Time to get over blaming parents

See I come at this differently. I just think people are trying to grieve their unmet needs and expectations and it is difficult. This happens to various degrees in families and I think far more families in the past were extremely dysfunctional with regards particularly to emotional expression but also physical sexual and emotional violence which are and were extremely common in families.

I have really messed up with my own kids before and while I was processing abuse from my family growing up and more recently when I raised it with family members. I was endlessly bullied by my older brothers and SA by one of them. My parents were completely emotionally detached and my mother who has issues with narcissistic traits was very clear was that her primary focus and job in life was as a wife not a mother. My father simply didn’t have the capacity to engage emotionally.

There will never ever be accountability in my family so that is what I want to do differently. Take accountability, repair and reconnect with my children whenever I fuck up. I’m human so I will fuck up many more times in my life than I already have.

@AliceMaforethought - thank you. I must admit I struggle to frame it as abuse, as I tend to think that abuse is something more severe and calculating.
I'm not sure that my mother considered the consequences of her behaviour and strangely enough I do think that she loves me, but wasn't and isn't very emotionally able. She certainly had her own share of emotional traumas in her own life, and I think she probably shut down a bit on an emotional level. I don't really bear any anger towards her now but definitely a bit of sadness that our relationship is not what I would want for me and my daughters.

And this is why - opportunity to start removing the layers of denial ( we have no choice but to adopt as children) are essential.

If one can't start the process of exploration then often they will never realise. As I say often here, no one ever ever starts a post questioning parental experience without it suggesting alot needs to be explored here.

I implore anyone here to show me a post that is only a petty reflection of upset because they didn't get bought the best designer trainers growing up? Show me.....

That is abuse. I'm so sorry you went through that. Some people think that abuse is only extreme cases like Baby P or Daniel Pelka or Victoria Climbie. That isn't the case, you were manipulated and emotionally abused.

I'm sorry but I don't agree. My parents were not abusive, but they were far enough from ideal that I have never wanted my own kids and I have no issue calling out some of their more problematic behaviour.

I think it helps to understand your past and learn from it to become a better person and a better parent, if you don't you can end up repeating the same mistakes.

It doesn't mean you have to blame or berate your parents.

I daresay my DC will have complaints about my parenting and in my 50s, I have come to an acceptance about my own parents but I still find it hard to accept that they were doing their best at all times. I can categorically state that my mother heavily contributed to me developing an eating disorder in my mid teens that lasted for almost ten years.

From my earliest memories she was what would now be termed "a feeder". Simultaneously she would make regular and constant comments about how much larger I was compared to her and my grandmother at the same age. My friends were always slimmer and prettier than me blah blah blah. At the time I felt ashamed and ugly. Looking back I was barely overweight.

I have tried to forgive and consider where she was coming from but must admit it has affected our relationship and how I view her, particularly since having my own DC. My own DDs are late teens and I have consciously never commented on their food intake or their weight/appearance.

I don't believe this comes under 'abuse' and am quite sure she wouldn't even acknowledge it should I raise it with her. She has no idea how it affected me and how hard it was to become well, both mentally and physically.

I had no idea how emotionally abusive my mum was and is. So I would have never recognised trauma or scores according to ACE at all.

The ' no contact thing' referred to here by a poster only gives me the impression of a bitterness and resentment within said poster and as a parent themselves a refusal to acknowledge ones significant failings.

If my own goes NC. I will absolutely see what may have fed it. A mismatch of needs to ability to deliver and meet many needs as a mum to them, ND challenges, very toxic influences outside.

In my situation where I have gone NC, ongoing endless emotional abuse, threats of violence, covering up and ignoring abuse in the worst ways from others, triangulation, manipulation, coersion, appalling gaslighting, emotional neglect and a veneer presented to the public of a good kind person. Absolutely hideous crazy making behaviour.

When people get upset and belittle this agonising NC decision many have to make, it automatically makes me suspicious of them, what they can't admit in themselves. Very reminiscent of the denial and gaslighting behaviour rife from toxic abusive parents tbh.

Absolutely. Hitting children was part of the punishment at school when I was there! Socially acceptable child abuse. Rape within marriage also not a crime, and domestic abuse considered not a police matter until quite recently.
I had no idea what I experienced was abuse until I was much older.

I think you're sort of right. I don't think there's any point in whinging and moaning and blaming our parents for everything - that's childish and indulgent and doesn't help anything. But I do think it is totally worth looking back on your childhood and identifying things that affected you, because if you don't you're going to carry those things into adulthood and possibly inflict them on your children without knowing it.

My parents were bad parents largely because they were totally unwilling to address anything. I didn't expect them to be perfect, but some self awareness would have gone a long way. That lack of awareness means we are pretty much unable to have a relationship at this point. They can't see that or fix it because they are unwilling to look at anything in any depth.

I won't get everything right with my kids but I will be open to them bringing up issues and talking about them. That is where the difference lies.

No one is perfect. But a person who can acknowledge their mistakes and try to learn from them is streets and streets ahead of the person who'd rather ignore things and pretend they never happened.

