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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Is calling your DD 'Elouise-Bracegirdle' a teasing way of dealing with her having a brace fitted?

34 replies

chiaroscuro · 29/10/2010 14:05

Or is it a bit cruel?

OP posts:
maryz · 29/10/2010 15:45

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JamieLeeCurtis · 29/10/2010 16:02

Agree with you Gibbon....

chiaroscuro - if the teasing was not tempered by genuine attempts to understand how you felt, and it was definitely not stopped when/if you made it clear that you were upset by it, then yes, it is cruel.

I came from quite a teasy family and I know some things hurt me and I never told the person concerned - because that's what I was like - not very assertive, and easily hurt. And many/most children are like that.

I hope I take this into my relationship with my DCs, so I try to distinguish laughing with and laughing at

JamieLeeCurtis · 29/10/2010 16:03

Miggsie put it better than me

pickledbabe · 29/10/2010 16:17

I read it as someone doing it to a child you knew.

And my reply was always going to be that it's horrible and mean.

If it had been another person, I would have told you to challenge them.

I don't know what the solution is when it's against you, thouhg. Sad

And I like BeerTrix's thing about home being a safe place.

chiaroscuro · 29/10/2010 16:38

My father wasn't someone you told you didn't like something really.

I was a very unhappy child and was consistently bullied through school. I was self conscious, gauche and socially inept. I don't know if I was aware at the time that it mattered so very much. I liked pleasing people generally so wouldn't have thought to complain.

He does have massive gender issues which as an adult, and one in counselling I can both shrug off but also be a bit Shock by.

He says (to my mum and me) that women are like emotional baggage that you are trying to stuff into a cheap carrier bag and the handles are stretched to the limit.

I didn't deliberately want to shock, but like MaryZ said, a part of me needed to know that if it wasn't OK to happen to another child, then it wasn't OK that it happened to me. I didn't even use my usual posting name because somehow if I project it all onto 'someone' else, I can be objective about the rightness or wrongness of it. But if I tell it as happening to me, I have to feel it.

To go to school and be teased about wearing a brace and then come home to that on my bedroom door. No I didn't like it. But didn't have the voice to say so.

If I objected, he would shrug and express that my reaction was proof of my emotional irrationality.
He says our redeeming point is that we are nice to look at.

It is with some sadness that I have recognised the pattern of my failed relationships echoing my upbringing. Apologising for everything, feelings reactions.

OP posts:
LittleRedPumpkin · 29/10/2010 16:38

Oh, I'm so sorry, chi, I cross-posted with your explanation.

It sounds as if your parents really upset you and obviously from the responses on here, it was not a nice or normal thing to do.

JamieLeeCurtis · 29/10/2010 17:01

That is really terrible chiaroscuro. Terribly wrong for that to be happening at school, and not only not stopped by your parents and teachers, but continued at home.

Home should be a safe, accepting place. I have seen the effect that "mild" bullying has had on my son's self esteem, and I try to inoculate him from that with love, acceptance and praise. So sorry your father did not do that for you.

maryz · 29/10/2010 17:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JamieLeeCurtis · 29/10/2010 17:22

Yes - really good point maryz - home can be the start of it ...

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