Fake memories?

[Aydel]

I was chatting with DD2 the other day about bringing up children, specifically her and her sister when they were little. She said to me “You used to hit us all the time to make us behave.”

I was horrified - the only time I smacked either of them was DD1’s hand with the fish slice when I was cooking and she was trying to touch the frying pan. DD2 “remembers” me pulling down her trousers and smacking her bottom. She claims this happened at home and specifically when I picked her up from nursery on a few occasions. I said that it categorically didn’t happen. She just said “OK, if that’s what you say.”

She also said she used to scream and cry and refuse to go back to boarding school on a Sunday night. This also isn’t true! She was always quite happy about it, and slept all the way to school. It was never an issue.

She’s 23 now. I asked her what other “discipline” she remembered, and she remembered being taken home from a restaurant when she was about 4, because she kept getting down and running around (true). And also being made to clean her bedroom wall when she had scribbled on it (also true). But I’ve never hit either her or her sister! I asked her sister, and she said that neither I nor DH ever hit her or her sister, and confirmed that DD2 didn’t cry when she went back to school. Yet DD2 is adamant that this happened, and it makes me sad and worried.

She's only 23 - she wasn't beaten at boarding school

But I would argue that someone completely well adjusted wouldn’t make stuff up for the hell of it. People are products of their environment by and large, so if they’re making stuff up it raises the question why they feel the need. It’s a fact of life that your upbringing and parenting shape you and sometimes even with the best will in the world they don’t do the best job a lot of the time. Parents play a significant part in how their children turn out.

She didn’t board at 11, she was older. I am sure there were some tears at the start as it was all so different (including a change of country), but she didn’t cry every Sunday when we took her back. We would joke about her falling asleep as soon as the engine started, and having to wake her up when we got to school. DD1 would sometimes come with us, and just remembers her sister sleeping for the entire journey.

And DD1 is adamant that they were never hit or smacked. Told off and removed, yes, but not smacked.

Yep, it’s apparently quite common. Best ignored.🙂

I agree with you but I would caution that it is not necessarily parental fault here, we just can’t know either way.

100% my sibling does this for drama

We can’t know as we don’t know the OP or daughters life, but people don’t generally make things up out of thin air, so maybe a chat needs to be had to understand where it’s coming from.

My mum is like your mum. Doesn't seem to remember any of the bad parts of my upbringing. She will deny they happened and it's really fractured our relationship. I just think of her as a gaslighter now and can't trust her

Sorry, my mum is like you *

Do you have any siblings, if so, can they verify it happened?

Yep, this. Not everything is down to poor parenting - children are influenced by all sorts of things that are nothing to do with their parents.

@loverofbestbuy

perhaps doesn’t want to revisit / cause a fuss 🤷
Or maybe the more likely reason.... it never happened.

You are assuming it happened. I'm sorry it happened to you. That doesn't mean everyone was like your mum

Not quite the same, but my DD is convinced that we once drove through a tunnel that we regularly pass on the way home. There's no way a car would even fit through and we've never even walked there (dodge area). She must have dreamt it but she's convinced we did even though she can see it's not possible.

There's a few things she's mentioned that didn't happen. Weird.

There have been cases discussed where one sibling detailed a completely different childhood to that which took place. Multiple siblings confirm their stories are nonsensical. Some of the 'facts' couldn't have happened due to geographical/logistical realities. Yet the 'victim' is convinced of their truth.

There are probably various reasons why this happens but it isn't always down to parental abuse. People are complex. Weird shit happens in peoples heads. Unfortunately the whole 'we must believe and accept whatever victims say' movement has thrown facts out in the attempt to rebalance the sadly high number of abuse cases that were not believed. But accepting a falsehood as fact doesn't serve anyone abs creates new victims.

I gave myself a false memory.

There was one particular thing my dad used to do. A few years ago I remembered it and thought how nice it was that he did it, but then I thought 'what would I have done or said if Mum had said that he did it out of guilt and we all know why he felt that way.' It was just a random thought, IT NEVER HAPPENED and I know it didn't. But my mind has still managed to do a sort of 'ah, but maybe it DID happen and you've just forgotten...'

It would have been out of character to the point of insanity for my mother to have said such a thing, and my dad was an exemplary father. But I still catch myself sometimes thinking 'but maybe it WAS real...'

It wasn't. But the more you think about things like this, the more real they begin to feel. Maybe your DD had a vivid dream or wrote a story where these things happened, and it has sunk into her subconscious so deeply that she 'feels' it as a memory?

maybe it was dreams? I had so many vivid dreams that my brother was dead and we were in mourning, at once stage in my childhood - concentrated on around a one month period - that I used to wake up thinking it was true, because I remembered other mornings lying in my bed crying about it.

So to this day I have clear memories of mourning my very much alive and walking around my house right now, adult "baby" brother - if that makes sense?

Of course they can be influenced by other things, but what I’m saying is your upbringing and early family life influences the rest of your life. I’m more replying to other posters saying people ‘blame their parents’. Your early environment explains a lot about why someone is how they are as an older child/ adult. And that’s not me ‘blaming’ anyone, literally not a single parent or person in the world is perfect, no one gets everything right but your parents are your earliest influences.

The thing with memories are that they are a not a true representation of the event, they can diminish, or be embellished, over time. So what might have happened her is that there was a girl at her primary school who did get hit - or her and her friends talked about who's mum was the nastiest (and your daughter joined in, because no one want's to be left out at that age) - so your daughter could have mixed up other peoples recollections with the ones that actually happened to her and made them her own.

"Most open and supportive"

Assume you aren't including yourself or a good deal of MN parents in that because you can't call yourself open and supportive whilst dismissing their trauma!

OP your conviction she CAN'T Possibly have cried when getting back to boarding school or just before leaving doesn't make me think you definitely never hit her another time and don't remember it because for you it wasn't a big deal but for her it was and she now remembers it as a more frequent thing

Just because DD1 never saw it doesn't mean it didn't happen either.

@tuvamoodyson they can't verify the specific events but she does the same thing to them too. And I can verify their events. It's a sad situation but perhaps not the same as the op's

Me and my brother have different interpretations of our childhood it is quite common I think. I remember the abuse much more. He has framed it as being ok. I am autistic and did lots of things because of that, but my family including brother just thought I was badly behaved. So I remember the unfairness of it all, while to him it wasn't.

I think as others saying there is some truth in these memories. I believe it is common for DC to attribute abuse to the wrong person. And the screaming and crying are what she felt like doing. She probably dealt with it by shutting down - hence the sleeping.

I listened to an interesting programme about this. Apparently we all process our memories into identifiable 'tropes' in order to rationalise our identities, and also to communicate this version of ourselves to others. So if someone says 'I was an only child' or 'I went to boarding school', we have this flood of associations and prejudices that link to these situations. It's easier for us to then find our identity if we rearrange our memories to fit the profiles.

My sibling would deny my mother ever assaulted me (or them) for years. My mother very much did but doesn’t recognise what she did as assault. She is a perpetual victim and was always forced to respond by our awful behaviour but in her words she “never hit” us. She only ever sees the positive things in life. She never remembers the negative. She genuinely has no recollection of it. I don’t understand how it works.

I’m not saying that’s the case with OP but based on a few words here and asking a sibling a question that in a potentially abusive relationship (again hypothetical) would never get an honest answer doesn’t make the mothers pov true either.

The truth will be somewhere in the middle.