Milhouse: My mom's got problems. Scary problems.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was struck by this line of dialogue in the Simpsons the other day, uttered by Milhouse: “I had to talk to my Mom all night. She’s got problems. Scary problems.”

I was fortunate enough not to have parents who dumped their emotional burdens on me too much. But it seems I’ve met many people who, during their childhood almost had to act as confidants, if not therapists, for their parents.

I’m just curious as to how many Dopers had that experience, how it worked out, and how you feel about it in retrospect.

2

Yeah, I played confidant and therapist to both parents from a very young age. It got worse as their relationship fell apart, and they were both telling me why the other parent sucks/ruined their life/how they cheated/etc etc. My mom will still call me up and dump on me.

I hated it then, I hate it now, and I expect I’ll continue to hate it. I once suggested that she get a therapist, but she doesn’t listen to me…

3

My mom did dump a fair bit on me but she did her best not to dump about my Dad, just the rest of her life.

My Dad still has the problem of sharing about his woman troubles. As if I know what to do! I really like my step-mom and I know the lady he still cares for and they have a on-again off-again friendship (it never evolved into anything more though it could have) and I like her a lot too.

I’d rather be friends with them myself and not listen to Dad. I’ve managed to get him to cut down on a lot of that though.

4

I am very lucky.

Considering all that my mom went through ( widowed, dying parents during my formative years, job, terrible news of son’s future) she sheilded me as much as she could from all that. Not that I didn’t notice it all, as I was front and center to most of it, yet clueless and slackjawed, much like now.

She was always scared to death to fly or boat or swim, but let me fly by myself on a plane to places to visit relatives ( for a whole summer YAY!), I would go canoeing or swimming with friends all the time. Considering it all, I had some great times as a kid ( then school would start and ruin any happy-feel-good times, but that is what education is for, to crush the spirit out of you. :slight_smile: )

The thing that blows my mind is how much baggage my mom has inheirited or been guilted into because of her previous generation and religious upbringing. Not that my grandparents weren’t cool, it was different times. My mom has never learned to let go of that baggage and say it isn’t hers to deal with or it is outdated. *It’s just the way it has always been and it cannot be changed. * Rolling with the wave of life is something my mother is not capable of doing. Chronologically speaking, having a conversation with my mother usually feels like it is in the early 1950’s with her mind set. Sometimes earlier. So, that’s always good for some mental eye rolling.
I’ve left the mental baggage at the curb that she has tried to pass on to me like a family heirloom ( guilt, guilt, more guilt, some bizarre notion about cooking and keeping a clean house and uppity sarcastic women are not ladies. :dubious: ) I plan to pass on to my children my own set of newly acquired mental baggage. And they have the rest of their lives to either get over me and my failings.
Overall, I have an incredible mom. She drives me nuts, but she’s incredible.

Now, I am her therapist, but she does she a real therapist and takes meds to help with a variety of issues. YAY for pills!

5

It took me a while to figure out that not everyone relates like this, but our family bonds by complaining. I finally realized (not until after I went away to grad school, I think) that my constant complaining was bringing people down, and stopped (and generally became a much more positive, easy-going person, I think.) Now when I go home all the complaints grate on me a little.

Apparently my family is from Venus, but I have moved to Mars and gone native.

Anyway, it didn’t start until I was in my teens, but I guess once my mom thought I was old enough to handle it, she started complaining to me about Dad a lot. She needed somebody to vent to, I guess, and I was, uh, familiar with the subject matter. I resented having to take on that burden, though, and it’s possible that it turned me against him more than he deserved. But it’s not like Dad gave his side of the story to me. He barely talks to me at all, unless he’s had about five beers.

6

My parents decided to check out of the whole adult responsibility thing and laft it all for me.

As I told my mother - There is something seriously wrong when the teenage girl in the house is doing all the housework, cooking, shopping, child rearing, going to parent teacher conferences, chasing the parents for their paychecks, making arrangements with the utilities to make sure things don’t get shut off, helping dad juggle his girlfriends and trying to keep mom functioning.

I resented it then and I resent it now. I have a great amount of distance between myself and my mother and I refuse to be in contact with my father at all. My mother still leans on me a lot but I have slowly stopped doing things for her. She’s an adult and needs to act like it.