The thing is though that it is. One of my parents decided the addiction of the other was the source of all their problems, and never once looked at all the things they did, which were also abusive. And neither of them ever acknowledged what happened to me and my siblings. I have relatives who were there, and would still not recognise that as my experience. Abuse of children while not always intentional, was not always recognised in the 70s, 70s, 80s. And I also don’t think the trauma experienced by parents in those decades is recognised either. How you bring up children have survived a war / lost family in a war, I just don’t know.
now at least some of us can acknowledge we are not perfect parents.

But some of us DID have really difficult childhoods and if you grew up unnoticed and unloved then it's not easy to become a grounded adult with a strong sense of self worth.
Sometimes we just can't get past the blame game - it doesn't mean we enjoy playing it though.

Your view is too simplistic OP.

There are many way kids can get hurt beyond physical and mental abuse...

For example people who grew up with a parent who:

• abused alcohol or drug
• constantly cheated on their partner
• was cold/distant and so on
• had mental health issues that made it difficult for them to be present
• has extreme political views and negative views of women and the LGBTQ+ community
• don't see their kids as independent human being and try to control them...

There are so many scenarios that don't involve direct violence/sexual abuse and so on that can scar children and affect their views of life.

This is the time when our brain, emotion and how we view ourselves and the world develop so of course someone's childhood is going to affect them in adulthood.

The mind is complex and telling people to just ''get over it'' is daft. It is the same type of nonsense that people with mental health issues/depression have to hear all the time. It is not that simple or that black and white.

I really don’t think they will because all of the skills that you’ve listed can be obtained in adulthood.

They aren’t starting from a disadvantage the trauma causes to children.
I would say, I probably got about 45 before I was on an even point with my peers.
And at that point, I started to try and build the life that they had achieved by the age of 20 specifically Because of the damage that had been done to me in the first 22 years of my life.

As I already said, anyone who has suffered 9 on that ACE list has been abused. I only got 1 because I included my 80 -yr -old mum giving me maybe 2 soft whacks on my bum when tiny!

I am not at all sure that our own supposedly enlightened generation will be free of the ' no contact' thing.

Sure. But the list of ACEs was referred to in the thread. This is an objective measurement of the things that we know - from statistically valid and robust research - cause genuine childhood trauma.

If you take a look at the list of things on that list, far more of them were inflicted on a far higher proportion of children in previous generations and accepted as “normal” even by professionals such as teachers who were aware of it, whereas now they would be reported immediately and there would be police/ social services involvement.

There is a lot of denial amongst the older generation now about just how damaging the parenting of a large proportion of them was to their children, and it is disingenuous in the extreme to refuse to accept or acknowledge this and instead to try to conflate their children trying to discuss and address this issue with them, with the normal part of the process of growing up where teens/ young adults rebel/ try to differentiate/ create some emotional distance from their parents (which in loving parent/ child relationships tends to be temporary, then a closer and loving but adult relationship grows in its place).

It’s a false equivocation which is part of this pattern of behaviour of trying to pretend you are in the right no matter what, refusing to apologise, a total lack of self-reflection and, frankly, putting ego above any concern for the hurt you’ve caused to others. The self-righteousness and excuses are completely unjustified because there were plenty of good parents at that time who did not behave like this to their children: they were good parents because they weren’t so selfish and they actually loved their children and cared about them as people, rather than viewing them as obligations/ objects/ possessions, treating them much like a malfunctioning house appliance if they were unable to fulfil the parents’ demands/ wishes rather than realising that their children were people with their own personalities and emotional needs, and that simply putting a roof over their heads and food in their mouthes and not physically abusing them is not anywhere close to “great parenting”: that’s still not even meeting the basic minimum requirements.

Obviously some of us, like me, had far worse experiences where there was physical abuse as well. But there are so many elderly people around now, it seems, who are inexplicably baffled by having poor/ no relationship with their children who were terrible parents and yet are convinced that they did a great job of it when they never got anywhere above the second level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in what they provided to their children and are desperate to assert that this is equivalent to the average standard of parenting today when it clearly is not.

I can imagine a lot of children of influencers beimg quite angry when they grow up. Already seeing it.

Absolutely. Most humans spend the first 15 to 20 years of their lives, their formative years, in protective custody of their parents or parent.
These are just any old years, these are the formative years. The most important years.
This is when the personality develops, interests & skills are nurtured or not, phobias and aversions develop, most of us do a unbelievable amount of change in our first 15 to 20 years compared to almost any other time in our life no matter what happens to us. And this just happens to be the time that we spend with our parents.

So yeah, if later in life, you have a phobia, or you have an aversion, or you develop an addiction, or you have violent tendencies, or you choose to abandon your family, or you make other bad decisions, who you going to blame? Oh it must have been your parents they didn't show you enough love or they were too tough on you or they weren't tough enough on you or they played favorites or they treated you all the siblings the same or they pushed you too hard in school or they didn't push you hard enough in school or whatever....
Parents, particularly moms, you know darn well you're going to be a martyr. No matter what happens later in life, if it's bad, you're going to get blamed.
If your kid doesn't blame you, then the kids friends or a therapist will.
It's not fair. But it is common.
Nobody likes to accept the fact that they're the screw up. Nobody likes to accept the fact that their problems are a result of themselves.
Everyone prefers to have a scapegoat.

