AIBU to ask: How did you disappoint your parent/s?

[Countingwiththecount]

I dropped out of uni after a year to 'reconsider'. My mum was so upset she declared the previous twenty years 'an utter failure' and held me personally responsible for gender inequality. To this day we are still nowhere near as close as before. Fortunately I have reached a stage in my life where I can accept this but I'd be v interested to hear other MNers experiences!

Even more sad when it gets you wondering how to stop your own DC feeling they've let you down hobnob.

Surely all these parents didn't set out to make their DC feel like that?

Maybe I'm being naive.

I disappointed my mother by being born and continued to do so till the day she died. Literally. Some of her very last words to me where her being highly annoyed that I hadn't brought her a clean nightie since I had not telepathically known it was needed. My son, aged 15 months at her death, also disappointed by being a fairly average child, reaching milestones at an average rate. Disappointing as I was, I apparently did everything amazingly quickly as a baby, at least according to her! My brother on the other hand was a remarkable person in all repects. Always.

My mother learnt from her mother (who was a very very mentally unstable woman - albeit a strong, intelligent woman failed by the men in her life). Don't blame her for how she is - I take the brunt of it and my brother's fairly shielded from it all - but it does make me cry lots sometimes when she pulls one of her stunts.

You either get defined by the shit life throws at you and make yourself a victim of misery porn memoir proportions or you grit your teeth and carry on and carve your own path though - I cry, I slot a few more pieces of the mental jigsaw into place and I move on... sad thing is she thinks she knows me better than I know myself - but she doesn't really have a clue! I even went for counselling and the counsellor turned around to me and said she couldn't help me get to any insights as I had such a good understanding of it all myself anyway (don't make it funner dealing with it though lol)!

At age 11 my mother was sure I had a brain defect, especially when I fainted in town on her, and made me have 6 head X-rays at the hospital. She shouted the Dr's down who advised against it as my skull wasn't properly formed. She was convinced I had a chunk of brain missing (mainly because I was a little lazy and hopeless at maths ). She was er, rather eccentric. Needless to say there was nothing wrong and she was markedly disappointed with the results and whisked me off to a dodgy hypnotist to improve my maths instead .

FFWD 5 years and I got expelled from a my very middle of the range boarding school that I had weekly boarded at for 10 years and the best part? It was on Fathers Day.

I am officially the Black Sheep of my family (but there are only 3 of us left now so not much competition) .

I haven't really...she's very proud of me. I was never the traditional go-to-uni at 18 kid....took me till' 22 to get to drama college but was awarded a big scolarship and did ok afterwards...now I have a different career and she's very proud of that. I see I'm lucky.

I disappointed my mother by not becoming a solicitor or barrister like she wanted - I hated studying law, I found it tedious. I disappointed my father by not becoming an alcoholic like him, and by marrying a man who is teetotal.

being born was my biggest mistake if i'd been a boy i'd of been adopted out in case i turned out like my dad (my sister is just like him why does it matter what sex you are?!!)

i didnt push myself at school (bullied beyond recognition for being tall/ over weight/ the poor neglected smelly kid)

fell pg early on (with a slightly older man im still with all these yrs later getting married to and having 2nd child with)

being overweight is her favourite thing to pick on (''i just dont know how you and your sister are so fat ive never been bigger than a 16 and i had depression'' even so far as saying when i told her i was pg ''oh you'll get that diabetes then with your weight and watch you dont go into early labour'')

not earning loads of money (lucky enought to be a sahm when out of work whilst my mum is ''still trying to get into her chosen field'' - unemployed for over 4 yrs and yet she still wears judjey pants about anyone claiming off the state - which she is doing!)

being strict with DD (i never had rules growing up i was completely ignored basically and used to go to mates houses for days without her even calling. i know how awful it is to feel unloved and like DD to have boundaries whilst still knowing OH and i love her very much)

finally not saving money ever (my mum was so frugal with money we used to have no food in the fridge, second hand clothes and run out of electric more often than not - whilst mum afforded her highlights every 4 weeks, nights out twice a week, weekends away with my step dad) so i am now very frivolous i buy DD nice things, take her to different towns for shopping and lunch but she isnt over spoilt she knows daddy works hard for moneys and she and OH do like to save so it evens out

sorry that was really long but god it feels really good to get off my chest.

by not always being interested in hanging around with the "brightest" people if they happen to be arseholes
by not going to oxbridge
by not being the editor of a national newspaper at the age of 26
by marrying someone without a degree who does a blue collar job
and generally by being more interested in my family and having a normal, happy life than in having an "interesting" job (i.e. the kind of job which sounds good at dinner parties and on cvs but in which you are surrounded by narcissistic nobbers)

they are neither of them gauche enough to come out and say the above in as many words. But its made abundantly clear.

I get the feeling that I was a disappointment from conception. The last disappointment for my mother that I know of was my deciding to go to art school in 2000. She felt art was a hobby not a job. She said in our last conversation in 2004, when I told we were moving to London so I could pursue a masters degree in art, "When are you going to get a real job like the rest of us, stop dreaming and help DH pay the bills". I never understood why she thought I didn't have a job; since moving 3000 miles away, (which when she was told, she said, 'why are you doing this to me?' ), I'd always had a job, and in fact, didn't even get a student loan to attend university because I worked throughout.

