Longing to be "normal" or have a "normal" home... as a kid, or maybe even now

In My Humble Opinion
42

“Normal” is a range of behaviours. Basically, if you were to organize any given aspect into a bell curve, “normal” is the stuff in the middle. It also varies by culture.

I think your experiences mean that you’re not typical, but I don’t think I’d call it abnormal.

When I look at my childhood, I think the circumstances were pretty normal, if less than ideal, but the level of dysfunction was abnormal. And some things I think are normal for one culture, but slip into abnormal: traits such as being super high-maintance served to make poor mountain villagers in nineteenth-century Europe a tight, cohesive group, but are a lot less functional today.

But basically, I judge it by how hard I’ve had to work, and how much therapy I’ve had to have, to be a functional adult.

43

There’s no textbook definition of normal that would satisfy everyone.

But in my case (as I may have said in my OP), when I walked into a friend’s home as a kid, I knew when I was in a normal home v. when I walked into a home that was like mine. My home had a darkness, an atmosphere of tension, there was no heart at the center of it. There wasn’t a firm foundation of belonging and safety. I wasn’t physically abused but I didn’t feel emotionally safe.

In the homes of some of my friends, there was clarity, safety, lightness, ease. Things felt ordinary. You could get through dinner or an evening of watching TV without hateful words, barbs, sarcasm, tears, doors slamming. I know normal families fight and argue, but I’m talking about something darker and more sinister.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, good for you-- I envy you.

44

I have always been a bit jealous of people who grew up in a loving family, financially stable, grew up with friends from kindergarten to high school.

I did not have any of that. So I’m a bit of a cynical loner. I don’t understand people who smile all the time. I don’t understand people who don’t worry about retirement or finances. Happiness eludes me.

45

I think we use “normal” as simple shorthand for either “not blatantly dysfunctional” or “not too different from the folks in our surroundings”.

Obviously, what is normal is subjective and there is actually no standard for it. And normalcy can also take on a negative aspect in the sense of conformism. OTOH, there are also certain standards we may want to “normalize” in situations such as family in the sense that there are certain standards of decency, courtesy and care that we expect of people around us and would like to have a right to expect of them.

46

I know exactly what you mean. I could tell if my dad had a bad day by the he drove down the driveway and when he slammed the car door. So could the dog. Always wondering when you made conversation how would it be received. Then the arguing to 3 or 4 in the morning. Screaming, doors slamming, crying and if you were lucky he would leave and mayo you could get a little sleep before school.

It was a relief when they separated. Lonely but quiet.

47

Most of the time best not to try to make conversation. The thing about my father was that you could be going along having what you thought was a fairly normal, pleasant, benign conversation and something would trigger him-- like driving into a hidden pothole on a country road in the dark.

My father was an angry man. He felt that life had cheated him, and maybe it had. I think if he had been married to a different woman, a mature, loving, grounded person, he could have been fairly happy and functional. I used to wish they would get divorced and he would marry an ordinary “normal” person. My mother was the dark force in the home and there was no way those two could possibly create a safe, emotionally secure home together.

My mother had some very dark stuff way in her past that she would never talk about. I suspect she was sexually molested as a very little girl either by her older brother (who was a repulsive letch well into his 80s) or someone else. She had an aunt who was a nun, and Mama had considered entering the convent when something derailed that. It would have been a good life for her in those simple, pre-Vatican II days-- carefully structured days, lots of routine, supported and cared for in a women-only community.

Anyhoo, both parents are gone now-- my father in 1989 at 64 and Mama in 2018 at 93. I believe in a wholly benevolent afterlife of some kind and I assure myself that they are finally at peace.

I really appreciate everyone sharing their stories.

48

reading everyone’s stories, and the replies to my question has helped me a little. Thanks everyone for sharing.

Thelma, your bit that I quoted made me realize that my house and family were that family when I was a kid. I didn’t understand it then even though it helped form the structure of my home life today, but now I sorta do. We were that family, deliberately, for some of my older siblings friends and some of mine too. A sort of place they “could go to breathe” as my mom would say.

