Do you like your adult children?

[Walnutwhipsarenothesame]

My father used to say he loved me but he didn’t like me. I found that upsetting at the time, but I find now I feel the same sometimes about mine. They are adults. It feels very sad.

As I have got older I have been better able to grasp why my mother was so emotionally sterile - an only child with strict catholic parents, brought up in a repressed atmosphere, plagued with PMT, locked in a co-dependent but twisted relationship with my Dad, she had no means of offering praise and love. It simply was not in her repertoire. I remember, at the age of about 5, asking her for a cuddle and she said - oh don't be so silly, or words to that effect.

As time goes by I realise that she did love us, but did not know how to show it. We had all the material goods that their income would allow - we had birthday parties, holidays - we did not lack for anything, except the one ingredient that we all wanted: a bit of love and warmth and praise.

My own children are grown now and I look back on my parenting and hope and pray that I did some of it right. They are wonderful kind human beings, so something must have gone right; but I do find myself dwelling on the incidences when I fell short. They loom very large in my mind.

Oh, same, my parenting when kids were small was not A+. It was D- some days.
But I know I haven't sent the message "don't be you, be me" to my kids which is what my mother has done to me. Im not real to her so I irritate her with my autonomy. She hates any perceived weakness. But it turns out she also hates strength. Our relationship is terrible but because my enabling father and apologist brother support her narratives she is literally encouraged to blame me for her shortcomings. I have 90% given up. V sad though. Who would choose this.
I'd listen to my kids because I understand they are people in their own right. So I hope my children never feel like this about me.