To still feel so fucked off with my parents?

[lastminuterush]

In many ways my parents were good; very loving and generous and supportive.

But there are various things that really stand out from my childhood and adolescence and I sometimes feel angry.

Like:

• clothes; we didn't lack money but I never had clothes. A few hand me downs from my brother. Some horrible stuff from the market. Occasionally I'd beg something as a birthday or Christmas present but often it was wrong - like one year I asked for jeans and I got them but they were more demim trousers with an elasticised waist and embroidery, so for much younger girls. It contributed in part to such bad bullying as I always had awful stuff.

• my dad and the camera. He used to 'stage' elaborate photographs - getting the whole family to stand somewhere stupid while he took a picture or getting you into stupid poses and then putting the photos up somewhere. He once barged in on me when I was trying to eat something and took a photo. Just made you feel self conscious and stupid. And I hate the fact that I hate most of our family photos as I remember feeling awkward and ridiculous.

• Sunday school. My brother and I were made to attend Sunday school twice a day every Sunday. This lasted until year 5 for me I think and year 7 for my brother. Then it was once a day. I think we finally rebelled completely in secondary. The people running it were completely barking mad but my dad used to chuckle in an indulgent way and seemed to find them charming

• food. Just couldn't ever have a snack without some huge row as my mum worried endlessly about me getting fat yet used to buy copious amounts of cakes and biscuits.

• my mum slagging me off to people, sometimes inventing stuff. Sometimes if I challenged her on it she'd do this silly high pitched laugh and claim it happened. Stuff like 'titter titter my DD once rang me in the middle of the night because she fell out with her friends at a sleepover'. This didn't happen! Other times she would agree it was fictitious but she was trying to make the other parent feel better because I was well behaved

• mother having a memory like an elephant. I got into a minor bit of trouble at school in year 1 - talking or something - and the teacher must have mentioned it to my grandmother at pickup and she told my mum. My mum was still talking about it when I was in secondary school.

• my mums rages. Not often but sometimes I remember her just losing it and screaming. It was frightening when I was little.

• the emphasis on academic achievement. They used to force me to do work after school and if I got things wrong they'd yell and scream; my dad would punch things in frustration. It made me feel awful.

• comparisons to other children; my mum would tell me how much better another little girl was at me for something.

I don't know. Sometimes I feel mad with them, then guilty.

(I don't want counselling; please don't suggest.)

Thanks summer - I often do think I had a 60s/70s childhood but in the 80s/90s!

There was a lot of bullying and I think my parents thought I had a particularly difficult personality.

I think reetgod has got it - doesn't matter on the seriousness of something- it matters the effect on you

So did mine OP - difficult personality!!

It's hard because you don't know if they knew the things they were doing upset you and didn't care, which would be abusive, or if they honestly didn't realise, in which case it suggests they were good parents who tried their best but, like everyone, didn't get everything right.

Do you know what their childhood were like? Because if they had issues with bad memories from their own parents when they grew up perhaps they were consciously trying to do the opposite with you and went too far? For example their parents never helped them with/valued doing homework, so they didn't do well at school and didn't get great jobs, and then as adults felt frustrated with the way they could have done so much more, so focused really hard on making sure you and your brother didn't make the same mistake, and got frustrated if you didn't understand why they were making such a big deal out of it.

Do they have good social skills themselves and value interactions with others, or do they prefer to keep themselves to themselves?

Some of the things you mention could simply you attributing the same feelings and knowledge you have automatically to them - to you it seemed obvious that your clothes were obviously 'wrong' and made you a target for bullying, but some people genuinely aren't bothered about clothes, and wouldn't be able to really 'see' the difference between a long shapeless grey skirt and a short, stylish one. To them they would both be grey skirts and it would be pointless spending a few quid more on the second. They certainly wouldn't be able to make a correlation between skirt a = people mocking you, skirt b - people liking you.

The photo thing seems similar - I would suggest that it never entered your dads head that taking the photos bothered you in anyway.

Things like Sunday school I can't see as a huge issue - you say the people in charge were 'mad' but unless they were actually abusive it's not really a huge issue to be forced to go somewhere you'd prefer not to as a child. I understand you'd rather have been somewhere else, but lots of children would probably prefer to not go to school/a childminders/visit great-grandma but have to! Perhaps Sunday school was the only time your parents could get some time just to themselves all week?

