Does anyone else wonder what their parents were thinking?!

[Destinedforfakeness]

A few things have happened lately which made me reflect on some not great or questionable stuff from my childhood. I'm not talk abuse, but stuff which I think of now and do wonder what my parents were thinking! I know parenting is hard and time have changed so maybe that's it. Some examples are things like, sending me to the closest school because it was close but a terrible school, moving to a rural location when I was a teen and it being really hard and disruptive, making us stay with grandparents for a day/night every weekend throughout my childhood (not for work).

To then smaller incidents of which they are many and quite detailed but what sticks out is the lack of attention / child centric approach. But tueh I do think being more child centred is a more contemporary thing. I'm late 30s.Such as a time when we were on holiday and I was poorly and left to walk home from a bar alone. Or nothing being fixed of my possessions if they broke,just a few examples.

I have an ok relationship with my parents now they are quite self involved, so I'm not sure if this was just a different era or its them.

Did anyone else have a childhood like this? And have thoughts about it with an adult perspective?

Whether or not we'd make the same decision or agree with their decision is different to wondering what they were thinking. That suggests their thought processes are pretty mad
I wouldn't like to spend every weekend with grandparents or live rurally but I see neighbours spending time with their parents and ILs every weekend so I know it's not unusual.
The walking home from the bar story sounds insane considering your update about how ill you were but the fact that you can't ask why they moved from X to Y is very sad and says a lot.

@BoohooWoohoo we didn't spend time with them with my parents. Me and my sister went to their house alone. In my opinion they are quite different things.

I understand OP. I have great, loving parents. Sometimes though I remember something and think - WTF? Mostly being left to deal with stuff I didn’t really know how to deal with.

I think that leaving you to walk home when ill in Spain, and letting you go on holiday with a boyfriend 4 years older, are signs that they were rather lax parents. The school being the nearest to home, and staying with your grandparents every weekend, are not in themselves bad, but taken over all, show a lack of real care.
That being said, I am one of 4 siblings, and the youngest seems to have experienced a totally different childhood to the older 3. From our point of view we had very loving, parents, who we thought at the time were rather strict. The youngest was the only boy, and from our point of view was very indulged, especially by our mother, but in his view, he was emotionally neglected by our father, and he has made sure that his son has never felt like that. This was in the 1950s, and fathers tended to be out at work and did little child care. It shows that experiences of childhood are very personal, and people feel how they feel. You were there, no one else can dispute how you felt at the time.

I’d say the following

‘I'm realising my parents will often retrospectively say stuff which was different to how it was.’

‘I think it was not considerate. But I'm evidently alone in this.’ ‘

‘But obviously I'm mainly alone in my thoughts and reflections’

Did you express to them that you wanted to stay at home? What was their response?

I don't follow how this is black and white thinking. The points where I say I think different are just reflections of the thread replies I'm confused as to how this conveys a fie mindset.

I'm not sure why the grandparents thing has been the thing people have focused on. Anyway, yeah I think I did but would feel like I was moaning and inconvenient. Mainly though I didn't say anything because we always had to go anyway and then I was told off or my parents (mum as it was her parents) would be annoyed with me for making a fuss. So the end result was the same but I got in trouble so not worth it.

I basically realised that there was no point continually saying anything. I don't know how to describe this but I didn't have the type of childhood or relationship with parents where I'd just expect my own way and therefore say what I wanted. So for much of this type of thing it was absolutely a given we would just do as told.

Because you think all the replies on the thread are black and you are 100% in the wrong.

Yes us kids of the 80s were much more compliant, wish mine were like that sometimes, I would have never said the things my son says to me.

I didn’t realise that staying with gps once a week or so wasn’t normal and possibly neglectful.

id best start saying no to my 4 year old dgd when she asks to stay every week then 🤷‍♀️

I stayed loads with my paternal grandparents when I was little, I loved it there, so many lovely memories and I’m glad I did because my gran died when I was six .

there’s loads in my childhood that now people would pull faces at, my mum was abusive both physically and mentally at times and my brothers were taken into care when I was 5, staying with my grandparents and moving to North Wales when I was 15 just before I started my GCSEs (although wasn’t great but worked out well in the end) wasn’t neglectful for me.

@blackheartsgirl

Sorry if I misunderstood but are you saying that you don't consider your mothers abuse and your siblings being taken into care as neglectful?