I guess that’s part of what spurred my interest in this thread as well

49

Bless your mom. :slightly_smiling_face: I wonder how she knew. Had her childhood home life been rocky?

50

No, she and my uncle never once indicated anything other than a happy home life growing up. There was never anything they weren’t willing to talk about(but otoh how would I know?) My Grandparents were never mean or creepy or anything.

Strong sense of what a family should be like? Higher level of empathy? A little of both I think. My mom is the lady at the check out stand who will compliment you on something you’re wearing and have a small convo while getting through the line, she never shied away from asking questions if something didn’t seem right, so I’m sure thats part of it.

51

ETA Maybe thats part of why I asked also, I grew up in a happy family, but saw so so many around me who weren’t. But that stuff was only just beginning to be talked about and viewed differently, not as “just how it is” in the 70s. My part of the world was a sub rosa hell for a lot of people, I now realize looking back.

52

In my 50s I became good friends with one of my high school teachers (I graduated in 1966), a nun. I asked her once, “Didn’t it seem to you that there was something not quite right about my home life?” She said, frankly-- and she herself had come from a troubled family-- “Yes, we teachers did, but back in those days, we didn’t get into students’ personal lives unless we thought there was serious abuse.” My home wasn’t abusive, just emotionally bereft.

I think your mother’s curiosity and drive to ask questions stood her in good stead. I have always thought that my curiosity was one of my strongest drives and that may have been my ticket to a better emotional life once I left home. That and decades of therapy (that I paid for myself-- never had insurance that would cover it).

I don’t know your mom, but I really like her!

53

Okay, I finally have a few hours to spare, so I’m going to tell a couple of stories that I’ve never shared on SDMB, and don’t often tell in meatspace. People tend to get judgey unless they know all the details, and it’s upsetting to tell all the details. Also, a disclaimer: Those of you who have been sexually abused, those who’ve had a death in the family: peace. I am not comparing myself to you. I know I could never understand what you’ve been through. But what happened to me was not something that happens to every kid; it was not just part of growing up.

I’ll start with the Akron visit. This was my dad’s side of the family, mostly his cousins, and as I said upthread, there were very few people even close to my age on that side. I didn’t belong to a generation as such; I was simply a stray kid surrounded by adults middle-aged and older.

So, 1981 and I’m eleven. My dad’s mom decides she wants to visit the Akron cousins for the Fourth of July. She also wants my dad to drive her. He doesn’t want to go, but he can’t stand up to his mother. My mom doesn’t want to go, but she can’t stand up to her husband. I didn’t see anything wrong with my going; I was aware to some extent of this friction, but I figured things would settle down once we got there. Besides, I had so few chances to be with family. The last time I’d been to Akron for the 4th, I had been six years old, and there were just enough other minor children for me to have a good time and be social. So now that we were all older, this would be even more fun, right?

So we got there, and my dad settled in talking with the men. My mom settled in drinking and talking with the women. Grammy settled in talking with the other old folks. And I…did not settle in. Dunno what happened to Robbie and Lisa and the blonde girl whose name I forget. Maybe summer camp? At any rate, no one there was under 30; in fact, only a few were under 50.

Well, but that didn’t have to be the end of the world. I knew from reading books that it’s good to get to know older relatives. So I’m not going to be the kind of brat who says “Ew, old people; I hate it here.” I went in with a good attitude, and I barely got civility. From the moment I got there, it was almost the silent treatment. Almost, because you have to speak to someone to tell them to shut up or go somewhere else.

It was mostly what we now call micro-aggressions, but two incidents stand out. First, on the day before the holiday, my mom brought me along on a last-minute grocery/supplies run. The shopping center also had a McDonald’s, and I about swallowed my tongue when she bought me a burger and fries (no value meals yet, IIRC). She’d been pretty much ignoring me along with everyone else, and now she was not only acknowledging my existence, but letting me have junk food? Maybe things are turning around!

Not quite. I had to eat my McD’s in the car, which I think did not go over too well with the other women. Valerie was in the back seat with me; she was a cousin, a few years older than my oldest sister. Out of nowhere, she chirps to me, “You have a really nice mother!” Well, I don’t know or like where this is going, so I keep eating my fries. Valerie continues, “She takes you everywhere with you…buys you anything you want…You’re really lucky!”

