To be annoyed by my mother rewriting history?

[ButterpieandCheese]

She's lovely overall, she really is, so I feel mean, but this has been playing on my mind...

The other day we got talking about school, and she said she beleives in just letting older kids (ie 14+) just get on with schoolwork and approach the adults if they need help, as they need to learn to be independent. Fair enough.

Then she said "there would have been no point trying to keep you in college, you weren't interested in studying and just wanted to be earning money as you were living with your boyfriend"

Err...actually I loved college. I've always been bookish, and the extra freedom (and the library) were brilliant. I was, by that point, already well on the way into mental illness (that my mum knows about - she was the one taking me to appointments, and she knows it has been really serious at points since, so wasn't just general teenage attention seeking) and had had an awful time through bullying and having undiagnosed Dyspraxia (and possibly something else - basically, my brain doesn't work like other people's brains), but college was brilliant because I had the freedom to fit my "quirks" and was top of my classes and finally having the chance to shine.

I left because my Dad saw me at home on one day when I should have been in college. One day. The college had a bit of a culture of bad attendance anyway, and that day was a half day that a lot of people skipped. I know I should have gone, but, ONE DAY. They had never had a bad report, I was only in my second term, I had been taken out of lessons and allowed to study by myself in school as recognition of my difficulties, so I was doing really well to have not missed any up till then.

My Dad shouted at me, told me that I was making my mum ill by my stupid behaviour, and drove me, crying, to the job centre where I had to find a job. Luckily I found one in a library, that meant I only had to miss one day a week of college, but from there it was a slippery slope, and I had stopped attending entirely by the time AS levels came round, and hadn't submitted any coursework until at the last minute, when I put in the minimum. I sat the exams however, and got an A and two Cs.

Now, I know that I need to take responsibility for my own actions, and maybe I should have worked harder and not skived off that time, and they had been having trouble with me for a while (by trouble, I mean that they had to take me to the doctors and see me moping about/listen to me going on and on about whatever I was obsessed with, and I did a bit of sneaking about like all teenagers do, but on the scale of it, nothing major), and so on, but my mum seems to have recast my leaving college (I then signed up with the OU under a special dispensation as I was under 18, and passed the course with flying colours. Never finished my degree though.) as something that I did for my boyfriend, when in actual fact at that point I had only just met him, and it would be a year before we moved in together (the 1st day of the month after I turned 18)

I know she will have been telling this version of her wayward daughter (who then went and got herself pregnant! When I told my mum I was pregnant at 21 - the same age she had me - she immediately made plans to fit me and my baby in the spare room. No mention of now DH in all this.) to all her friends and getting sympathy for how well she has coped.

She also keeps, out of nowhere, telling me that the best thing I can do for my kids is to teach them to be totally normal and not stand out in any way. Just give them the best branded things - don't I remember when I said that the one day people in my class looked at me with respect was when I had the latest trainers? She somehow thinks me saying that was a comment on how nice the trainers were (I didn't even know - it was news to me when the other kids started making a fuss) rather than a comment on the fact that the other kids spent most of the year not touching anything I had touched as I had "germs" apparently.

I had a hellish time as a child, not through one person's fault - I just didn't fit the mould. I just wish somebody would acknowledge that, instead of trying to make it all about how really I just wanted a boyfriend and some nice trainers. When I say I'm nervous about sending DD1 to school (I wanted to HE but can't due to my health) she tells me that she was nervous sending me, but look how much fun I had! That I say I'm more bothered about the kids doing well than them being "normal", she just says that I shouldn't encourage them to stand out, because being top of the class only brings heartache. They should just find a nice man and have babies, because, I love my babies, don't I?

Well, yes I do love them, of course I do. Why couldn't I have had the babies and done well academically? I know I'm no genius, but I was constantly top of the class - my school said I, and my friend, were miles out ahead in our schoolwork of the rest of the year.

Meh. I'm ranting now. Every time I try to bring this up, they just say that I am trying to make out that I'm something I'm not - I apparently say I'm not bothered about material goods, but don't I remember being excited about having ? I do, and I'm not pretending to not like material goods, I'm just saying I would rather my kids went to museums (and enjoyed them) than Disneyland. I would rather have a bookcase than a massive TV. I like feeding my children vegetables at a table. It's not airs and graces, it's just giving them the tools to experience things fully.

For people that don't know there's a thread in relationships called "but we took you to stately homes" (or similar) which is all about this, if you want advice/a good moan.

I would hope SS have more modern attitudes now. I was at private school, although (like most kids) I kept quiet about home most of the time the staff apparently knew I was being physically attacked, underfed, not cared for when sick etc

But they didn't say anything because 'what good would it do?' Shock, horror, I might end up in state school! And wouldn't that be worse than coming to them every day.

Well, maybe I'd've felt I had a safe place to sleep and not developed crippling insomnia to start with you bloody idiots!

And another one... I could swear at least one of you is my sister!

I 'could have gone to college but you were more interested in getting on and earning' - erm, no, I wanted to go to Art College (it was possible at 16 back then) but you thought I'd get in with a bad crowd (apparently in her version of family history I'm the one who's 'easily led') and do drink/drugs/get pregnant, so you said that if I didn't either stay on at school or get a job I would be thrown out of the house as you wouldn't support me. It terrified me, but I couldn't bear school (I was being bullied to the point of breakdown but that was my 'oversensitivity') so I left and got the first job I could find.