On the other hand, you and your brother both making suicide attempts at similar ages is something that is unusual.

You say you don't want counselling, but has it helped writing it all down here at all? perhaps you could just write down things as and when you remember them in a journal/blog, just to process your feelings about them. You could try writing it down and then burning it to forget about it and move on, or perhaps keeping it and then referring back to it when you do something you regret with your own kids, which might help you make sense of it, e.g. 'God I really regret shouting at DD now but she was being so rude I couldn't help it, she really knows how to push my buttons and I had such a rough day at work - hmm perhaps that's how dad felt when he hit the table when I was doing my homework.'

Or, on the other hand you might think, 'God DD was really winding me up then and I understand why I shouted at her, but I can't imagine ever screaming in her face like Dad did to me, that probably was wrong.'

It might allow you to process it a little bit?

I think there is a difference between helping with homework and making a five or six year old sit at the table and punching it when she gets things wrong.

I do think there was an element of 'it's a skirt ... it's a bag' with them. Certainly my dad. My mum always had awful taste.

Your experience is your experience. I sometimes think comparison with others doesn't always help. One person's shit parents can be another's okay parents. Too many variables. Bottom line is, for you they were shit. And even on an objective level the incidents you remember support this view. You can analyse it to death, try to make sense, but at the end of the day, you will never have an absolute, accurate, knowledge, rationale, of what it was all about. However - you were short-changed on the parent front - it happens - what would you like to happen now?

op I do get what you are saying but look at it slightly different. I could write a long list of things I don't think were right in my childhood, from my parents smoking in the car to the shitty unhealthy meals and the kids should be seen but not heard attitude. I now just think it was just fairly normal for that era. My daughter has had a different upbringing but no doubt as an adult she'll think of stuff I done that she didn't like. I'm doing my best though. I have had conversations with my mum in recent years and she does actually regret some of the stuff from my childhood. My parents even say now when we talk about the past "that was just how it was, I know people wouldn't dream of doing that nowadays." I also think if you have your own kids in the future they will pick up on what you didn't like about their parenting style as you won't repeat it. I hope you find peace with it all. I am not trying to downplay your feelings at all, just offering my perspective and obviously I don't know your parents personally just going by the picture I'm getting in my head.

I agree on the comparison with others thing - I think that NO two families are the same - atmosphere in each family is different- the emphasis is different

I struggle with my childhood too, and I find it very difficult when I read advice such as 'you're an adult now, time to move on,' because I can't.

Part of my anger stems from the fact that I know I'm not the person I could have been, due to my pretty dreadful start.

I've not parented the way I could have, I have anxiety that's with me for life, my self-esteem is shot to pieces, my coping mechanisms are dreadful...I've had counselling, and though I've made some changes, it's largely left me with an awareness of how and why I'm fucked up, but no way of making it better.

OP - it's very hard.

On the subject of food, my DM always said she hated cooking and it showed in her food. I can still remember sitting over my plate trying to hide my retching as there would be hell to pay if I left anything. Even in my mid 50s there are still foods that I cannot face, despite being well off, my DD had 2 allotments but no freezer so when a fruit or veg came into season that was all you got day after day. I remember the first time my DP was invited for dinner, my DM did an apple pie, my DP said to me afterwards that the pastry was closer to short bread and I'm never eating at your DPs again !
When ever we went to visit we would take them out to dinner rather than eat at their home.

As to what I would like to happen now, I think the difficulty is that there is no clear line drawn. It's more of a gradual smudging but when you trace it back that's where it starts.

So, I didn't have friends or boyfriends or confidence in my adolescence. So I was lonely and troubled in my twenties and that led to my thirties and ...

It isn't a question of saying 'ah, well that's that then' as although it IS, it also affects me now. I wish it didn't.

lastminuterush I get it. I feel robbed of being the person I could have been, sometimes.

Springtown- very valid points.

The variables thing... to some extent it's down to personality type. I have two siblings who I believe haven't felt some of the issues as strongly as me; they were less introverted and reflective as I was as a child. My gut reaction was always 'will what I think/say/do upset my parents?' Whereas my brother and sister seemed more resilient. But then who am I to judge? Maybe they would tell a different story.