I still don’t answer, because I could never have withstood the consequences of saying “I was dragged here, and if I got everything I want, I would be somewhere else, where I might be welcome. And as far as my getting anything I want, gimme a break.” So I just keep eating, and she trails off. Of course, my mom says nothing.

And the second incident. Oh, should have mentioned that we were not just there for the weekend. I’m sure it was more than a week, maybe ten days, and perhaps the reason my dad was so reluctant to go was because this was his entire vacation time for the year. Anyway, it was after the fourth, and I was sitting in a lawn chair, near my mom and I forget who else. Lenny C, one of my dad’s cousins, is spitting in the grass. Repeatedly, and with a lot of spray, some of which gets on me. I ask him politely if he’d mind stopping (if there is anything polite about a child asking an adult to do or not do something). “…Because I don’t like it.”

“Well, isn’t that just too bad about you.” ::hock::phooey::: And of course, my mom says nothing.

So finally we get home, and a day or two later, I ask my mom why I had to go if no one wanted me there. She gets all indignant because, of course, she didn’t want to go and dad didn’t want to go, so what was I complaining about…

Years later, my sister (the middle daughter) and I figured it out. “They are all so gossipy!” she said. “They had you pegged as a spoiled brat just because you were the youngest and then the only, and that must have spread all the way to Akron. So everything you said or did was seen through that filter.” Gadzooks, that’s right. I forgot to mention above that both my sisters were permanently out of the house by the time I was five. And when my sister said that, I remembered all the times people had said to me, “Your parents must be spoiiiiiiiling you!..You must have your parents wrapped around your little finger!” I mean, how does a five- or six-year old respond to that? At that age, I would not have dared to contradict an adult, so I could hardly defend myself, and anyway, how would I have known if I was spoiled or not?

But that was the generation that reviled only-children. And I’m sure many of them would have given anything to have their own room, and not have to share, and so forth. Never occurred to them that I would have given anything to have someone to share with. Beyond that, though, WTF? I know a lot of people who have one child, in fact, I don’t think I know anyone with more than two, and I can’t imagine talking to any of these kids the way adults talked to me. Much less badgering them about their onliness.

And there could have been other factors. Most of these people had lived through the Depression and at least one of the world wars, so it may also have been hard for them to imagine anyone who had plenty to eat and wear being unhappy. And I was what used to be called an “early bloomer”; maybe I was giving some of the men uncomfortable Humbert Humbert thoughts. And someone could have been mad at one or both of my parents, or my grandmother, and taking it out on me. What easier target is there than a kid who wants to be good? And as far as being mad at Grammy, maybe they were. Again, I swear we got there days before the 4th, and didn’t leave until at least two days later. No one dares to tell the head of the family (her) it’s time for her to move on, so you tell the meek little girl to move on, and hopefully that’ll start the ball rolling.

I mean, okay, they didn’t want a kid at their party. Maybe there was a miscommunication; the Akron people didn’t ask if I was coming; my parents didn’t ask if it was okay to bring me. Still, this was not indifference, it was hostility. I wasn’t asking to join the bridge foursome; I wasn’t asking anyone to watch the Brady Bunch with me. But they could have at least made me feel welcome. (I’m fairly certain that Lenny, the spitting guy, was hoping that if he was mean enough, I would run crying to my parents, who would then, since they spoiled me so bad, have whisked me away to Disney World.)

The only excuse I can think of for my parents ignoring me was that they wanted to send the message “See, we don’t spoil her with too much attention; we don’t give her any attention! Yay for raising kids right!” But I think it sent a worse message: that I was such a piece of work, my own parents couldn’t stand me.

See, if my parents had known ahead of time that no one else was bringing their kid/s, they could have advised me to bring books and craft projects. Or better yet, make other arrangements. There were people I could have stayed with in town who would have been happy to host me. And at the very least, one or both of them could have said to me, “I know this is not a great time for you, but you’re a good kid and we never meant for you to be isolated like this.” And then leave the morning of the 5th; if Grammy wants to stay, tell her to get a ride with someone else. But they both loved being miserable.