And once, about 20 years ago, she admitted that she knew my father had been abusing me at the age of 4, telling me that she 'stepped in' and put a stop to it (why tf she didn't leave is something that still enrages me). Since then, utter denial. Dad nothing but a kind, caring father who loved us all dearly and would do anything for us, not a sexually and emotionally abusive arsehole who made our childhoods and teenage years a living hell. Completely glossed over.

Just last week she completely denied that she'd told the teachers on a school trip I wasn't allowed to go on the Corkscrew at Alton Towers because she was scared of rollercoasters - denied I'd even been to AT (we went twice with the school!!) and got very angry... (I know, a very minor thing, but still!!)

I wish I could let it go, I know I need to let it wash over me, but it infuriates and saddens me... especially as my dad is now dying and all this stuff is coming back to haunt me. Grr. Should've namechanged.

The tiny things stick in your mind don't they?

I used to refuse to take tablet painkillers because I had difficultly swallowing pills. Instead of getting liquid painkillers, she wrote to my school and told me I wasn't allowed any. Didn't tell me. I was in agony with toothache one day, decided it was worth the effort to get some down. "your mother said you're not allowed, you must be allergic. Don't you remember?"

Didn't yell, "of course I'm not fucking allergic, she's shoved the things down my fucking throat before now."

I wish I had. I wish every single time some piece of fuckery came up I had screamed and yelled and shouted about it and maybe people would have realised that no, I wasn't coping fine. I was fucking miserable and trained to think everything was my fault and that I should accept it.

Lovecat.....I must say that luckily my dad never sexually abused me, although he was very violent and emotionally abusive.

My dad also died a couple of years back, when he was dying it brought back alot of memories for me too. I had also just had my first baby so was quite difficult.

But I must say, now hes dead, I feel a whole lot better. Relived.

Theres no point bieng angry at a dead person. they cant hear or see you. it just a bit less anger inside me.

lemmein - I am so sorry for your loss, and the treatment of your brother. I hope life is kinder to you now.

I am still too hurt and angry to discuss most of mine, but one of the more 'trivial' is the way my mother loves to crow about how she supported us through university.
The reality is that although we weren't entitled to a full grant due to parental income, that they were supposed to top-up, I received not a penny from my parents, and had to work through the full 3 years which often caused difficulties at times, particularly as effectively I had to leave home at 18. (my room was given to a younger sibling, I could have gone home in holidays, but I'd have been sleeping on the sofa)
My brother had it worse though- the month after he went to university they moved abroad, effectively making him homeless at 18.2

These type of threads always astound me. My Mum is the one who rewrites it all - she is not an abusive and manipulative woman - oh no!

The thing that always surprises me though, is how many other people had similar upbringings to mine. When I was at school, everyone else seemed happy at home (apart from the usual teenage stuff), but I suppose if there was anyone else having a shit time, they probably kept it to themselves just like I did. Yet on MN, there's loads of us!

ButterpieandCheese, and to everyone else here in fact. Are we related?
Too many parents try to re-write history to compensate for wrongdoings. Reading everyone's story has made me remember mine - there's still a lot of (hate the term, but I'll use it anyway) issues, but for the most part, I tend to not go over history with my Mum. I always steer her away from childhood stories and will get up and leave if she tries to repeat her lies. We do have a relationship - not a close one - but it's based on day to day stuff, nothing more.

These are things you'll never change, but can avoid. Keeping them in the forefront of your mind will only let them influence the way you are now. You sound lovely, and very clever. But you're being drawn into you mother's fabricated history and being very much affected by it.

Step away from it. You needn't forget about your upbringing, but you definitely don't have to be drawn into your Mum's version of events. You know what happened. That's all that really matters.

My mum too - recently had an argument about my wedding, she remembers that all along I was planning my wedding for x day and year. Not that I fell accidentally pregnant, and was forced into picking a date asap. She tried to get us married before baby was born but I dug my heels in and ended up doing it wjen baby was 5 months. My point was if I hadn't fallen pregnant I wouldn't have got married when I did, probably not at all. This caused a huge argument, in front of my aunt, with mother demanding I validate her version of events. I did, for a quiet life. She wins again

But I remember her calling my unborn child a bastard, refusing to speak to me or DP, door slamming, hysterics etc. Oh no, that didn't happen....

Shakey, you're describing my childhood and mother relationship exactly!

I've moved away and it helps such a lot to have space.

I believe this is what they call gaslighting.

Last week my mother told me I started boarding at school when I was 11 because I "asked to", nothing to do with the fact that my parents moved 200 miles away at the same time.

I was also informed that the food at said school was excellent (my mother never ate there), so I must have imagined the dog foodesque stews, lumpy semolina and cauliflower cheese with caterpillars in it.

I also have 'past forgetters". My mum won' even talk about i, so no glossing over at least. My dada makes stuff up and thinks he was wonderful, but he wasn't. He is okay with his replacement children, so that's ok...

Anyway, my memory is so poor I hardly recall stuff these days, which is a mercy, but doesn't stop the anxiety attacks and so on.

I hear myself shouting at my kids and think. One day they will hate me. I think we all make mistakes (as parents) and we will ALL want to gloss them over.

I learnt my parents were people, and people are untrustworthy. I.e no-one is perfect we all have the potential to do harm, and we pass it on even if we don't want to.