Actually, I really do mind mothers of adult children being portrayed as complete idiots

[springydaff]

So many threads that portray mothers of adult children as needing discipline to behave, as though they are complete moronic idiots.

If my child ever felt the need to have a word with me about my behaviour I would be fucking mortified and clearly in the wrong

What, really? I always expect my DC to have the same potential to be U as myself or anyone else. Whose your kid? The new friggin Messiah?!

Grumpy that's true. Women are judged so much harder than men, even by ourselves it would seem .

There was no reason for my comment to be deleted.

I said IF the op has been cut off it’s because of her own behaviour. And nobody gets a free pass because she’s a mother.

What about that is against talk guidelines?

I understand you, Springydaffs, I have had a tricky relationship with my Mum for most of my life BUT, she kept going, she didn't leave us, did her best always - even if her choices weren't always in our best interests - or hers.

As I get older, I feel more accepting and at peace with who she is and how she got there. She's my Mum and that's that. I wouldn't want any other.

I read threads from 'perfect parents' here and feel irritated. I doubt that many are true but the fact that there's so much of a need to compare and 'be better than everybody else' is utterly draining. I too think that those parents will be bewildered in later years when their own children give their feedback.

It's not a race, not a competition and judging other people who are doing their best is pointless.

OhCaptain I didn't see your comment but your follow up comment wasn't nice so I imagine your previous one was worse?

Lets hope you don't get judged as harshly by your children as you judge other posters.

If I act the way to my children as my parents have acted towards me and my children then I would fully deserve being cut off of their lives.

Who did I judge harshly?

The OP has spent pages ambiguously posting accusations of “perfect” parenting when nobody has claimed any such thing.

No reason given for the thread. No reason given for why she minds if complete strangers act a certain way toward their mothers, regardless of reason or circumstance.

It was this,OhCaptain:
IF the op has been cut off it’s because of her own behaviour

Sometimes that's true but sometimes not. I thought it was a harsh judgement of the OP who is clearly upset.

I'm not in a rattled state at the moment but i see an awful lot of perfect parent threads with the poster's main objective being to slap down other mothers. There are a lot of those on this site.

But lying, the OP used a quote from another poster on another thread, who was speaking of her own experiences as she’s entitled to, to start this thread and start bashing people.

THAT is not ok. It’s not even allowed.

I can see what the op means.Parents can only do what they can do.

Im not talking abuse.Just everyday normal things.

Parents on here seem to think they are doing everything right.But everyone fucks up.Sometimes monumentally.

Like all these threads about not letting kids walk home from school,go to a friends house.Or get the bus in to town.Kids need that.
It builds their character.

You dont let yourkids do that,of course they will resent you.

Then there are all the mil threads here,you have to do exactly as your told by dil.Otherwise you dont get to see gc.And its something silly like not letting them nap,or letting nap too long.

My parents were abusive by default. We could be too.

What does that even mean? Abusive by default? Your posts read as though you believe that parents who love and care for their children, feed them well, provide a safe home for them, speak to them kindly and do not physically, sexually or emotionally damage them might some day in the future find that actually that was abusive.

It's as though you think that competent, loving, supportive parents might somehow inadvertently and through no fault of their own be abusing their children. This just isn't true, and sounds like a way of you absolving bad parents of responsibility and justifying them expecting their adult children to brush their miserable childhoods under the carpet on the grounds that it's apparently not their place to criticise their mothers.

we all as mothers can screw up bring our children up. we don't get an instruction manual with the baby ,we learn as we go along.
but there are little minor screw ups that we beat ourselves up with for ,feeling guilt even though it couldn't be helped
and then there's the big major screw ups. the ones that fuck you up mentally and you know your life would of turned out different if your mother had made a different decision
them screw ups are not easy to forgive and move on

I had a perfectly decent mother and myself have a very good relationship with my adult daughter. I also had a very lovely MIL whom my dh remembers with great affection.

But tbh I don't think that means the three of us have to be thanked for enormous sacrifices. We chose to be parents for the ultimately selfish reason that we thought it would make us happy. Even my MIL (born in 1926) could have chosen not to. She didn't. Our children did not choose to be born, and they did not choose to be born into the families they were. We chose for them.

Also, even for my MIL quite a lot of information about child psychology was available. There were cheap editions of Dr Spock in any bookshop when my now 60yo dh was a child (first published in 1946). I have a copy upstairs; it is sensible and reasonable and you'd get a long way with it. Literacy levels were relatively high in the 50s, 60s and 70s, paperbacks were astonishingly cheap: people who really cared could have worked their way through it.

FYI Captain my loving children are in my life.

Do stop with the hectoring.

corythatwas Donald Winnicott was regularly on the radio in the early sixties broadcasting about mothers and babies and how they could relate well to one another.
There was information around, but more than that there had always been the capacity for kindness, and self-reflection on the idea that children need love, security and nurture. It’s not rocket science.

If my MIL doesn't get her way (e.g. we don't cancel plans for a weekend that have been in the diary for six months because she's decided she wants us to do something else with a week's notice), she cries. Literally turns on the waterworks and has FIL phone us to say how upset she is in the hopes she'll get her way.

If that isn't behaving like a toddler then I don't know what is.

I meant I agree with you.