Anyway, sorry for the long ramble. I know it’s not as bad as what some people have been through. But it was very hurtful; not the worst kind of hurt, but bad enough. And just unusual enough that I had no examples to follow. In books, someone always reaches out to the lonely, rejected kid.

54

As an only child, I can relate to this. People assume I was spoiled, when in fact I was barely noticed.

Would they have been capable of such sensitive insight? Mine certainly wouldn’t have.

Thanks for telling your story.

55

They were sometimes. My mom more so, but they were both capable of it. See, there were about five good years with my parents, from about '76 through '80. Then things started falling apart in ways that were not immediately apparent to me. There’s a much worse story from '83, but it takes even longer to tell, and I won’t be up to it for a while. Would anyone mind if I bumped this thread the week after next?

And FTR, things were not always this way with my dad’s family either. There had been plenty of times when I had felt welcome and like part of the family. That’s part of why this hit so hard: I had zero idea why they were being like this, and kept thinking it must have been something I’d done. I didn’t know then what these people were really like: passive-aggressive (Lenny used to walk his dog past the house of a guy he didn’t like and let the dog piss all over the lawn and ruin it), benignly bigoted (same silent treatment given to the First Black Family in the subdivision. And don’t ask how they felt about people of the Jewish faith), mostly self-employed (so they didn’t have a boss or co-workers, just people who worked for them), and generally small-minded (gossip, golf and soap operas were the main topics of conversation).

And yes, that sounds like the kind of people I didn’t need to cultivate. But I had no choice, and I was trying to make the best of things. Took me a long time to make the connection that trying to be friendly and pleasant was, in their eyes, bratty behavior. So I stopped trying to be friendly, and then I was a sulky brat. Man, they really were a bunch of assholes. But they’re all dead now…

56

More likely it was something your parents did, and the passive-aggressive way to deal with it was to treat you like crap.

[Aside: my Swype autocorrect turned “crap” into “Grail.” Soon to be a new Dan Brown novel.]

Probably seen as “uppity, too big for your britches.”

That helps.

No prob. People have been known to bump threads years later.

57

Rilchiam, I very much appreciated your post. I had the same situation (only child, nobody within 20 years of my age in either direction, b. 1971) and I used to look so forward to visits to family in the Midwest. I didn’t have nearly as bad an experience as you did, but when I reconnected with extended family as an adult for practical reasons, it was a shock to find out how little they all thought of me—some just didn’t care, some envied me, and some just really hated me, mostly filtered through what they thought of my parents and where I grew up. (A couple of people made up for it, mostly aunts who had married into the family, though only one is still around.)

My psychologist has pointed out that the name for what I went through as a kid is neglect—specifically, emotional neglect. I had food, water, and education, but was pretty much left on my own, or as a fifth wheel, the rest of the time. We were bussed (bused?) across town to school, so no school friends in the neighbourhood. As you said, it’s not in the same category as sexual abuse or some of the most horrific things people do to children, but it does a number on you all the same.

58

My parents got married way too young, in 1950, because, woo-hoo, free legal sex! I came along and ruined all their fun exactly one year later. My mother loathed being a housewife and mother (had 2 more kids, boys) - she felt ‘tied down’. Her best friend was a ‘career girl’, very glamorous, who came to visit and tell my drooling mother about her rich friends and exploits. My mother spent much of her time smoking and yakking endlessly on the phone. My father never spoke a word to me, I lived in terror of him. Both parents ignored and resented me. My grandmother took me to her house on weekends and summer vacations. I spent as much time as I could with other relatives in the neighborhood, remember having to run home at night full of sadness and dread to my cold glum house. I was also bullied in school. I was slapped, neglected, and called names when I started dating boys. They were afraid I would get knocked up. It was awful. I am possibly on the autism spectrum and I know I am not ‘normal’ myself, so that might have something to do with how they treated me - back then, such things were a mystery.

