To be annoyed that my parents deny I was bullied 25 years ago?

[BigBlueBubble]

Talking to my parents tonight about getting DS into a good school so he doesn’t go through the awful bullying I experienced at the local comp. They’ve denied any knowledge of me ever being bullied and said they thought I was “happy” as a teenager.

They apparently don’t remember me crying several times a week and telling them I was miserable. They don’t remember me having no friends. My mother doesn’t remember regularly getting hysterical because I was hurting her by crying and being depressed. My father doesn’t remember telling me to stop crying because it was upsetting my mother and not helping the situation. They don’t remember me refusing to go to school. Or the meetings they had with the woman (psychologist of some kind) that the school sent out. Or forcing me to go to school with threats that the authorities would “take me away” and “drug me with happy pills” if I didn’t go to school quietly and stop talking about feeling depressed and afraid.

I know it was 25 years ago but it was a terrible life changing experience that destroyed four years of my life and has had lifelong effects, and them denying it happened has really upset me.

Memory is a very strange thing, particularly when it is long ago. I remember stuff happening to my sister that she says never happened or that it happened differently and vica versa. As for my sister and my mother they regularly disagreed about the details of (or even if )things that had happened when we were children. I tended to argue less but I often had a third view!

It is very upsetting though if it is something that was very important to you.

It all sounds very familiar - by parents "can't remember" things that highlight they've done some pretty shitty things either. It's ll so convenient for them.

It's makes the original pain & upset so much more hurtful by heaping more shit on top. Like it's a trebble whammy - not only did you get bullied, but the way they dealt with it at the time made it so much worse, instead of making it better, then, when you dare to recall it, they deny it - even more hurt!

I suspect your parents don't remember because they are as self involved now as they were then. You remember being incredibly unhappy but if they just see things selfishly, all they experienced at the time was a bit of "moaning" from you about not wanting to go to school and it probably inconvenienced them on the way out the door to work but they managed to fix the situation by saying stuff about happy pills and taking you away and then you stopped complaining and went back to school. Job done! They probably retain no more memory of it than if there was a week or two when the shower wasn't working so they were late to work because they had to run a bath.

And yes as others have said you'd be very welcome on Stately Homes and you might be interested in the books People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck or Children of the Self Absorbed by Nina Brown.

I absolutely feel your pain. There is nothing you can do apart from heal your own pain. It is useless to protest against such things. They will only become more entrenched in their belief. And it’s not that they believe what they are saying it’s that they cannot face up to the truth and see themselves for the inadequate parents that they were. It is just too scary to even go there. Even trying to get them to admit it will tear you to shreds. I have been there and done that.

My mother is in complete denial about so much of my childhood.

I went nc with my brother last year the last time he was violent with me. She told me that she just wanted us to get on. I went ballistic.

The upshot is she has decided that I bullied my brother not the other way round. The fact that he is older and larger and regularly imprisoned me in rooms whilst squashing me so I couldn’t breathe and throwing me around like a rag doll until he was done. Then as he got older he started with sexualised abuse. According to her none of this happened.

He also had a bunch of great stuff given to him as a teen that was his and given to him just because. (As in not birthdays). To use it sometimes I had to beg and plead to him. Thus in every way he was my master.

My parents created a monster, who to this day treats me abysmally and was violent with me last year (hence nc). I am disabled - an invisible disability - and he denies this. The more recent violence and threats of violence occured when he saw me not being able to do things he has decided I can do (which I would be able to do very easily were I able bodied).

As for the upsets I had as a child. I am a sensitive soul and not meant for a family of brutes. My mother used to stand over me goading me to cry. When I confronted her about it a few years ago she justified it as her elder sister did it to her. She also doesn’t believe in emotions.

So why and how did I bully my brother? I got upset and angry a lot as a teen as I was trying to escape the family abuse. For example I screamed and shouted when I was studying in my room when he would play the same record over and over again for a couple of hours. My therapist pointed out he did this specifically to make me look crazy - afterall you do it once and it upsets someone, why would you do it again other than to goad them? As I say, he was older so we are talking him being late teens.

My mother still uses this last one to show how horrid and unreasonable I was. This has been twisted to me expecting complete silence - as though I were some kind of tyrannical dictator (I wish). Surely when someone is sleeping, studying or working, you are relatively quiet. It’s common decency. I didn’t get up at 5 am and blast the tv or stereo. There’d have been hell on that front. But it was ok for them to do the same to me. She also denies the other abuse. She was complicit, knew about some of the sexual stuff and it all should have been stamped out when he was very small.

In what world is it normal to let one child abuse another? He and my mother also used to laugh about it. She’d tell him off, try and fail to hit him and then they’d be in fits of giggles.

My mother phoned me this morning for an unrelated issue and I said again how odd I find it that they never dealt with my bullying. She said “Well you never wanted to talk about it, you just bottled it up”.

