Small ways in which your parents fucked you up

[SaladBap]

Over the last few days, I've come to the uncomfortable realisation that what I thought was clever, edgy humour is actually unpleasant, mean and arrogant.

I was raised to think that our family was a bit of a cut above other people in terms of humour/intelligence - edgy jokes that cut very close to the bone, self deprecating humour, but also snobbery regarding other people's hobbies and interests (anything pop culture)

Other people were humourless, dull and couldn't take a joke

I've realised that this isn't a sign of how quirky and funny I am, nor of my moral superiority, but actually makes me seem an arrogant snob. It's also caused a kneejerk habit of thinking negatively about people

It explains why I've struggled to make friends, I think, and why my self esteem is quite low at times - I apply that really sarcastic voice to everyone including myself

I'm looking at my parents through totally new eyes. Things like their sneering at "catalogue families" who brought rounders sets to the beach or park - we could easily have done so too, my parents didn't want to, but us children would probably have quite liked it instead of being forced to just sit there while they read the newspaper!

It's a small thing, but I actually feel quite cross about it.

Can anyone relate?

I've also recently realised that I can't deal with silence at home (unless I'm alone, in which case I crave the peacefulness) because, growing up, there was so much noise in our house that when either my mum or dad (or worse) fell silent, it meant they were brooding on something and would be about to explode in rage.

I can relate to this. I hate when my DH and DC go silent even though I know logically it doesn't mean World War 3 is about to kick-off. Even though I am safe now, I feel panicky, and fill silence with pointless, anxious chatter.

God, so much.

My mum is the eternal pride and is uncomfortable talking about anything other than doilies and the neighbour's new patio furniture. As a result she never told me about sex or periods. I'm so pleased I learned about periods at school aged 11, and tv at mine didn't come until I was 13. My niece is 9 and has just got hers - imagine how terrifying it would've been if she didn't know what they were.

My 8yo DD and 4yo DS know all about periods, have seen me change sanitary towels and I leave tampons (United, obviously and in their packets) our in the way I do toilet roll. I want it to be normal for them. DS included

I have huge and permanent emotional scars from my childhood, however a few small ones...

Being expected to eat seconds and yet always be thin.

Looking down on fussy eaters as being "freezer eaters".

To find other people's misfortune amusing.

To laugh at obesity, deformity and disability.

These all came from my father. He used to wind down the car windows and encourage us to shoot abuse at gay people (strangers) as we drive past. I'm just glad that I had the intellect and life experience to eventually realise that most people didn't think or behave like manic hyenas.

Shout at fat people!

Even he want homophobic (although he loathes almost everyone else).

I can't have less than full to bursting kitchen cupboards or I get twitchy.

My mum wouldn't make dinner when DSis and I were young teens unless she herself was hungry. As a day snacker while we were at school, she sometimes didn't bother with dinner. That would be fine except she often only bought food as and when it was needed by her. I recall eating 6-10 boiled eggs for dinner every day for three days because other than a tin of bisto gravy, some weevil filled flour and a tin of green beans or something similar, that was all that we had in. The freezer had an old fish and a few other things I had no idea what they had previously been.
On other days my dinner was microwaved frozen peas and sweetcorn (yum!).
By the time DSis and I were 15 and 16 we were working and bought our own food or got fed at work.

Now if I see food on offer, I get it. And if the offer is good, I buy loads. Tins keep!
I have a huge, monstrous cardboard box currently bending my kitchen table with the weight of dozens of cans of various stuff. My cupboards are full. I have over 20kg of pastas (all varieties!) and probably 10kg of rice. DH doesn't understand that I have a genuine fear of my kids not having a dinner option. I love to cook and can spend hours and hours every day in the kitchen.

Mum also screwed up my other priorities. I absolutely cannot blow money on clothes for myself. She never bought DSis and I any clothes from aged around 10 or so. We lived in our friends hand me downs and mum's friends even gave us their cast offs (makes me wonder if they had noticed). Problem was, I was a skinny size 6 teenager and the clothes were a good size 12 or 14. I'd make do. Knickers were knotted at the side and the jeans were folded across my tummy from hip to hip and secured with a plastic belt I found.

The kicker is, we weren't poor. Mum just liked to spend her money on her hobbies.

