To think that we all 'damage' our kids a bit, and it's not the end of the world

[Echobelly]

As Larkin said ' They fuck you up your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do'...

There's a lot of anxiety created for parents - well, for mothers especially, thanks Patriarchy - that things we do or say or don't do or don't say 'damage' our kids. And I think there are things about all our parenting that causes what the media might call 'damage' to our kids, but what does that really mean?

At the end of the day, unless we are actually serious cruel or neglectful, what this means is that our parenting style might mean our kids might grow up oversensitive to criticism, not great at intimacy, have a bad temper, be shy, talk too much, find it a bit hard to trust people or whatever. But you know what? They'll still have relationships, hold down jobs and have satisfying lives despite those traits.

I think parents need to forgive themselves more - yes, our actions do have an impact on our kids, some of it negative, but the negatives are extremely unlikely to be devastating in the normal course of things.

I do think MNers are very quick to suggest cutting contact with family members. I definitely agree there are some situations where there really isn't much choice but to go NC, but posters seem to suggest it at the drop of a hat here. Same with "leave the bastard". Some people have very unrealistic expectations of how relationships work.

If the majority of memories are good, if you keep your promises as best as you can, always try your best, apologise when you lose your shit, I think you'll end up with well balanced loving children.

Agree strongly with @gluteustothemaximus, and would only add to that list: 'show them your love is unconditional and that it's for the person they are'.

I think that all these things make the backbone of your relationship with your kids and that it's these fundamentals which count. If you have this, I think that the superficial 'only human' fuckups (occasionally ranting at them when you could have been more patient etc.) don't matter in the scheme of things, and don't ultimately cause 'damage'.

I fell into a deep depression when my twins were small. One of them was in nicu for two months and I read this article about how boys especially are severely affected by separation from their mother or minimal physical contact in the early weeks, and how it causes lifelong mental health issues. I thought he’s only two months old and I’ve fucked him up for life.

Now he’s being assessed for autism and every day I wonder if it’s because of damage resulting from being apart from him - I can picture him screaming in the night and me not being there.

Mum guilt is awful.

Good thread.

I think what we can do is try to continually improve.

I saw another member post about a list her and her mother wrote about things they would change from her childhood. I try to do that in my present parenting.

I try not to do the things that my mother did to me. For example she discouraged independence, and my bed was in her room until I was 5. I then couldnt sleep alone and had nightmares. She would call me an alliterative nickname that lead me to believe I was the nickname 'lazy....', and I still feel I am lazy now. Even though I am not. She would criticise my weight and big thighs despite me being my fathers muscular build and she being a waif) etc.

One day I found myself calling DD an alliterative nickname related to a personality trait she has. And I stopped myself.

I know there will be other aspects of my parenting that will be poor and my DD will think back to and wonder 'why did she do that' but I am most definitely NOT doing what my mother did.

I think the concept is called kaizen in Japanese (Continuous improvement) and I think that that's all we can hope for.

I think its true to a certain degree, we just have to do our best not to push our issues onto them.
Life makes us who we are and forms our opinions and points of view. Some of that is going to brush off onto our kids, the good and the bad.

WishIHadntLooked77 - ah yes, I missed the main one! Unconditional love.

My upbringing was very conditional.

peppermint

100% agree.

Our girls are smart, kind, funny but they are fucking wimps with physical stuff. The pair of them. I see kids running round full steam, banging into stuff, hitting their heads on things and getting up and laughing, not my two. So delicate and bloody precious.

My husband does say as a child he found physical stuff scary and feels his balance was off, so he wonders if it's genetic, but still there's blame from us being too hover-y/helpful at parks etc too for sure.

It does make me feel bad. But on the flip side my two never push another kid out the way or hurt others like more boisterous kids might. You can't have it all.

But - they also have loads of good qualities and no-one's perfect. I don't think there's a way to raise the perfect child. We need to be easier on ourselves.