So clearly she does remember. And now she’s saying I didn’t want to talk about it, when in actual fact they told me to shut up because there was nothing they could do and I was upsetting my mother.

I know it was a long time ago but it had a lifelong effect on me. I still have low self esteem and struggle to form friendships. And since I became a parent myself it’s on my mind a lot because I can’t imagine letting my child suffer like that and I’m scared about what will happen when he goes to school.

It's not your fault. They're trying to make themselves feel better. My mother does the same thing- I was bullied at school to the extent that I started to pull out my own hair which made her so angry she would hit me. When I begged her to help she laughed. I still have bald patches over 20 years later and she saw them recently, and got angry again because "You only did it to upset me. You refused all help and anyway you were old enough to know better"
I was 11.
Don't be scared about your child going to school- you're not going to be like your parents.

I feel the same about my childhood now that I have my own children. We didn’t have a single adult to look after our needs, every single person in our lives were out for no1 and if that meant emotionally abusing a child, then that’s what happened. Even now if I talk about anything that happened as a child - for instance (and this is one of the smaller things) after my dad died we never saw my GP on that side from one year to the next. They’d always say “don’t be a stranger” and expect us, as children of 12 and 8, to ride our bikes 11 miles in to another county, to go and see them - this apparently was totally acceptable says my mum and more than we deserved. At least they always sent cards at Christmas type comments.

I like to think she doesn’t remember because she was drunk the whole time but in reality I think she remembers herself as an amazing mum of two who never made any mistakes. How could she when “you turned out alright”...

She shouted at me when I BF in public. She shouted at me when my stitches reopened after giving birth. If fact every time there is a tiny sliver of vulnerability she seizes gve opportunity to make herself feel better because it shows I am not perfect “like I think I am”.

Eurgh. They do remember and I’m sorry to say it but they haven’t treated you well x

People are weird about school bullying. I think there is a bit of a kids will be kids mentality and some adults prefer to brush it under the rug.

This does sound a very difficult situation. To a degree, there is a smattering of this in all of us. My mother claims to have no idea I hated school etc. As the mother of grown-up children, I would just like to add the perspective of a mother. When your children are small you are desperate to be the best parent that you can be and definitely better than your own parents. As the years go by, problems come and go. Some you deal with well, others not so well. Some things might be minimised or handled badly, and often things are said that cannot be unsaid, some of which you didn't mean. Alongside this, you are managing adult relationships which may or may not be supportive. I have always loved my children more than my life but cannot claim to be a perfect mother. I am lucky that despite all my mistakes they are all well and happy and we have good relationships. For years I desperately wanted them to affirm that I did ok in their periods of difficulty but now I realise that is wrong and would only be for my peace of mind. The truth is they did well despite my mistakes. Many parents want to airbrush for this very reason. We all revisit our memories from a different viewpoint and change them a little to fit our own narrative. I am not saying this is the case here Op so not minimising your situation. I am sad on MN that posters pile in with the accusations so readily about relatives, in particular, MILs. All of you young parents will get something wrong, there will be fallouts and you will be MIL. be grateful if your children are loving and forgiving because you won't be perfect.

My Mum did the same.

It took until she needed a level of Care, in her early 80's, for her to admit that she she just couldn't deal with the type of Mother she had been and the life she had led. She had to turn NSPCC adverts off, because they mirrored her behaviour.

Nothing about what I'd suffered, but at least there was an apology in with it.

As you are seeing, it's very common for inadequate and neglectful/abusive Parents to do the same. Hence all the "the SS took my kids for no reason" brigade.

People see things differently and also remember things differently. It is a bitter pill to swallow.

I was lucky that before she died my Mum admitted she regretted telling me to turn the other cheek and not fight the bullies. All those years later she saw first hand the damage the had done and it must have been hard on her. I wonder if your parents are lying to themselves as the truth of their inaction would be too painful?

I’m reading so much suffering in these posts.

Birdsgottafly
Interesting piece of information there about SS. My friend says my mother will say something is white if I say it’s black just to argue with me.

you just bottled it up

Mine says similar. “You were always so secretive.” “You don’t tell me anything about your life.”

My explanation:
a) she holds court to be adulated and doesn’t actually want to listen.
b) anything I tell her will be used against me in the court of mother superiority.

It is difficult dealing with people who have issues, bullied, mental health. Some people choose to cope by denying it ever happens. Saying that, maybe it's time for you to move on for good instead of dwellign on it?

My parents don't remember a few things I found traumatic at a young age. My DF has mellowed considerably since then and finds some of what (I remind him) he did fairly surprising. They also only found out since I had DD that I was abused by my boyfriend age 17/18. Not sure they'd have done much if I had told them but I felt bad for not asking for help at the time when I saw their reactions.