59

I think your post is completely relevant to this thread and that your complaint against your parents and the other members of your family is completely valid, and that there is no need for you to apologize for posting about something that is not an example of extreme maltreatment. I would hope the readers of this board would be progressive and intelligent enough to generally agree with me.

I happen to disagree with the idea that children owe their parents, or other elders, deferential treatment or that, as long as they don’t subject you to the most blatant abuse or neglect, you have no grounds to complain against your parents. Your being young and dependent is something you can’t help. In fact, it’s your parents’ doing. If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander. If adults can expect you to be respectful to them, you should damn well have the right to expect respect from them, and to complain if you’re not happy about something. In my not so humble opinion, you were, for example, as justified in asking Lenny to stop spitting as you would have if you were an adult; the adults were generally bigotted against you for assuming that you were spoiled as an only child and treating you disparagingly as a result; your mother was acting like an asshole toward you for not having respect for your feelings and honest questions. The adults that raised me never managed to brainwash me to believe that I owed them respect even if they didn’t respect me, or that I owed them any kind of respect they didn’t owe me…and believe me, they tried.

But I can imagine that you must have had to put up with negative opinions on other forums by bigotted people who believe in automatically “respecting your elders” and who don’t want to recognize people’s legitimate complaints against parents and other adults who somehow slighted them while they were children. It’s not okay to “sometimes” be unkind to children. You should feel the same need to respect a child as you do to respect another adult.

60

themapleleaf, thank you for your kind words.

Actually, no; no one’s tried that on me. What I’ve learned is that it’s hard to find a receptive audience for these stories. People who did have a “normal” upbringing, in the sense of parents who were caring and reasonable, can’t quite grasp something like the Akron story. “Well, maybe you were acting up…Maybe they were tired…Maybe they just thought, kids are kids and adults are adults…” Then there are the people who were, or claim to have been, openly rebellious as kids. “Oh, I woulda told them all to fuck themselves, and then broken every ornament on my way out the door!” And people who have had a truly life-changing event like a death, or who have experienced something that was clearly illegal, like sexual abuse, tended to wait me out, then roll their eyes and sigh, “I wish that was the worst thing that ever happened to me!”

So I just don’t talk about this stuff much. I did get into it once with another poster in the Pit, about my mom and much older sister expecting me to be BFFs with them in my twenties, after they’d shunned me so bad as a tween. “Since time immemorial, older sisters have been bossing and bullying their younger sisters!” she declared. (Sounded to me like she was an older sister herself, and her younger sibling/s might see it differently.) But I learned two things from that: first, that it says something about my mom and sister, that my description of them sounded like two teenagers, when in fact they were late twenties and early fifties.

And the second thing was, a few years after that when I was talking to a housemate about our pasts, I knew how to disclaim my story. “What I’m about to describe was not just Part of Growing Up. PoGU is when you’re eleven and your sister is thirteen and she doesn’t want to play Barbies with you any more, because she wants to go to the mall and hang out with other seventh-graders. Or when you’re seven and your ten- and twelve-year-old siblings are gonna ride their bikes to some cool place, and you can’t go with them because a) you’re not allowed on or across the main road and b) you have one of those kiddie bikes that couldn’t keep up with them anyway. But if it’s any consolation, in a year, the oldest will be a teenager and s/he won’t want anything to do with either of you.” That got a chuckle from him, and after that, he listened and was appalled.

Anyway, thank you again for listening to me. And another thing I kept forgetting to mention is that Akron is when I first learned that “bored” and “lonely” have a lot of overlap. I mean, there was fuck all for me to do, except maybe watch TV if someone didn’t come in and announce, “TV rots your brain; go outside.” I brought nothing with me; there were very few books and none that interested me; any play equipment someone’s now-grown children had used was long gone, and there were no appropriately-aged kids in the community. And really, the people accusing me of being spoiled weren’t thinking it through. If they were so determined to “cure” me, why not give me some work to do?

So yeah, I don’t believe in mocking kids for claiming to be bored. A lot of times, they mean they’re lonely. It’s not much use telling them to find something to do if they’re still going to be alone.