I still balk at paying for clothes for myself but my three kids have everything they need (though I still say hell no to most designer overpriced labels)

My mum is obsessed with weight, she always talked about the various plastic surgeries she wanted and how pregnancy ruined her body.

My younger sister was the favourite for most of my life. She was born quite premature and so was extremely skinny until she hit puberty and then she gained weight and stopped being the favourite. My older sister took her place as she became skinnier and skinnier.

I was never skinny enough so I missed out on being the golden child. She always bought oversized clothes for me ( so oversized that I can still fit in my clothes I had when I was ten) to hide me. We had a massive fight once when she said I must have a thyroid problem because I was just too fat ( I was the normal weight for my age). My Dad was a master at being passive but he also loved to joke about my love for food. Today, I struggle with food. The only thing I don’t feel guilt about eating is probably water or something. Even fruit was full of sugar and so restricted for me.

My weight was also an issue because it meant I’d never find a husband (good news for gay me). Even though I wasn’t allowed to even touch men ( I went to girls schools my whole life) I was expected to be married by 25. I remember once my dad told me off for using the title ‘Ms’ because men don’t like that.

@Billyjoearmstrong that’s so sad she must have been really bad

I was messed up it’s took a lot of years but I’m ok now although food issues.
Had to sit and eat my tea until it was all gone.
Advised I had tree trunk legs
Sister was and is the favourite because she was born first and had 5 years bonding before I came along.
Didn’t buy school pictures because I had acne.
Had pics of my sister in fancy frames and only one passport size photo of me behind an ornament (to this day I can’t have a photo without over analysing It).
Kids at school had labels and fancy things I had hand me downs.
Never came to school performances (neighbour would wave at me while seeing her son on her behalf)
Couldn’t play downstairs (Mother was very house proud) to this day it’s like the queens coming if she comes round she criticises my perfectly clean ruddy home ( with 3 kids) It’s like I can’t be myself I’m always trying to impress her.
She encouraged me to get weight loss surgery I was 13 stone 5 and 5 foot 1 she kept on so much I did it. Can’t imagine doing this to my dd.
No emotional support I one told her I needed to tell her something important as a teenager!! I said Mam Iv got depression she laughed and said oh I thought you where going to say you where pregnant and walked out the room.
I got married to the first man who showed me love still with him 20 years later but again wouldn’t want my dd to marry at 20 I would want her to see life and support her. I was paying board at 17 had a full time job when I left school, she didn’t encourage me to go into further education she wanted me to get a job and pay bored even at 13 I had a paper round so she never had to pay for me for a long time.

When I was pregnant with my 1st ds she would criticise me for eating a pizza and nagged about veg yet my dsis smoked through her pregnancy Even though the baby had a serious heart defect my mam said it would do the baby more harm if she stopped stress etc. She said she would buy babies pram but she would choose it. Jesus this is like therapy for me got it all of my chest and there’s more.

Lifeisconfusing, my mum used to say I had legs like tree trunks too. I never believed it but the thing that makes it particularly cruel is that I have a disability and can't get round without a wheelchair. If I was ever going to be self conscious of one of my body parts my legs would have been it. You're right about this thread being like therapy.

My parents were never interested in my education. Not once attended a parents evening & just glanced at school reports. No encouragement through GCSEs

I look at DS now and could never do that to him.

I don’t think I’ll ever have a dream job because of it. My grades were dire.

I've been thinking about this thread after reading it this morning and thinking about things my parents did/said to me. i have so many unhappy memories that now keep popping up and my upbringing has definitely shaped how I'm raising my children. My dad would belt me for any minor issue he wasn't happy with - buckle end - i would never ever lay a finger on my children or discipline them in the other ways him and mum chose to. I remember them actually using a bar of soap to wash my sister's mouth out with after she said the word tit instead of teat. She was only 3. Another thing I remember mum saying, that has had a massive impact on my relationships with boyfriends and even now with my husband, was to not bother coming home if I got pregnant when i wasn't married. She told me this when I was 12 and I simply chose not to have sex when I got older and formed relationships as I was terrified of being kicked out of home and her not wanting me, which clearly wasn't conducive to a happy adult relationship with any boyfriend. I still felt like this in my 30's and she still disapproved when became pregnant at 34 whilst only engaged. I'm 45 now and this still haunts me. As I result I tell my mum nothing about my life. She has no idea what has happened since I left home as she only gets the edited highlights. I never want my children to feel like that about me. The final straw though is the mum (dad died a few years back) doesn't speak to me or my sister anymore as we have talked 'outside the immediate family' about issues and her behaviour that she is obviously ashamed of. I have to live knowing my mum didn't want me as a child and no longer wants to know me as an adult despite me going out of my way to help her now she lives alone. She won't give in though as she is stubborn and has anger management issues. She has previously said she expects people who she has fallen out with to come to her on bended knees begging her for forgiveness but i most definitely won't be doing that! The next i hear about her will probably be to tell me She has died.

