Was there a moment for you when your childhood was over? (TW perhaps depending on replies if any).

[TheChinaBerryTree]

With hindsight or otherwise?

I will share my experience.

I have been seeing a therapist recently. And this issue has come up for me.
I struggled with starting/being at school. It was all a bit much for me. I was/am bright/academic, it was more so the socilaisation, dynamics of other children, being 'on' all day I think albeit at the time I couldn't have articulated this at that age of course.

Anyway I settled in eventually and got used to it although I still found it quite overwhelming. Had a good small group of friends.

We moved house when I was 6 and parents moved me to a new school the same year, when I was 7.

I simply did not cope, at all. I couldn't make friends and didn't try to, I think it was just too much for me. The kids all seemed older and somehow 'tougher' more confident, not like my old school which was a very cute little old village-y one. The work was harder, which wouldn't have been a problem if not for my being so miserable. I had an eating disorder within a year that has plagued me most of my adult life. I think at that point, with hindsight of course I just stopped developing 'properly', and no fun was to be had any more other than on the odd occasion outside of school, and through binge-eating!

I am interested to know if anyone else's childhood had interruptions or 'before/after' life-changing events. I know some kids went through far more than I did too.

Yes. The day my Dad told me he was leaving to live with his secretary. Life as I knew it stopped. Still affected by it 40 years later.

My step mother being very nasty and cruel to the point I had a breakdown at 14 and told my dad I just couldnt face it anymore. He did nothing about it, saw him casually until it faded once he had his own family. He's met my daughter (19) 3x. Daddy issues yep

sorry to hear the move affected you so deeply, OP. How are you doing these days?

Yes. My cousin died when I was eleven, of an acute infection. We were very close. My family were not great at talking about it, and a lot went unsaid. I was expected to behave like an adult from then onwards, and not cause any trouble or worry for my family. It affected me very deeply for many years and isn’t something I can talk about now due to a lot of unresolved emotion.

My childhood stopped when I was bullied mercilessly for being a lesbian. I knew it must be horrendously wrong, and I felt so ashamed. It still affects me at age 50.

I feel all the posts on this topic very deeply. So sorry for what we all went through.

My dad died when I was 14. We were a family who didn't discuss things. My mum knew he was dying, but he wasn't told, although I think he realised. Anyway, it was a terrible shock, dad ill in bed, get home from school and he died 2 hours later. I didn't know what he died from until I overheard my mum telling someone. I was told by my horrible maternal grandmother and an older cousin that I had to look after my mum, I mustn't cry, I had to be strong. It messed me up for years.

Yes when my violent father lifted me up against the wall and tried to throttle me

i was in my primary school summer dress so about 6

or when he drove me to near a river on the way to school to say he was going to drown me - I was 11 that time. I cried when I get to school and got told off for being late.

or the countless times between then and after where I was sat alone hiding in the upstairs loo - wondering if I should call childline or run away

I think around 6? When I began to understand that the emotional abuse we were subjected to was bad and scary and not what my friends experienced in their homes. My memory is hazy (blocked out a lot) but I was scared/anxious for seemingly most of my childhood. There must have been happy/calm periods, I just don’t remember them.

Also developed an eating disorder quite young. Then full on depression in the teen years due to shaming around puberty.

When my adopted mum died, just before I became a teenager.

There was life before, and then there was life after.

The sunlight drained from life when she died and it's never come back, for all that there are people I love dearly. Where I lived with my rather unpleasant father stopped being a home and became empty bricks and mortar.

There is no security in life; it's an illusion, one that enables us to function. We need love and safety to flourish, but the foundations we build on are far more fragile and subject to luck than we want to acknowledge.

When I was 11 a policeman knocked on our door to tell my mum my dad had collapsed & died at work. He worked in a Hospital kitchen.

I am so sorry all of us have had these experiences. My dad was abusive so I didnt have a happy home life either. It really does mess you up. When childhood becomes about survival we don't have the opportunities for your brains to develop in a linear 'normal' way.