I will not have my kids think of me like I think of my parents. They are my children - I hope to act like a mother and not a parasite!

7

I could write a book about my mom, her “sharing” of (too much) information, her abuse of guilt, and her control issues. However, I won’t, as it would sound like I am the crazy one. As a child, I wasn’t her number 1 confidant and therapist; that was my sister Brynda who did indeed become a psychologist. Go figure.

To this day, she can still guilt me by nothing more than the tone of her voice on my answering machine. She still tells me too much, like when she nudges me at the doctor’s office and nods towards the 75 year old receptionist “See her? She slept with your father.” The man has been dead for almost 9 years!

I have been very careful to (mostly) not pass this stuff on to my own kids. As a result, my kids don’t understand why my relationship with their Grandma is frequently strained. I think I’ll leave it that way, I’m fairly used to being blamed.

Thankfully, she is on meds now. To quote Shirley Ujest YAY for pills!

8

I was definitely my mom’s #1 emotional connection, not my dad. And I knew all this things she didn’t like about him and why. Lots of TMI. For a living now I do what? I’m a therapist.

No kids, though. After “raising” my mom and seeing patients all day, I’m ready for someone to take care of me for a change!

9

While it is true that parents leaning on kids can be a serious failure of parenting duties, in my experience it isn’t always negative. My mother and I had a period of about a year during my late teens where we spent a great deal of time crying on each other’s shoulders. I wasn’t her confidant–that is (and had been for the last 30 years) my father. But when things went through a real rough patch–it was one of those years where, after a while, you clench up every time the phone rings–we mourned together, and I think that doing so was healthy for both of us. Sometimes life is shitty, and it isn’t anyone’s fault and there are things that can’t really be fixed.

Two caveats: One, my mother always gave much more than she took, as far as emotional support goes, and second, my mother has six children, and one thing that I have always admired about her is that she has a truly unique relationship with each of us. None of my siblings really ever had this sort of relationship with my mother. On the other hand, there are aspects of each of those relationships that I, myself, do not really understand. Had seeing my mother weep been overly upsetting to me, I have no doubt she would never have wept in front of me, but that’s not the case, and for us, weeping together is a healthy thing.

10

My mom tried this on me once (using me as therapy).

I looked at her, took her hand and said “am I your daughter or your therapist?”

She started professional therapy the next week.

I love my mom.

11

My mother was the model of never doing this growing up. I never knew that my parents had rough financial periods,for instance, or that there was a suspected affair and near divorce until years later. If a relative was sick or dying, she’d tell me calmly and clearly, ready to be supportive of however I took it, the by the book mom thing of pushing aside her own grief to help us kids. Not the healthiest thing to deny one’s emotions, but I claim childhood innocence not realizing parents were supposed to have feelings.

Sometime in my twenties, that changed. She’d always been a very involved parent, knew where we were going, who we were hanging out with, crushing on, etc but somewhere along the line, her heavy involvement with the family meant she wasn’t spending time maintaining any adult friendships. As the older relatives have died out, and her children grew up, she not only has more free time since she’s not so much a caregiver anymore, she has no one left to girlfriend with.

She still has tons of baggage about her relationship with her mom, Grams been dead nearly five years but Mom still needs to tell me all about it. I stop her TMIing me all the time “Moooom! You’re talking about my DAD, eww!” It was getting especially bad after they retired and moved a few hundred miles away, but hooking her up online has improved things immensely.

12

It isn’t a family function without a great deal of complaining with my relatives. Growing up I was the child who was seen and not heard. I brought tea, I served dessert, I did the dishes. This whole time I could have been complaining with the rest of them, but it repulsed me, so I kept my trap shut.

My dad’s image is because of my mom, so I can sympathize with you, Podkayne. It’s tough when you don’t know what to think and you can’t hear anything except the story you’re being fed.

Going through my mom’s 3rd failing marriage at the ripe old age of 10 (it failed completely at age 12), I was the one who was dragged into the car with mom or step-dad to hear about everything. At that time I became a full time nanny-like figure for my 2 year old sister until I went away to college.

When we lived with Grandma for a while, it was worse … we were in a smaller house and a state where she didn’t know as many people thus I became default number 1. Then when mom found #4 … I got to hear about his imperfections before he even proposed. It’s amazing I let the wedding go through.