I'm not sure that an adult child's perception of their parents' failures and the impact that these failures may have had on their lives are always accurate. I watched a Dr Phil cilip (my latest addiction) on YouTube where a 30+ year old man blamed his parents for absolutely everything that had gone wrong in his life. Admittedly they weren't the best parents ever but the things that their son was trying to pin on them was ridiculous and he took absolutely no accountability for anything himself.

The thing that struck me is that whilst imperfect parenting can have a negative impact on someone during their formative years, there must be a point where an adult starts to take responsibility for themselves and their own life. This man was so eager to blame his parents for all the bad things in his life as he simply couldn't handle the fact that he was an independent adult that was actually responsible for his own successes and failures. It's like he was stuck in the child's mindset that all his troubles could and should be fixed by his parents. I think focussing overly on parenting and it's importance does play into the hands of these types of people that are keen to blame anyone but themselves for their failures and make their parents make a convenient scapegoat.

Gluteustothemaximus. Just remember that your DCs are being given the example that it is fine to simply abandon ones parents by going NC. I hope you won’t regret teaching them that lesson when they decide to focus on your misdemeanours in years to come, as there will be some! It will be the obvious step for them to do the same.

Mine are adult.

Could I honestly say that I did the best that I could? Yes I could, given the circumstances.

Was it good enough. Clearly not on reflection.

Can't see if this has been posted before:
"All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."
Mitch Albom

I like the idea of parents moulding out of clay amd leaving finger prints, little unique bits etc

@fallofrain I hate that quote. My parents were/are abusive. Violent, neglectful, inconsistent, gaslighty- and I am hugely damaged. 15 years of specialist therapy and counting. That does NOT mean I am shattered "beyond repair. People like me are capable of getting better and having meaningful happy lives.

My DDs know they are very much loved and they know their parents love each other very much too. DH and I present a united front to our DDs (even if we discuss and disagree in private). This means our DDs feel very safe and secure in their daily lives.

But they have also known me be (occasionally) unfair. I have been known to shout. Sometimes they are not my No. 1 priority. I don't tend to sweat the small stuff like keeping their rooms immaculately tidy (a weekly tidy + clean is sufficient). Neither have I ever agonised over how much sugar they eat or how much screen time they have.

We have rarely, if ever, missed a sports day, school play or parents evening. But they know we have our own lives and interests which are important to us too.

End result is we have two laid back, happy go lucky daughters who have never really given us a moment's worry. I have friends who have raised their children in much more rarified and helicoptering environments and they always seemed stressed to the eyeballs to me.

OP this might interest you

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201512/the-good-enough-parent-is-the-best-parent

@Bumpitybumper, I take your point, and I do agree that 'adult children' whose childhood experience has negatively affected them into later life have to take responsibility for changing that situation - given that they're adults i.e. counselling, looking at their own behaviours.

I found myself angry and depressed in my early 30's and started counselling, and was told quite firmly by the psych. that my mother's relationship with me wasn't normal and loving as I'd previously thought, but inappropriate and abusive in some ways at least. It's taken some years to work through this new knowledge and turn it around from a 'pity party for one' to information I can use to change my relationship with my mother/change my negative behaviour/parent in different ways - it feels like a process - continuous improvement like a PP said.

From what I've read, your 30's are a really common time for negative childhood experience to result in depression. One thing which struck me that they psych. said in counselling was constant lack of boundaries + conditional love (i.e. do what I say/be what I expect without question, or no love/affection/communication) screws up the child's 'sense of self'...as I understand it, she was basically saying that I didn't know who I was or see myself as an individual. If you accept that, I can see how it can be hard to take adult responsibility for later troubles/failures.

I've also read that adults who suffer neglect as children (my mother, not me) can fail to move on from a child's emotional mindset...once they've found that their parents' love can't be trusted, it can have pretty major effects down the line. My mother simply can't take responsibility for mistakes, for example.

@jeanne16, do you know what @gluteustothemaximus experienced? Do you know that her children aren't being protected by the NC decision? If children are at risk of the same damage, NC is sometimes the only sound parenting decision to make.

