so that showed us three kids that we should always out our wants and needs last to everybody else. That childhood makes me feel guilty for desiring anything at all. My dad stopped working when he was in his mid 50’s and basically pissed away his last 20 years. Neither of them valued themselves. Tough to work thru that. Did wonders for my self esteem.
I remember bragging to my friends that my dad could drink beer all day long and never get drunk, alcohol had no effect on him. I was a year out of high school when I realized I’d simply never seen him sober. He’d get up, take his coffee out to the garage or outside where we weren’t allowed to bother him, come in for lunch and crack a can of beer then. He’d drink beer till after dinner when he ‘fell asleep’ on the couch.
Now that we’re adults and I visit them where they’ve retired I know what he’s like sober - he’s an asshole.
I honestly don’t know whether I had a good childhood or a bad one. Compared to my friends’ parents who never hit their kids and who didn’t smoke, I guess I had a bad childhood. But my parents were often nice to me as well. So…I don’t know.
Parents are subject to the same human foibles as anyone else - they are human, after all. While I think it is important to learn from observations of our own parents, I do not think it is fair to have retrospective expectations of what our childhood should have been. If you are a parent now, all you can do is apply the lessons of your own chidhood to your own kids, and hope someday when they are responsible, indepedent adults they are not mocking and cursing you.
My parents both did their best for me and my brother. However, I have a lot of learnings from my dad that I apply to my own kids today. He gave me plenty of examples of what not to do as a father, but I still think he did the best he could, and I do not fault him (I do mock and curse him once in a while, tho!).
If you really thought your parents were abusive, you wouldn’t dream of leaving your own beloved child under their care just to save a few bucks on a sitter, would you?
I’ve always known that my childhood was bad, but it wasn’t until I had kids that I realized how really screwed up my parents were.
Like the time my father beat the shit out of me for giving him the wrong sized spoon for breakfast. I had no idea that most parents don’t do that to their six-year-olds.
Or when he would pick me up by the hair and shake me so violently that the skin would rip. For nothing, really. He was just having a bad day and would latch onto any excuse.
But having kids of my own made me wonder just how bad it was. Looking at my two-year-old who is learning how to say “Yeah!” To this day, there’s no way I can be that unguarded about liking something. Or when my four-year-old daughter asks me a question. None of us would ever dare ask one of our parents “What are you doing?” It was less dangerous to go play with gasoline.
Even outside of the abuse, my father’s “parenting” style was bizarre, to say the least. One day, shortly before my sister turned 16, he told her that she couldn’t have her driver’s license for as many days as she hadn’t made her bed since she turned 15. OK, but why not tell her this before starting to count so she could have a chance to change her behavior?
Every child thinks their family life. They have no real reference point.
It’s only when we go out into the world that we realize that other families are different. Those other families are just different, not necessarily, better.
I kinda know the feeling. In my mom’s case, I don’t think it was so much that she was a doormat, just that she hated conflict, and didn’t have very good skills in dealing with it. So whenever there was any sort of problem, especially with my brother (which were many; I’m pretty sure he has Asperger’s), it was always easiest for her to tell me to just let it go. The message I received was that I wasn’t worth standing up for; that his desire to tease me, hit me, whatever, was more important that my desire not to be victimized. I could give you a list of times my mother took his side. He pushed me into a window and I wound up paying for half of it. She went to her grave, and beyond, swearing that she didn’t play favorites.
This is called “Real Life”. Pull your pants up, get over yourself and get on with it.
I remember the day I first thought of my dad as a real person at my age at the time, and realized he was even more kick-ass than I had thought of him before. Knew more, did more, taught more than I ever hope to learn myself. Failings? You bet. I hardly even can recall them now.
I really hope you are wrong. By no means did I think my parents were perfect but the point is, I didn’t realize how odd their behavior was until I was an adult. I certainly hope it isn’t real life to discover your parents were mentally and physically abusive because I hope most aren’t. As far as getting on with it, there is nothing to get on with. I am still close to my parents and have to resentment towards them. They were young, had no idea what they were doing and I suspect, learned “parenting” from their parents. I was just wondering if it was a normal thing to not realize how screwed up a situation was until many years of being out of it.