@Imtryingveryhard you should be proud if yourself that you not like your parents! Enjoy your Little family and your life it’s not your fault remember that.

I remember another thing. I asked her what she could see me doing I.e career she replied a house wife!!! I want to do counselling courses starting this September now my 3 children are in school but I know she will say (why are you doing that when you should be ironing or something?) 😡

I’m
Laughing to my self thinking of what my snobby grandmother used to say!!
If I had my time again I wouldn’t have kids.
Woman today having babies to different men out of wedlock (she was born 1931 and she had her 1sr baby out of wedlock her second to her 1st dh and her third baby to her 2nd dh)

My aunty advised her that her 2nd dh was sexually abusing her and she was smacked across the face and her plait was cut off after that she was know as the liar in the family.

My mum would fondly remember my sister and as children and say how well behaved we were. It's because we were threatened with violence and grounding if we did a single thing wrong. It was easier to not interact when out and be bored, whilst everyone else just thought we were boring! I still got told off for my 'behaviour' into my 40's. My parents were definitely parents and nothing more. Not friends, not fun to visit, a definite chore to have in my life.

My parents were lovely to me and my sister but had a very toxic passive aggressive relationship with each other. But this manifested into lots of not talking to each other ("Tell your mother we've run out of toilet paper" while she was in the room etc) and long sighs, brooding silences etc.

The longest length of time I remember them not speaking was three weeks. But they never rowed, never addressed whatever had annoyed whichever one started the silence. It was just a horrible atmosphere with no actual argument.

So the first time I was in a serious relationship that degenerated into shouting (albeit over something minor) it caused basically a fight or flight reaction where I was so inconsolable that there was actual shouting that it was clear everything was over, we were never getting past it, this was the end.

DH and I rarely disagree and I don't recall us ever particularly shouting at each other, even if there is the odd snappy word. But even now I have to try and rationalise my response to any disagreement.

A million, but one quirk of my mother's that took me a few years to work out: her opinions are the opposite of others and usually a reaction to them making a fuss (in her view). These opinions are also framed so that she is intellectually superior, but involve no more thought process than "that's just silly".

One example, when donald trump got elected everyone was just being ridiculous. Of course, he would stop tweeting (!)

I used to do this for years, copying her. And ironically, I used to hold the opinion that people blaming that their parents for their problems was just silly.

Hopefully, I am a more mature thinker now. Also, I no longer dismiss others' opinions as silly (oh the mortification that I once did).

This rings so many bells with me - my parents are judgey, sneery people too. They won't shop at Asda for example, because it's common. Always desperate to outdo other members of the family, particularly my mother's sister and BIL, who ran a business and had much more money than us. (My cousins had ponies and more importantly an actual etch-a-sketch .) My parents scrimped and saved to put us through private school, with the help of the army and various scholarships, and now say they shouldn't have bothered because none of us are rich. My nephew went to Cambridge and then trained as a teacher - parents said oh no, you're so clever, why are you wasting your life - in front of DSis (his mum) who is also a teacher.
We had to eat everything on our plate, even if that meant sitting at the table by ourselves for several hours.
There are four of us siblings and between us we have two suicide attempts, one drug addiction, one alcohol addiction, one prison sentence, one school expulsion, two school suspensions, three divorces, four weight problems and much unhappiness.
Also I am nearly 50 and neither of my parents have ever told me that they love me. They are both in their 80s now and sometimes I can't wait for them to die, although I'm sure there will be all sorts of complicated emotions when they do, because of course not every second has been awful, there have been lots of fun times too.
Typing this out has actually been quite revealing - food for thought!

Parents watching 70s comedy rape porn with me in the room