Today's children will be moaning just as vehemently about their parents failing to build up their resilience, failing to discipline them when they end up in trouble as adults, not driving them hard enough when they don't meet their potential, not being rich enough, going 50/50 on divorced parenting, choosing a useless partner, just getting divorced, putting pictures on social media, not looking after their health and getting old.
Nothing changes.

Absolutely. And it is very uncomfortable for the generations who engaged in this abuse and tried to justify it to themselves because it was so common to see their children parenting their grandchildren differently and challenging these behaviours (which often continue even when their children are adults, so it can come as quite a shock to them when their children refuse to accept it anymore once they have children of their own whom they need to protect from exposure to it).

So often rather than discussing it and acknowledging it, apologising, changing their behaviour, instead they try to blame their child for what they did; or respond with self-righteousness and try to gaslight their child by denying it all and trying to rewrite history (one of one of mine’s favourite phrases was “recollections may vary”, apparently oblivious to the fact that is was only their “recollection” which apparently varied from everyone else’s, as though this meant that objective reality didn’t exist); or paint themselves as the victim; or pretend their child is a “snowflake” and making a fuss about nothing when they try to address the issue so that it can be addressed openly and there is any chance of establishing a functional relationship moving forward, etc. Then such people seem surprised that their relationships with their family are minimal.

Of course we all make mistakes. Everyone’s fallible and will get things wrong. But there are some people who behaved truly appallingly to their children in a manner that isn’t comparable to the vast majority of parenting currently, behaviour which would very rarely be able to take place now without there being external intervention from social services. It is horrific that people who did such things don’t even have the decency to apologise and acknowledge how damaging it was.

It kind of is.

I have had years of counselling to SEE how appalling my parental experience was and still is without good boundaries and now knowing and seeing. We are often blindingly loyal and brainwashed and it can start with a little question on a forum somewhere like here to begin to realise the extent of emotional abuse many have endured.

It often starts with a small reflection on something that just feels wrong. Every post that's ' parental blame ' starts with something small. And then, if willing, the child, now adult will start looking further and start realising what they've endured. This is vital in understanding current relationship patterns and in establishing boundaries with parents who are still alive and will still be the same people capable of the same behaviour.

It's very important to inform and explore it if you are still in any relationship or contact with parents and family who are highly coercive, manipulative and excellent public performers.

So - yes. The threads you talk of are probably the start of a very important unraveling.

Never have I seen one petty post question and explore their parental experience. Not one ever.

So no, it's not time to stop. It is time to continue speaking out.

I just looked at that ACE list. Anyone who gets 9/ 10 on that list was abused. I got 1. But this thread is not about that!

IMO. Parents have an obligation and responsibility to do their best. And as long as they do I don’t think we can really hold it against them. My mother did her best, my father did the bare minimum, he made sure we had food clothes and a roof, I don’t resent my mother but I do my father because he could have and should have tried harder but he was and still is lazy and selfish when it comes to other people’s needs. His lack of compassion and care along with his harsh attitude towards me resulted in me marrying someone who was nearly identical to him without me realising it, which then led to years of me being treated badly and ending up with severe depression. So yes parents have a lot to answer for sometimes.

Same here. I have 9/10. My children have 1/10. I hope very much that’ll make a huge difference in how they perceive their childhoods as adults.

There seems to be a tendency to try to draw false equivocations and say “oh, well, all parents make mistakes” or “it’s just how things were”. But actually it is not: plenty of parents in the previous few generations did not subject their children to things on the ACE list and were very good parents.

The excuses made by many people who were abusive (particularly those who think they were amazing parents simply because they fed and housed their children adequately and didn’t physically abuse their children, while damaging them immensely in other ways) compounds the damage that the parents did because it undermines and dismisses the child (as an adult) bravely, finally speaking up about what happened (which takes huge courage) and dismisses and ridicules the impact on them. I just can’t imagine being told I’d caused such pain to my own child and my main concern not being about that and wanting to comfort them and make amends, but rather trying to find some way to spin a narrative to make myself the victim and pretend I was in the right. This denial of the reality is, as several posters have noted, a very common scenario sadly.

I think this is a really interesting thread and I don’t have time to read it all now so will return. But I agree op and think it has become culturally fashionable to over analyse our upbringing. I say this cautiously as we do need to reflect, experience and process our feelings before we move on, people can’t just move on because they choose to.

For me I thought my mum was pretty great until I had kids, and for the first 5yrs or so I found all this unexpressed childhood anger and resentment coming up. Unwantedly! But I kind of see it all as part of a natural maturation process like you say, we become parents and we start to see it through their eyes. But what we felt during the not good bits still exists. I think there’s just a growing up that has to happen where we look realistically at our experiences in a balanced way - some were shit and some were great (of course there is a whole gamut of experiences and abuse sits in here differently) - feel our feelings, accept it happened and why, and move on.

Sometimes the feelings still come up to surprise us, but we can use this to relate to our own kids and choose not to dwell and solidify a one sided version of the story. There are many ways of seeing each upbringing.