I really resent my parents for labelling us as children

I grew up in the 70's.
My sister and I were always pigeonholed-she was the pretty one (blonder curly hair) and I was the smart one. (straight hair)

We laugh about it now but there is a picture of us going to a birthday party where she is in a white frilly party dress all smiles and I am in a plain navy blue dress with a white collar looking very solemn. It is very poignant.
We clearly look like we are going to different places!!
*now both of us would prefer the navy dress 😂

It is long enough ago and we are able to laugh and joke about it but it can def encourage feelings of resentment and inadequacies in young girls.

Hopefully you can reconnect with your sisters-it's not too late!!

And I assume your parents were trying to do what they thought was best for each of you individually and did not have bad intentions but were trying to do what they thought was right.
Obviously it didn't go as planned but I think they were awkwardly trying.
Parenting isn't always easy!

Honestly I think your making a mountain out of a molehill. Your parents did what they thought best, they had your best interests at heart which is way more than most people can say about their parents. You could easily meet up with you sister and have a better relationship but you have to make the effort.

Projection of personality types by parents onto children is quite common and certainly happened in my family where my mother, who had one older sister, projected her perceptions of her older sister's personality (bad) onto her elder daughter (me) and her own personality (good) onto her younger daughter (my sister). It was really quite ridiculous as I have very little in common with my maternal aunt, an extremely outgoing social butterfly. My mother made decisions for me based on what she believed (with no evidence at all bar her own projections) was my personality which needed to be controlled and punished.

I don't agree with what your parents did. They sound similar to my friend's parents (she was one of four children - they had the pretty one, the academic one, the sporty one and the artistic one and it hasn't done any of them any favours).

However, it sounds like your parents were misguided rather than cruel, abusive or neglectful. My friend and her siblings have forgiven their parents and have a close family relationship. I think you should aim for the same outcome @Tigss - with the help of therapy if necessary.

It’s hard though - kind of like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Let’s say there was a family with a Chloe Kelly, a Rosalia and a Hannah Fry. It would be a shame if they didn’t encourage their sport, music and academics.

Though of course it was wrong if they didn’t let you learn and instrument or try sport. And absolutely no excuse for labelling someone the pretty one!

Get over yourself you are an adult and need to take responsibility for your own actions and stop blaming your parents they did their best and I’m sure they loved you. No parent is perfect

I think it sounds like your parents were following the fashion of the time, which was probably in response to the previous generation who were very much considered to have been ignored as individuals by their parents and just lumped as the children. It is damaging to label children as talents etc change anyway. On the bright side, at least you seem to have been given positive labels.

This, and said kindly -get some proper perspective too OP - your childhood was alot better than others who have been seriously abused by their parents. Atleast their intentions were right and you’ve benefited from it with education and your lifestyle now. No one has a totally balanced childhood, there are always issues with the way you feel about parents and siblings. Therapy is a helpful way for you to reflect on why you really feel this way and perhaps get into some volunteering and see what real hardships others face in society, you’ll feel a lot better about your own if your grounded.

How do you know that??

Lots of people fuck up. You (like me) are a stranger on the internet - how on earth can you second guess what another stranger's intentions were from the limited (and possibly skewed) information the OP has given.

Yes, my mother & sister always teased me about “puppy fat” when looking back at photos I was clearly skinny. Stayed with me.

Yes. I sounds like they really tried to do the best they could for you. My dd has always been pretty but I never complemented her on her looks as I didn't want her to think that was where her value lay and everyone else used to remark on how pretty she was anyway. Turns out she thought she was ugly because I never said anything. Imagine how complicated it must have been to bring up virtual triplets

Definitely try therapy, it would be good to talk it through with a professional.

I get the hurt, I wasn't pigeon-holded compared to a sibling, but told as I started secondary school that I wasn't sporty/musically or artiscally-inclined. I'm not a natural in those areas, but I'd not really had much exposure to them either by 11, so on later reflection it all seemed rather unfair these areas were ruled out for me/discouraged because I had no immediate natural flair. I did discover some of them later in life.

I also recall being v angry with my parents in my late 20s. I wasn't at a happy place in my own life and stewed with resentment at all the injustices in my upbringing and the impact it had on me. We never fell out, but the these thoughts simmered away.

20 years on and being in a happier place, I look back and recognise the good in my upbringing. It wasn't perfect (whose is?) But there was no neglect, many good things and yes some not so good things... but I also recognise my parents are human, they did love us and tried their best, and they made mistakes.

We have a good relationship on the whole and while they do sometimes drive me crazy, i value that we have good bond and that they're really good grandparents to my children.

Talk it through with someone. I think many people carry resentments from their childhood and these surface especially when you're not happy in the present. It's good to process and acceot these and have a think about why they're upsetting you now.

Final thought, you're only in your late 20s, there's still plenty of opprtunity to learn new things. I'd embrace that.