The only disappointing thing to my dad was when he caught me smoking at 15; he just calmly looked at me and said, "You should know better." That was a genuine disappointment, although I didn't quit smoking for 10 years. But that moment stayed with me.

By not being able to afford having 30 k sitting in a bank account to make a comfortable buffer. (Any responsible adult should realize they need to have at least a 30k buffer)
By having to take a loan to buy a car. (Loans are for stupid people who cant make money)
By not investing in a pension plan from the tender age of 18

etc. All in the same vein

My dad told me 2 weeks ago when i was planning on having my hair cut that i wasn't allowed the style i wanted and (quite honestly not remotely joking) that he wouldn't love me anymore or let me in the house if i cut it. (i am 34 and have always had long hair).

He has a daughter from a previous marriage who he never had any control over so mum says he tries to control me doubly to make up for it!

He calls me an idiot if i say anything he doesn't agree with. It's all very sad really because the behaviour is trying to keep me closer (in the only way he knows how) and it is pushing me away.

He always spoke to me (from small) as if i was a grown up and if i didn't understand or asked a silly question then i was thick. Similar to a medieval idea of people being born with all the knowledge they will ever have and children needing to be beaten to 'remember' it. (i was never beaten tho btw)

Once when i was 11 i asked what a 69 was (someone told me to say it to a teacher at school) and Dad went apoplectic, screaming i was a slag and stuff. My mum then said to me how stupid i had been to say something i knew would upset him.

It never occurred to either of them that i may not actually know and i wasn't being purposely nasty. I learned never to ask a question after that, and just found things out on my own.

Only now can i understand that i wasn't awful and they were woeful parents. It is liberating tho.

For not going to an olde worlde uni. I still went to a top Russell Group uni but because it wasn't sodding Edinburgh, Bristol etc it was deemed rubbish.
I had a catholic wedding in Spain, not a c of e affair.
For not being a raging Tory/ royal watcher/ armed forces admirer

I hope I end up like my Mum who, despite the fact I was a bit of a rebel and took drugs, slept around and got pregnant halfway through uni aged 20, my Mum has always believed in me and never made me feel like she was disappointed. I have since sorted things out and I think she would have been supportive of any choice I made. She is wonderful.

for people who have had parents who have made them feel bad about themselves.

Everything I say or do is one big dissapointment to my mother.

I remind her of my father. She hates my father.

My DF is too good for me, I must guilt trip him into staying with me somehow.

DS was born on Xmas Day, apparently I ruined her Xmas, and she will never be able to celebrate it properly again.

I didn't go to university.

I like cars.

Everything that makes me, well, me really!

I didn't reach my Mensa predicted potential, or any potential actually hehe, I'm fat (mother only) and I gave my children chavvy names
Actually they do love me to bits and have never said the above (other than the chavvy names!) but I know they are a little disappointed for me rather than them iykwim?

My parents are proud of me just for existing. They're prouder when I'm happy and even if I fuck up, they're merely supportive, never disappointed. Probably still proud actually.

But I know my ma secretly wishes I shared her love of trashy mags and Jeremy Kyle when instead I think they're 67% of what's wrong with society.

But we muddle through.

Some of this thread is bloody awful.

Right, now i'm miserable, so i propose everyone on here with children go and tell them you love them and are proud of them, right now.....go on....do it...i mean it.....RIGHT NOW!

yes SoH, I was the 'golden child', and my dad was extremely proud of me (mum died when I was v. young), but there were set backs and plain disappointments along the way which hurt a great deal.

but no, nothing like the stuff being described on here. Parents can fuck you up, even when they don't mean to.

My dads a multimillionaire

I clam benefits

Didn't go to uni.

Had ds at 18

And the big one got sexual abused from the ages of 8 till 16 by my step dad, and my dad told me it was my fault.

We don't speak, utter disappointment as a daughter to him, but he's no father

ah spuddy i tell my DD i love her and am proud of her and how pretty and smart she is so much she has actually told me to stop it ''muuuum you've already told me you love me this morning i knoooow!''

better she knows than wonders tho

spuddy - dd is sick to death of me telling her I love her. Don't care.

I've told dd I love her and I'm proud of her.

Her response?

"Of course mama, but may I have a biscuit?"

okay then super and awesome i'll let you off this time!

Spuddybean, you are right. I just told my DDs how much I love them and how proud I am. They both said 'I know' and shushed me as i had interuopted The Jonas Brothers.

Sad, sad stories here. They make me more determined to ensure my children know how loved they are. Hope I remember to keep doing it in their teenage years.

I didn't go to college and Uni straight after I graduated from high school (well I eventually did but that was years after I'd stopped living with them!)

I had my first child young, before I had any sort of career established. And to their dismay, I went on to have 2 more.

I married a "foreigner".

I worked in "blue collar" part-time jobs when I was a teen to get more pocket money. My dad still thought it was disgraceful as none of his children should ever have to do that, yet he gave me peanuts for allowances and wouldn't raise them even after I'd taken on said jobs so what did he expect.