The era we grew up in is also relevant. Things like once weekly bath and hair wash- totally normal in the 60s / 70s (though very unpleasant when on my period, but hey, periods were never, ever mentioned. You just put up and shut up)

My parents mentioned briefly a couple of things in much later life which led me to believe that even they were shocked about things like the canings... I suspect they regretted doing it because they could see a couple of decades later that it's totally unacceptable. What's considered brutal and abusive now was just a normal part of life.

I guess all any of us can do is accept that
We don't choose our parents, that the vast majority of parents don't set out to wilfully hurt their children (physically or emotionally) but that no one is perfect, many people are not equipped to be brilliant parents and we probably all strive to correct the flaws we can see in our own upbringing

Hi. My childhood was pretty awful, top end of awful infact. Some of it was deliberate, some I know was circumstances, different culture from the norm. I've accepted the cultural difference made me stand out as an oddity and choose not to impost that on my children.
Some was deliberate abuse and would say from experience that acceptance, if at all possible, is what helped me in the end. That's not to say the pain doesn't come and go. It will always be there, but I don't let it spoil my emotional wellbeing.
Counselling did help to some degree, but...
Emotionally it made it worse in some ways, the individual therapist is key, a therapist is human, and therefore not perfect. To become a counsellor they would have had to received counselling themselves and on an ongoing basis. Therefore what they experience will form how they communicate and think.
Letting go of the image of what I would have choseen for yourself has made the most difference to me sanity. Flashbacks are commonplace for me, I have to stop torturing myself by going over it.
Healing is process, it takes time. Be kind to yourself. You can't change the past, it's the worse place to reside.

The saddest thing about my story is that due to my childhood and always being put down, I decided not to have children of my own, for fear I might inflict my childhood on them, that's how much my DPs destroyed me.
I never found peace until my mid 40s and by that time my relationship was on the rocks, now in my mid 50s I so regret my decision.

Although it doesn't sound abusive at first, I think badly dressing children when you can afford to dress them well is abusive. It makes your children a target for bullying and is very cruel. I'm from a really working class area and most folk dress their kids immaculately (even if the clothes are cheapies from primary) but I have some really well off relatives who dress their kids like tramps and it really does impact the kids confidence. I don't believe in spending a fortune on kids clothes (especially babies and toddlers) but dressing kids like tramps is just cruel

I think your list sounds a bit petty in places. There are a couple of things which are parenting fails, but we all have those I imagine. It all sounds very normal. Any friend of mine would have similar things, and I'm talking about the ones from loving homes. I think you've inherited your Mum's ability (shared with my Mum..) to have an elephantine memory and not let things go. Honestly, let it go. Talk through the bigger things perhaps, but as someone who looked after her own mother in the time running up to her death, I can tell you that any similar grudges I might have held all disappeared. We all make mistakes as parents. Sending a child to Sunday school used to be totally normal (I was also sent). Ditto getting clothes etc wrong (I could mention my friend who at Christmas got a Raleigh Shopper middle-aged-lady bike instead of the Raleigh Chopper she longed for). The photo things sounds funny and not unkindly meant at all.

I also can't believe that people are dismissing your childhood and your incredibly shit parents as something not too bad.

I had a shit childhood with a mother who was also an alcoholic and who yelled and screamed at me for perceived slights until she died. In fact that last time I saw her, a week before she died earlier this year, she told me how fat and ugly I was looking. That was a recurrent theme.

There were also little digs about how the fact that my son died shortly after birth was a sign that I would have been a shit parent. This was compounded by the fact that a few years later I had treatment for cancer which we thought meant I was infertile. When I eventually had two children in my 40's she told everyone how much she had to help me raise them because I was crap. They lived 200 miles away and we didn't see them often.

She was jealous of my academic achievements and tried to get me to quit University and marry well (like she had to).

The worst thing was my father never stood up for me because if he tried she would then scream at him.

We never had a proper mother daughter relationship and never did anything together. I didn't even know what it was like to have that until I met a friend and saw her with her grown up daughters.

To the family and the outside world, however, my mother was the glue that stuck us all together, the matriarch, the wise woman and it is a myth that she perpetuated. At her funeral people told me that I was like her and i couldn't help but laugh and tell them that I fucking hope not. Needless to say most of my extended family aren't speaking to me anymore. But I don't give a shit.