It wasn’t until I went away for my undergratuate degree did I learn I could tell my mother that I wasn’t interested, I always thought it was daughterly duty. Now I live 2 hours and 1 state away with limited calls (1-2 per month).

I love her dearly, but she controlled my life with her complaints and wishes that my life be perfect because of her imperfections.

13

As soon as I saw the OP, I knew this was the thread for me. And darned if my sister (Cub Mistress) didnt’ beat me to it.

Growing up, I was my mom’s emotional support. I would tell you when it started, but I was so young I don’t remember. I do remember being sick about half of second grade so I could stay home with her, so I know it was going on then. I also remember her asking me to fake being sick so she could sleep with me instead of my father. I knew everything that went on–the affairs, the physical abuse–everything, and even though I knew it was wrong for her to turn me into an adult, my urge to protect her and help her was much stronger than the urge to protest or to run. My sisters were older, so they could do that, but I couldn’t. After years of witnessing marital conflict, she actually told me–an 11 or 12 year old at the time–to make sure that he got the blue bankbook, but not the red one, when he left. Ok, mom, sure. I can do that. I thought things would be better when he left, but that’s when she became even more depressed, to the point of being suicidal. Lots of me pleading with her outside bathroom doors and getting in the car with her, saying “ok, then you will have to run off the road with me in the car.”

Things slowly got better. My (delayed) adolescence when I was 18 to 20 or so (on some level, I knew to wait until she was stronger) was a rough time, but then things got better. It helped that I moved away. When I was in my late twenties, I attended a Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families support group. I met a woman there whose mother had been suicidal, and that was a turning point for me. I wasn’t the only one. I also read Drama of the Gifted Child and learned the term “parentified child.” Good God, there was even a name for it. The most important turning point was a series of showdowns with my mother. She moved from “I am sorry for whatever you think I did” to “I treated you like an adult and that was wrong. I am sorry.” There was amazing healing in that.

As my sister pointed out, I am a therapist. Huge surprise. Interestingly, I rejected the idea of being a clinical psychologist at first, and got my Ph.D. in social psychology, which is an academic field that deals with normal behavior, not pathology. I wasn’t ready to be a psychotherapist. It was only after the showdowns with my mother that I retrained to do clinical work.

One of my current patients is a teenager who is a parentified child. It is really gratifying to work with her, and to help her understand what has happened to her and how to go from here.

I have thought a lot about how my childhood has affected me. Professionally and personally, it has given me a richer understanding of depression than most people have. It has also made me stronger. Anytime I encounter problems, I know I have faced worse with fewer resources. But it has also left me without that sense that every child should have of being protected. It is hard for me to trust that my husband will protect me, that I don’t have to face everything alone. I am learning, though, and that is a wonderful thing. And my mom is very stable on Paxil, which is even more wonderful.

My sister was right. This account probably makes it sound like I am the crazy one. :slight_smile: But I also know how powerful it was to me to know I was not the only one, so it is a story I tell when I can.

14

“My therapist told me I shouldn’t dump this on you, but…”

Actual quote from my mother subsequent to my parents’ marriage falling apart. And that was after a good 10 years of being the go-between, interpreter and general crutch to their relationship - which thank goodness I finally stepped out of the role of. I should have stopped earlier, but it was hard to watch them misunderstand each other constantly and not step in to mediate.

When I was 10 our family therapist told Mum and I that I’d already taken on the parent role in our relationship. Go overdeveloped sense of responsibility. I think letting go of that and putting my foot down about what I do not want to hear about from her has done a lot to make our relationship stronger, since now I don’t fear talking on the phone to her. We always got along well, but it’s just not a burden I can carry. We talk about everything else under the sun now, just not her problems with Dad.

(Funnily enough I don’t really resent being an ear and a shoulder for her other traumatic life stories - it was just being in the middle that I really really loathed.)

15

I believe my mother went too far in the other direction. She didn’t tell me enough. My mother was one of six kids, raised strict Catholic. She was the only one who ever married, and every single one of them was way beyond screwed up. I think the term “dysfunctional family” was coined for my mom’s family! Both of my mom’s parents died before I was born, so I never knew them, only what my mom told me of them. Well, to hear my mom tell it, she had an absolutely hunky-dory childhood, thankyewverymuch, and splendid parents. Well, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that splendid parents raise 6 emotionally screwed up kids (just a ferinstance, my mom thought it was perfectly okay for a man who molested me and two of my sisters, on a long-term basis, to continue living in our house). I don’t think she needed to go into exact details of what was wrong in her family, but I sure do wish I had more to go on than her repeated denial that anything had ever been wrong. Now, though, everyone who might have known anything about it is dead.