You and your sisters sound like a social experiment to be perfectly honest. What did your parents study, if they were academic?
My sibling and I were always compared. We were pigeon holed. You couldn't come out of that box for the fear of disappointment. For me, it made me raise the bar, for my sibling, he lowered his. I'm now stronger, he's weaker, no surprise there. We don't act like siblings as we've always had some kind of competition going on, created by our parents, indirectly. They caused resentment between us. It's difficult to navigate now they're gone.
Thank god I only had 1 child.

Blunt, but this in essence.

I was the gifted child. My mum gushed about it every opportunity she got. In the top 1% of the UK's academic learners, always perfect scores on absolutely everything without needing to give an ounce of effort. Musically talented, a keen ear and eye for patterns.
That pressure was insurmountable, and now I am a broken burnt-out cognitive mess of a person, and I ended up dropping out in college.

You have to get over it and realise you're only seeing it from your perspective. You might need therapy, you might just be able to reconcile with it yourself over time without therapy and a lot of introspection, but you're doing yourself more misdeeds by dwelling on this than you are by not taking active steps to get over it.

I hope you are the “perfect” parent now and never make a mistake!

☝🏻

I had a friend who experienced something similar. Her parents thought she was a genius, while her sister was seen as fairly stupid. Many decades on, my friend barely has a career and her sister is successful. I don’t think my friend could ever live up to her parents’ crazy expectations.

I don’t think people should minimise what you went through. I agree you should go to therapy.

You sound so ungrateful, your parents tried their best 🤷‍♀️

Had they not bothered to encourage you I expect you’d be here moaning about how your parents didn’t care or push you to achieve your potential- they can’t win.

If you’re dissatisfied with your life that’s on you - can’t blame your parents.

My Mum did this in a very much simplified way.

I was the older, in a village school, and I was bright. Sibling followed after having my written work read to her class as examples of good work.

Mum, trying to be kind and level the playing field for younger sibling, kind of told us that I was the hard bright one, she was the soft, pretty one. As the hard bright one I was a bit of a problem. Yes I rebelled, I was 15.

guess what we took from that? I'm not pretty, sibling isn't bright.
Neither was ever true.
it gets even worse. Sibling had two children. Guess what? One was a problem one was perfect.

children of the two each had two a
Also. Each one has a perfect and a problem child according to my sibling.

generational stuff like this has a very long reach. I really don't know how you stop it happening.

I have only one child. It wasn't deliberately, but now in my mid 70s, I wonder if it was subconscious?

guess what? My child is the golden child of their generation. They are aware of thi s and they don't like it. Though they acknowledge that on some level they revel in it.

what can you do, except try your hardest not to pass it on.

You know what? You sound ungrateful. If the worst your parents did was try to support your individuality and you literally don't want to see them because of this maybe you should get some therapy about your entitlement. It sounds like you were raised in a stable home where your parents sacrificed greatly to provide for you. My mother was a mentally ill alcoholic and I still think she did the best she could. YABU

Grow up & get a grip, OP.

Do you have any understanding that some kids have genuinely awful childhoods? Neglected, abused, starved, harmed, abandoned? This stuff actually happens in real life to real children.

Your self-indulgent bleating about what sounds like a very privileged middle-class childhood with loving parents who tried to give you & your sisters everything they could is pathetic. Ok, so they put labels on you, which may not have been ideal. But, in absolute terms, so fucking what?

So essentially they tried to help you thrive in the areas they thought you excelled at. They went to work to pay for your tutors and spent their spare time ferrying you all about to extra curricular. The absolute bastards.

How on earth can you possibly know that? I think it is ridiculous to be so judgemental and so certain of your damnation of OP's parents.
I take it you are not. a parent yourself, or have not brought up any children. Parenthood teaches humility.

I went to the same school as my sister and we had absolutely nothing in common for many years. She also had very different rules, much more relaxed, which is weird since I was the well behaved one generally. I think rules should generally be consistent, but I understand variations have to happen sometimes.

No, you didn't get to try all the things, but that's really not possible. If they tried to follow your interests, as lead by you rather than imposed by them, then that'd doesn't seem unreasonable.

I sent mine to good schools but also found it important to make sure that their personalities were considered. Most of mine went to good standard kind of schools, one of mine went to a more technical school because that fit their talents and interests more than a more academic school, yet another one went to an elite performing arts school that required rigid auditions and cost us a small fortune. Believe me, we didn't do that one for us and it would have been inappropriate for us to try to send the others there.

Honestly the crux of your issue seems to be that your not close to your sisters and you appear to face built this alternate reality in your head where you and your sisters are super close and best buds. That doesn't always happen in the best of families. Are you perhaps a bit lonely at the moment which might make these feeling coming to the fore?
It sounds like your parents did what they thought for you all.