Parents who are Dds of unloving DMs?

[MrsNotNice]

Hi,

Just looking for positive stories. Did anyone have an extremely unempathetic mum who made them feel rejected as a child?

If so, how did you find parenting a Dd of your own? And how is your relationship with your DM now?

I read about trans generational trauma and it freaked me out. I’m expecting a daughter and my relationship with my mother is unfortunately unemotional and so I’m quite terrified.

Looking for hope

I had a pretty horrific mother. I don’t have contact with her anymore.

I have DD’s and we are very close, I was/am very expressive in telling my girls I love them and they still come to me for cuddles, they’re mid and late teens.

My mother did one thing for me, she showed me how not to parent.

This probably describes me. I don't have human children, and my relationship with DM as an adult is reasonably cordial if a bit distant, so long as we stay off the subject of Brexit.

I had similar worries OP.

I surprised myself massively and love my DC more than I thought possible. I feel no desire to spend time away from him. I so much more comfortable than I thought that I would be.

I’m not sure whether I necessarily ‘learned’ from her mistakes or whether I realised that I’m not her basically!

I have a son and I’m extremely loving towards him. My DM never had problems expressing love and affection to my boy siblings.

It’s just me, she had projection issues with.

And now I’m pregnant with a girl and I’m terrified.

I need to convince myself I’m not her..

She was a great mum to my siblings in many ways just not me. I was the black sheep, and the only girl. Who looks exactly like her

Like a PP, my mother taught me how not to parent, I have a very close relationship with my adult daughter and am NC with my mother

My mother did one thing for me, she showed me how not to parent.

👆🏼 This sums it up for me perfectly. My mother was a nasty piece of work. Still is. Always swore I wouldn't turn out like her, as a mother or a person. I'm very close with my 17yo DD and we talk about stuff my mother wouldn't have tolerated.

I'm 100% nc with my 'D'M.

I was the same, I had a son first and was terrified of having a daughter, my mother is a great mother to my brothers but was awful to me. I was so scared I would be my mother. I'm not. I'm very close to my daughter, it has never been an issue at all.

I see my mother because we go visit my Dad but we don't and never will have a relationship.

You are not your mother. Remember that !

My mum put her volatile relationship with my father before me and my sibling. She never said she loved us, never cuddled us and both parents were what would be described as emotionally unavailable. She became nosy to find out details of my life once I was an older teen and adult but then used things against me. As a mother, she was pretty shit and I don't see her anymore.

I now have a son, 15 and a daughter, 10 and have a really close relationship with both of them. They both know they can come to me and their dad with anything at all. I'm a very different person to my mum, I talk about my feelings and encourage my kids to do the same.

Again, you are not your mum.

If you work on the basis of doing the opposite of how she "mothered" you, then you shouldn't go too far wrong, it's worked well for my daughters, and they were teenagers before the scales fell from my eyes and I realised what a strange, controlled childhood I had had compared to my friends

I learnt how NOT to be a mother!

Oddly enough though, my Mum is incredibly affectionate & loving to my DD!? Though she is only 4 so it may change as she gets older.

I'm the adult DD (30s) of a DM (50s) where my DGM (70s) is/was a narcissist/unempathetic.

My own DM is awesome and we are very close.

Trauma doesn't have to pass on through generations and the fact that you are self aware enough to even post this is a pretty good sign

My mother was a great role model for me.....I knew that whatever she did, I'd do the opposite and I'd be fine. She had three daughters and was horrible to all of us, cut us off at the knees, undermined our self-confidence, never showed any love.

When I had my DD, I knew just how to mother her - do the opposite of what my mother did. I loved my girl, always had her back, acted as her cheer squad through thick and thin. She is now an adult and we're as close as two women can be. We adore each other and are not afraid to show it. She lives 1,000km away now but distance doesn't hurt us.

Don't worry about having a daughter - it's the best thing in the world !

Op, I had and still have the same worries as you. I went through years of therapy to come to terms with my relationship with the Witch who birthed me before I had my DD and since, because I'm terrified of becoming the Witch without realising. It didn't help that I had a difficult labour and birthwith my DD, and I didn't have that rush of love that other mums talk about.
I still have to make a very conscious effort sometimes to reject my learned behaviour when interacting with my DD, take a breath and think again, but we have a very loving, open, fair relationship as much as possible.