16

I often played therapist to my mom. It was AWFUL, particularly because I learned things at a young age about both my parents that I feel made me develop a strong disdain towards both of them that I’m still trying to shake off. For example, my parents had divorced when I was 2, and my mom seemed determined that my sister and I would develop a strong relationship with my dad nonetheless, which was very noble. But before we would meet with dad, she would get upset and start drinking, then she’s spill out all of her previous marital woes to me - she used to tell me how he beat her and made fun of her for being part Jewish, and that my grandfather and grandmother called her a JAP (Jewish American Princess). She told me this when I was 8, and I couldn’t stand my father for a long, long time, and while I loved my grandparents, I was kind of resentful of them, too. Also, when something bad would happen, my mom would (and still does sometimes) start hitting the bottle. Even when I was 10, I knew it was wrong and tried to get her to get help, but she never did.

Also, every time something bad would happen to me (i.e., when I fell off my bike and tore off all the skin on my face from my nose to my hairline, or when I was mugged at gunpoint a couple of times), my mom would just fall apart. I often didn’t have time to take care of myself because I was trying to shut her up and make her stop crying. I remember that time I fell off my bike, even though I had been blacked out for a while on the street, I walked myself home, my mom started shrieking, and even though I was dazed and very nauseated with half my face torn off, I was the one who had to call the ambulance because mom just wouldn’t stop crying. I was very resentful of that, and still have little patience with her if she starts crying, no matter what the cause.

17

Wow! Thanx to this thread I just appreciated and respected my father and step mother a whole lot more. They had a hard life and we were a clearly dysfunctional family, but neither unloaded their emotional problems on us kids. Hell, we didn’t even think that they might have emotional problems. My sincerest sympathy to those who have been subjected to their parent’s emotional burdens.

18

I realized I only answered part of the question. I didn’t say how I felt about my parents kinda dumping on me.

I’m glad Mom didn’t talk about Dad to me, and Dad did talk a bit about Mom but kept it to a minimum… it was his mother who dumped on my Mom to me all the time I resented Grandma more than my parents.

Dad… well I can understand him now, but when I was younger I resented him as well. I felt he was telling me too much and that I really didn’t need to know this stuff. It really put a strain on our relationship. It wasn’t until I moved out on my own and changed for the better that I was able to tell him, “Know what? Stop it. I don’t need to hear this.” Our relationship has gotten much better because of that. He still lapses but it’s usually when he really needs to talk so I let it slide. He just needs someone to listen to and it helps me to understand him better. I don’t feel guilty about telling him to cut it out though.

19

The more I hear about other people’s mothers, the more I value mine.

My parents separated when I was seven and divorced the next year. While I often heard my father make snide remarks about my mother (I thought “martyr” was a swear word until I was in my teens), she never, ever told me or my brother anything specific about him. We were well aware they weren’t friendly and that my mom was angry at him, but she never divulged anything at all inappropriate, and I realize in retrospect that she must have been biting her tongue almost in two at some times. It wasn’t until I was 40, two years after my father had died, that my mother finally told bits and pieces of some of the elements of their life together I hadn’t known about. The only thing that got her talking was sitting at a table with my brother, me, and our illegitimate sister, about whom no one knew until she was grown, looking at old photos.

My mom went through incredibly rough times, both emotional and financial, bringing up two children alone and with minimal support. She didn’t drink to excess, unload her problems on us, or withdraw, and she never gave in to the urge to make it clear to us how much better a parent she was than he. She managed to put food on the table, clothes on our backs, and keep a roof over our heads, and she let us take joy in the lavish presents our dad, who was paying almost nothing in support, would send us twice a year. When I tell her now that she was a saint, she just shrugs and says, “I just did my job.”

20

My grandma did that to my mum. (And to give an indication as to the scale of the problems, my Grandma moved countries without telling my Grandad where she was going, taking my mum and aunty with her.) My mum had to grow up pretty quickly. She vowed to never treat her children as her personal therapist, and never has.