A pp mentioned that you won't get a chance to resolve your relationship with your mother. Personally, I think resolution is over rated. It is ok to not have a good feeling towards a dead parent. It is ok not to forgive them for a shit life that made you want to try and kill your self. It is even ok to not miss them when they die or not bother to resolve things if they are alive.

What is not ok is to hide it all away and continue to let it affect your life. If you don't want counselling, that's your decision. It is not for everyone. But you do need to find a way of living your life your way and fuck the people who tell you you are doing something wrong.

My close friends and husband all know how shit my mother was. They all tell me how much less stressed I look now she's gone.

I wish any grudges I had disappeared on their deaths, but they haven't.

I suppose the Sunday school thing was because of bullying (again!) I did tell them and they kept sending me.

Sending a child to Sunday school was totally normal when I was that age, but my parents were kind of Christian (the kind where my mother thought it would help my father get promoted- when he left that job, they stopped going). Sending a child TWICE a day when you aren't even a believer is odd, but it may have been the only babysitting they could get.
My parents were and are hugely disapproving of everything I do and I spent a huge part of my life doing whatever they wanted in the vain hope that one day they would like me. Threads like this have really helped me, because I can see that I am not alone and I am probably not the bitch they think I am.

SirVix the Chopper story made me laugh...and reminded me that while you dont always dwell on stuff from your childhood, sometimes other conversations or posts on MN bring things back.

We were told we couldn't have a bike until we I was 14 as they were dangerous. However my DB really wanted Raleigh Chopper (purple) so he got one when he was 9.. I was also then allowed a bike at 12 but I got the aforementioned Raleigh Shopper. My DB's was to play on but I needed the shopper so well, I could go to the shops for my Mum

I've now got a snazzy bike basket that I actually chose

I managed to let mine go until I had dd.
She was hot and whinging on holiday recently and I snapped at her.
And it all came back to me in a flash.
I had been doing similar once and my dad just snapped and let rip. The entire holiday was ruined because of me. Everyday I would get a 'you ruined it for everyone as per usual'. And my mum would anxiously back up my dad and weigh in with something else bad about me but it would sometimes be horribly spiteful or mocking, usually to someone else in a jokey way.
And I would spend all week looking at the floor and regretting opening my mouth for anything.
And every holiday was the same.

I didn't ruin any holiday.

But I didn't realise this until 3 weeks ago.

They aren't bad people. They did do their best.
But they destroyed any self confidence I might ever have had. And I'm finding it very hard to let go now as I just keep remembering more and more things.

I understand the issue about the clothing. I think some people honestly don't value having 'the right' clothes and the importance of how this feels to a teenager, and how it is like a magnet for bullies to be dressed so badly old fashioned.
I remember being about 10/11 just gown a lot and rather than being bought new clothes I was given my mothers hand me downs. The attitude was 'it will do'. There was no shortage of money either.
I never had a branded pair of trainers until I was older and bought them myself, had a freebie bag when I started high school. But otherwise a very loving and normal household, but just a reluctance to buy the fashionable or 'expensive' stuff.

It sounds like you have had a very difficult childhood last Reading it through the alcoholism leaps out at me, and that may well be one of the roots of their odd behaviour. Your Dad was presumably either also a heavy drinker or an 'enabler', and often the tendency to alcoholism can be passed down through families, so it maybe that one or both of them also had childhoods affected by it themselves. Regardless of the reasons, it sounds like one of the issues you are struggling with is the missed opportunities due to the impact this had on you, so perhaps thinking about how you could 'recover' by working out what you might want to do with your life and who you would like to be now would help? Life-coaching can help with this and with making changes happen, either by using a life-coach or finding a self-help book on it to find some ideas of ways to work on this. Personally I have found that pushing myself to start moving towards the life I wanted really helped me recover from some of my 'odd' childhood as it made me feel better about myself now, though there will always be some aspects I struggle with which are very much rooted in my upbringing (I relate very much to your clothes, family dynamics and social inclusion issues from childhood, but it was not to the extent of yours in other ways) All the best for the future.

Perhaps not counselling but seeing a psychologist could help you unpick what happened and make sense of it. Do you know much about your parents history? It sounds as if they made some extremely unusual decisions to say the least, any ideas where these could have come from? My parents were similarly not great, but I've got a reasonable understanding of where it came from and that's helped me move on from it. But while it's still a jumble of good, abusive and plain bizarre it's very hard to make sense of and leave behind.