Do you ever remember something your parents did when you were growing up and feel annoyed?

[RosieLemonade]

My mum would never ever pick me up on a night out, from a train station, from university etc. Every other parent I have known has done pick ups and drop offs. Me and my sister would have to walk an hour every Friday and Saturday night after working 9 hour shifts. I would never make DD get a bus after a 4 hour train journey (with a walk between station and stop). My mum was a good mum in lots of ways but this still annoys me years later!

I think the not doing anything child-centric at the weekends was the norm in the 70s and 80s. I remember really screamingly dull weekends, going shopping with my Mum but only for stuff for her, spending hours at MFI or Brentford Nylons, visiting crushingly dull old relatives. I wasn’t allowed to read or do anything as that would have been rude. I just had to sit on the sofa doing nothing.

Also never being able to celebrate success like good exam results or winning an essay competition, and being told “don’t boast” or “no-one’s interested.”

@ponyexpress22 I never saw my gran again, she died a few weeks later, I have some nice memories of her but also some not so great. I know that she loved me though but her relationship with DM was fraught. All I can think though is I was a child and was caught between their rows which was so unfair.

When I was 10, my parents decided they wanted to move to the countryside, and that it would be great for all the family. Dsis (15 months younger than me) and I got no say whatsoever (I wouldn’t have expected either of us to have a veto, but there was no acknowledgment of the fact that the move would mean uprooting us from our school and our friends), and it seems as if they gave no thought at all to making sure that our lives would be OK after the move.

I look at my life, from that time onwards, and it was not happy. We had some fun playing out on the hill, but it did not in any way outweigh the misery of being a complete outsider in a tiny village where everyone had known everyone else from birth onwards, and where we stuck out like sore thumbs - we knew nothing about farming (the major occupation round there) and I was a shy, dumpy, unsporty bookworm. I was bullied pretty much from the get-go, until the age of 16, when we moved up to sixth form college - somehow, at that point, the bullies grew up a bit and stopped, and I made a few friends - and I had more places to escape. Sadly it was too late, and, looking back, I was already clinically depressed (though I didn’t realise it until I was in my late 40s when a psychotherapist pointed out to me that it is not normal to be thinking about suicide as I was by the age of 14). It’s blighted my whole life - I still struggle with depression, low self esteem and anxiety.

And having been the main influence behind the move, Mum did the sum total of fuck all when I came crying to her about the bullying. She said “sticks and stones may break your bones, but calling names won’t hurt you”, and told me that, if I ignored them, it would stop. I tried - it didn’t stop. I didn’t dare go back to mum - I knew she would tell me I hadn’t tried hard enough to ignore them. And I didn’t tell anyone at school, because if my own mum didn’t care, why would the teachers. Not only did she do nothing, she never even bothered to ask if things were getting better (probably because she didn’t want to know, in case she would have to tear herself away from her own interests and do something to help or support me.

When Dh and I moved from the South East to Scotland, the dses were nearly 11, nearly 13 and 15, and we talked to them about the possibility of the move before Dh applied for the job here. We listened to their concerns, and made sure we took them into account when we were looking for somewhere to live.

And when ds2 was bullied at school, I acted immediately - I emailed the school and told them exactly what had happened, and when they rang me the following day, I made sure the situation was resolved in a way that ds2 was happy with. And I checked up periodically to make sure things were still OK.

Sorry - that turned into a bit of an essay.

Sorry to hear that Tara336 but hang on to those good memories. It wasn't your fault it wasn't great.

It's like some parents just do not care. It's so bloody sad.
My parents were constantly at each others throats and me and my siblings were just collateral damage. My dad would walk out after another slanging match and we would be left at my mother's mercy. She would be in such a rage she would turn her anger on us. Anything as an excuse to take it out on us. She would smash and literally trash our room. Me and my sisters stuff would be destroyed it was literally heartbreaking for us small girls.
The violence we would receive off of the pair of them was horrendous. If ss we would have been removed for sure. To the outside world it was all keeping up appearances. A real facade. Other family members knew how much abuse was going on but no one did anything and it's really affected me and my sister.
Just a miserable walking on egg shells childhood.
Now I have children of my own it's magnifyed my own childhood and how bad it was.

I’ve just remembered... we had a cat that had litters of kittens regularly. My mother used to call the RSPCA without even trying to find homes for them and they would be our down in our garden shed. One day our car didn’t come home. It occurs to me that she probably met the same fate that one of her kittens suffered. I kept one of the kittens and at about a year old my mother just took it to be put down without telling me.

We also had
Rabbits that my mother decided one day should be ‘set free’. In other words released into a local field. She promised me they would be very happy with the wild rabbits. 😒

When I had left home, they bought my sister a dog as a present. Sister was about 14. After a week they decided the dog was too much work and should be put down. It was a pedigree english sheepdog. So in disgust I promised to rehome the dog and looked after it in a shared house even though I was working full time. I eventually found it a home. I got £50 for it which just about covered the food etc. My father complained bitterly that I should have given my sister the money !

I was so excited when I got into college. I told my mum. Response: well why should I care?