One of my therapists once told me that in our efforts to not become the person we despise, we have to be wary of not trying too hard because we could burn ourselves out and accidentally display the behaviours anyway.

I'm very recently NC with my own Witch and also quite afraid of what that means for me and my family. You are more than welcome to DM chat with me if you want, it's such an anxious time x

My mother is and was awful. She is a completely self absorbed abusive narcissistic bitch. We are NC.

My DD and I are very close. I adore the bones of her.

My mother taught me on very special thing-how not to parent, so every cloud and all that!

I had a distant mum and now I have a distant teen DD However we were warm and loving until recently and I make sure to try to be emotionally and practically there for her, if she wants me, so I'm just trusting it's a teenage thing and hopefully we will be close again in the future.

Trust that once you accept that it's up to you what happens next you'll be fine.
Once you see that little face you'll know that you can't do anything but adore her.
We aren't our past but we need to be aware of it to keep ourselves in check.
Congratulations

My mother is horrible and I've been NC for 20 years

My dd is a teen and a gem. I mention her age as it's an age when things are often difficult. We're very close although when she was born I was very concerned that history would repeat itself.

The wheel has totally been reinvented and I'd attribute NC with my mum as a major reason for that.

i agree with pp’s, just bear in mind the ways she treated you that you found hard and do the opposite. Just be kind. You are not your mother.

I always worried I wouldn’t be good enough for my children, but I think I’ve done ok so far.

As other posters say you are not your mother.

My mum is the not maternal at all - I often wander why she had children! But I accept & try to understand that she in turn had a hard upbringing and armed with that knowledge I’m more forgiving than most people maybe.
I’m the opposite to my children- no idea if I’m getting it right but I try!

My 'D'M decided she didn't want to look after me anymore when I was 4. I moved in with DF. Didn't see her for a year, then did EOW until I was about 15.

Our relationship is ok now. I have quite a few siblings so am definitely somewhere near the bottom in terms of favourites.
I still have some resentment but it made me determined to be a good mom. I want to be the mother I never had and I adore DD so hopefully things will be different for us.

I bought a book. Honestly. I bought a book called Positive Parenting because it sounded kind and focused on the child and gets rid of all power play between parent and child so that life becomes fair and fun. And I just stuck religiously to its teaching until it became second nature. My DC and I have a very loving, trusting, safe bond that has nothing to do with how I was raised (except I do acknowledge the bits of my childhood that were good and replicate some of those, as that too is a positive act.)

Your mother sounds like mine!

I'm not going to lie sometimes when I talk to my children I hear my mothers voice in what I say. I pretty quickly changed how I say things because it makes me feel physically ill to sound like her.

I have no contact with my mum. But I have the best relationship with my DD's.

Everyone has said pretty much what I came her to say: my mother didn't know how to love me very well because she had a very damaged childhood herself, but I seem to be doing OK with DD who is now almost 13.

But one thing to be aware of is that parenting your own daughter will bring up emotions from your own childhood as well (I had PND and some of that, I am fairly sure, was from the return f abandonment and misery from when I was a baby). So counselling is a good thing, and I have dipped in and out of it a few times, and then again when my mother died. And it's not a failure, it's a way of making you a better mother.

I've always been careful not to make the same mistakes my parents made with me. I may have made my own - but not theirs!

As a previous poster succinctly said, my mother also showed me how not to parent. I was an only child and so bore the brunt of all her disappointment.
She came from an emotionally unavailable mother herself and I just don’t think had the emotional intelligence to see how damaging that had been to her. At least that’s what I like to believe otherwise it means she’s a hateful old cow who did it just because she could.

I love my DD more with every passing year. She was my first and when she was small she was such a daddy’s girl that I did worry we would never be close. As she grew up I realised she is nothing like me, we are complete opposites, I made sure I respected her for that.
I praised her individuality, I was there if she needed to confide in me, I set boundaries that I knew were for her own safety and most importantly, I love her unconditionally.
The best piece of advice I would give is, don't try to mould your daughter to be how you think she should be.
Let her be herself and love her for that.