I'm so sorry that you experienced these things.

@blackheartsgirl

I'm not sure if it's just mumsnet in general or today but the nasty comments as if I'm making some kind of direct attack on posters who choose to reply are just exhausting. Did I say it was neglectful? Did I say anything about asking to go? Why are you so butt hurt about my life experience? Genuinely why?

I'm not sure if you read my updates. I was made to go from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon from a toddler to a teen every weekend. We didn't have our own space, our own things like toys or anything beyond the clothes we took. It prevented me from seeing frow ds, doing hobbies and being in my own home to relax. We didn't do things with them or go places.

Is this is your grandchild's experience or staying at your home? For a start she's asking to come.

Can I ask out of an abundance of curiosity what kind of person gets kicks out of willfully misreading posts and gaslighting an op saying they said things they didn't? Just there's been quite a few of you on this thread. Who interestingly enough haven't fucked themselves to come back to justify the unpleasant things they thought they would say to someone looking for support.i wonder how sad, bitter and nasty you have to be to look for the absolute worst in a post, make up stuff about the op and tell them they've said things they haven't? It's not well adjusted is it?

This reply is the final fucking straw in a fucking awful gaslighting thread. Yes I have lost my temper. But actually thanks because I've leaned a valuable lesson.

I'm nit going to get support here. Even if everyone things I'm wrong, that's fine but the vitrol and gaslighting is something else. I'm sure I'll be told there is none and it's all me. I've seen enough threads go like this to know how it goes.

I've always thought that if online has an omact in real life you need to reflect on that and make a change. This thread has had a huge impact on my day, making me anxious an upset. On that note I'm going to de register. It's not oa supportive place anymore.

I hope some of you find peace. As it's not healthy to get enjoyment from being unkind and choose to misread posts in order to take the most negative view possible of an op.

It was a different time.

My DPs let me watch 18s as a very young dc.

OP, I hear you.

I never thought about it much until my own child turned 4 or 5, then I started thinking of my own childhood.

What blinded me to some pretty appalling parenting was that my mother was a teacher all her working life, so you assume that equals goid parent. Not so. You know those builders whose own home is falling to bits? Same principle with children of teachers I reckon.

My issues are the obvious lack of concern for any problems me and my sibling had. I was badly bullied by peers in and out of school and achieved nothing academically. School was about surviving the day rather than learning. How did they not know? It's also quite obvious that my sister needed support and had very few friends.

My father did absolutely nothing as a parent and left home as soon as we were both adults.

There's also a troubling memory of my parents having sex in a hotel room I was sleeping in on holiday when I was 10. My mum left my sister alone in a room to come to the room I was in with father. They assumed I was asleep and they wouldn't wake me. Wrong. I gather this sort of disregard for a childs sensitivities was reasonably common in the late 70s and early 80s.

So, you're not alone. We can still love our parents but also think in hindsight they were a bit crap and disinterested quite a lot of the time.

OP I am sorry about some of the replies on here. Some posters seem to be deliberately misreading your posts, I really don’t understand why. You’ve explained things very clearly. If people can’t be bothered to read OPs posts properly why bother commenting? Deliberately trying to derail the thread?

Also the fact is that you did feel that some of your parent’s decisions were wrong and they affected your childhood significantly. It’s not up to other people to say ‘oh that’s fine, what are you worrying about’. That is minimising and gaslighting.

Also I have similar experiences where I wonder why my parents behaved as they did. They weren’t abusive and overall I had a good childhood, but I have had to make peace with some of their decisions, and have tried to be different with my own DCs.

For example - my mum never told me anything about periods or puberty. Thank goodness I was a late developer, and our school had a good sex education programme, or it would have been very traumatic for me. She never bought me any sanitary pads and I made my own. I was too embarrassed to ask her to get them for me because I assumed it was something I shouldn’t talk about.

After my parents got divorced I moved out with my mum but I came back to stay with my dad and his new family every weekend, however I didn’t have my own room so slept on a sofa bed.
So OP I can imagine how you felt at your grandparents, I didn’t have my own things or my own space, couldn’t see my friends - all things which are really important to a teenager.

These are just a couple of things, I have plenty more examples! But my parents also did other caring things too, so it was a weird mix.

I guess compared to the life my parents had as children, we were brought up in relative luxury so I try to keep it in context. As others have said just having a child doesn’t fix people and they still have all their problems….