SinkGirl, mine was glued to me pretty much 24/7 as a baby and has autism. I worried that too much contact with his overanxious mother might have contributed to it.

If it's autism - you didn't cause it.

Oh, and he reports back (from uni) that he hadn't realised we were good parents till he met some people who had bad parents.

Make of that what you will!

One of the best things my crap childhood did for me was to teach me that I do not need to listen to, act on, or have feelings about what other people think or do.

I am completely confident in my parenting skills, my teenage boys are a complete joy to me, I don't feel any guilt about my choices for anything in their lives and I have taught them (hopefully well) to be their own person and to be confident in their own choices. I am also always completely honest with them.

When they are adults they may well feel that I was too harsh, too strict, too soft, too critical but that will be for them to deal with. As adults we have to take responsibility for who we are, we cannot go through life saying "I am like this because my parents did ........". We all have the ability to be the person we want to be and I hope that I have given them that.

I'm always a bit amazed that people don't spend loads of time reading up on child psychology and spending time with kids before having their own

Child development was a compulsory course at my (foreign) secondary school in the 70s. One of the most useful things I have ever studied: I referred back to that book when my own children were little 25 years later. Even these days, when someone comes on MN to ask "what's wrong with my 2yo/3yo/4yo" I often seem to see the book hovering before my eyes and its author whispering "told you so, it's what they do at that age".

I am too shouty and a bit too ocd with mess. I don't know what this will do to my children but at the end of the day, it is just me.

I score well on huge sense of security, social-ness and all the treats. No idea what that will do to them either, but again, it is just me...

I am really loving this discussion. Slightly just marking my place with this message.

My son is now 43. In retrospect I think I was a pretty shit mother. I don't really like small children much and found motherhood very difficult, I suspect being too young might have been a factor.

His take on it is completely different, he says he remembers a lot of fun and laughter and always feeling safe, secure and loved. He says I was a mum who "always put the work in". To be honest, I believe I'm a much better mother now than when he was little and that may influence his view.

I have a really visceral reaction to people saying stuff like this because it’s what my mum always says.

OK she didn’t neglect me but she fundamentally disliked who I am. I have recently discovered I have autism. Parenting an autistic child myself I see her type reasonably often - ‘oh I do my best, I’m only human, any problems are only because is so difficult....’

She is so quick to trot out this crap about everyone makes mistakes because (I believe) she didn’t want to look properly at her parenting and her treatment of me. Just wave a hand and say oh well everyone fucks up a little

I am NC with her. My life is much, much happier now.

Gluteustothemaximus. Just remember that your DCs are being given the example that it is fine to simply abandon ones parents by going NC. I hope you won’t regret teaching them that lesson when they decide to focus on your misdemeanours in years to come, as there will be some! It will be the obvious step for them to do the same.

My DC's are being set a great example, of not to put up with bullies. Not to put up with abuse. No matter if they are blood or water. To stand up for yourself. To watch out for red flags in relationships. To not allow yourself to be treated badly, in front of your children.

Funnily enough, my parents did send me a letter. Amongst all the nasty ones, this was one of the nastiest. They said 'I hope your children find some pathetic reason to cut you off when they're older. Then you'll know what it feels like'.

As I said. They're peaches.

I do think individual personalities have a lot to do with it as well.

My eldest and youngest are very happy-go-lucky well adjusted children. My middle dd has always needed (and probably Will always need) more attention than the others put together. She is (aged 13) very critical of our parenting, in a way the other two are not. She goes out of her way to make me feel bad about everything, and plays the victim in every situation. Everything bad in her life is someone else's doing. She talks about how much she loves me, but would never offer to help me with anything the way the other two would! I'm pretty sure when she grows up if her life hasn't gone to plan, it will be our fault

I have a "friend" like this. Known her since childhood, know her parents well too. Her life hasn't worked out how she would have wanted, and this is the fault of lots of people, including her parents, but not her.

My childhood wasn't perfect, but I was loved and knew it.