@stronggirlslift Thank you. I'm also a lifter! It helps me with the eating disorder which is more under control than it has been before. I am okay. I do think I'm too damaged for a relationship,all of mine have been bad for one reason or other. I blame myself for a lot of what happened even now. I drink too much, not addiction type level and I can do without it but it seems to be the only way I can switch my brain off some nights. And i am quite obsessive over the gym.Overall life is okay though, I am happier than I have been before, but therapy has made me realise a lot of things.

Glad to hear you’re in an ok place, OP, and hi to a fellow lifter! Interesting to see so many reports of ED from people here, and I feel so much empathy for everyone responding.

Lifting has been interesting for me because it’s the first time I’ve ever intentionally made my body bigger; I do wonder about the psychology of ED and being physically small when the ‘child’ status is abruptly ripped away for whatever reason. But mostly, I just have so much less physical pain because I’m stronger, so that makes me happy!

Support to all.

Yeah probably my parents splitting up when I was 15 or 16 when mum moved out of home to run off with another man. Then couple of years later one of the boys I grew up with in the village from primary school onwards being killed in a car accident was probably the final dagger in my childhood years.

adding trigger warning for abuse. Only just coming to terms with this in my 40s… but when I was a preschooler my mum developed psychosis and as the eldest of 4 I looked after siblings etc. her mental health was bad and untreated throughout my childhood, and I took the brunt as the eldest. As a preschooler I was given to an unsafe abusive unchecked babysitter to be looked after regularly until around age 6 and now recognise ptsd symptoms eg recurrent nightmares, hyper vigilance in me from age 5.

My sister was born. My grandad dropped dead. I had to start primary school. All of this happened in the space of about 6 weeks. Never got over the shock of the immense life change even 60 years later. Still an anxious over-thinker.

Yes, my parents divorced when I was 10.

My cousin disclosing the abuse we had suffered from our grandad. That was my before and after moment. Quite literally everything changed that day.

Yes, the day my sister died. I was 12. Our family was shattered and I grew up very quickly after that.

on the brain development issue, I genuinely felt that after starting talking therapy more of my prefrontal cortex fired up (specifically the part that formulates narrative and stories) as my mind felt strangely blank before then.
i have CPTSD symptoms and feel that it can be described as brain and nervous system adaptation but has a huge impact on brain development and nervous system operation. interested to hear others’ perspectives x

Also made the classic decision to marry someone very similar (domineering) to my mother (but different in some ways hence they annoy each other)

When one parent told me what my brother had done to my baby sister, and that we would have to keep it quiet or my siblings and I would be taken in to care and never see each other again. I was 8.
Parents both alcoholics, too many children, they drank all the money and we lived in complete poverty despite them having good jobs.

So as well as that, I learnt that we can't tell anyone when bad things happens to us because that'll just make it worse.
Brother learnt that he could do what he wanted to us.

I suppose it would have been the day I realised that my dad was terminally ill and didn't have long to go. He asked me to look after my mum. I was 13.

I had a turbulent time in high school. Was relatively gifted academically, but basically had a limited social life where I would stay at home. In answer to your question, probably when I got a bad case of glandular fever when I was 19. I had every symptom under the sun, including an unexplained POTS that left after the illness did. Problem is that it took 4 months to get rid of it. In the meantime, I had repeated candida infections and was borderline anorexic out of not being able to digest anything. Did think at points that this was how I was going to die.

It would take far too long to tell it all. It was so traumatic that I later wrote it into a complete story. Suffice to say that in school I was accused of something I had not done. I was a mousy little thing and I allowed a powerful teacher to bully me into a false confession. My childhood ended on that bright and sunny day in a school classroom. As a result I had a kind of mini breakdown and failed the 11 plus.When I emerged I has ceased to believe in a just god. I also realised that the meek do not inherit the earth, They inherit the dirt.. It is mostly the cold and clever liars and cheats who prosper. I became hard, ruthless and transactional and looked out for number one first.