To think that it is impossible to bring up your kids without doing them some sort of ''damage''?

[poshsinglemum]

They fuck you up your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They pass on all the faults they had,
And add some extra just for you.

Man passes misery to man,
It deepens like an ocean shelf.
So get out quickly as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself!

I love this poem by Philip Larkin.

IMo there are so many conflicting parenting styles, each claiming that that other parenting styles are wrong or damaging.

I think we should cut ourselves some slack. Do the best for your kids, love them and don't abuse them. Go out of your way not to harm them but don't stress about being the ''perfect'' parent as we are all human with faults and so are our kids.

Try to make their childhoods as magical as possible but don't stress if it dosn't represent something from a Boden magazine or Enid Blighton noval as we live in reality. (I'd secretly love dd to have an Enid Blighton childhood- will be more of a struggle as a single mum but not impossible)

Yes, should have added.

My parents DID fuck me up, and I can now admit it (cos yes, I understand and forgive them for trying to do the best they could). Have lots of mental health issues resulting - now being unravelled, finally.

but on the surface: I have a great family, good job, reasonably positive life - so not all bad .

And it wasn't their 'parenting decisions' as such, I agree that parenting choices shape you as a person. But the real fucked up stuff comes if those core values are undermined (trust/being valued/loved and told/expressing feelings).

So yes, if you love your children and tell them, I don't think it matters whether you have a bedtime or let them decide. Or all eat together. etc. I'm sure some are more desirable but not disastrous.

So yes, perhaps not all parents fuck you up. But I'm pretty sure all parents will give you some interesting foibles!

Kirriemummy I totally agree! My baby was also born in Dec n whatever I was doing or not doing, I was compered to what my sister did few years before. I've learnt not to listen to all these bullshits n focus on my DD as she is THE most important in here. I believe that Love and attention are the key for success. there will be as many parenting styles as many parents around! We should do whatever suits us n our DCs n not what somebody says in some sort of a publication.

Oh my DD is desperate for an Enid Blyton childhood!
She looks for secret passages everywhere. She even turned out the wardrobe to see if it has a false back. She really really wants to meet the Famous Five. She wants a parrot like Kiki, she wants to have adventures...she wants nice farmers wives to give her ham and strawberries. She really wants to go camping...

My mum had a thing about "not pushing yourself forward" and "not showing off" so, of course, DD is signed up for dance, drama, singing, piano lessons, which I was never allowed to have. She loves it, and yes, I do think "I would have been like that".

DH on the other hand has a crippling insecurity stemming from his very poor upbringing and status as "poorest family in the village".

We've both come a long way, I want DD to have something better than I did, but not to negate her personality in the process. It's a fine line. I never never want to be one of those parents who shouts at their child on sports day for not winning a race.

I prefer

"children are like a plate of glass, no matter how careful you are when you handle it you leave a mark."

In this case it means that the positive as well as the negative aspects of your parenting are reflected in how your children turn out.

I like the other version of the Larkin poem, I hadn't heard it before but it kind of illustrates the point.

some posters have touched on this - but it's not all about parenting. It's also about the parents' own attitudes and behaviours.

It has taken me 34 years to understand that the people my parents mix with aren't idiots, and aren't a bunch of vile bastards: merely that my parents see negativity as an easy form of conversation, because their parents in turn were conversational complainers... but a mix of circumstance and GPs' parenting styles also gave my parents an elevated sense of their own intellects.. and that mix of complaining, lack of insight and lack of respect for anyone else is actually the glue that sticks my parents' marriage together... and makes them happy until some other idiot besieges them...

gawd. They're passing this on quite effectively to my niece, via my sister.

I really really enjoy living in a world full of interesting people who live amazing lives and have all sorts of interesting insights to share (if asked in the right way about the right things... ). Life's so much more liveable if you just fix the things that are wrong (to the extent you can), or make them not your problem somehow, and then GET ON WITH SOMETHING FUN!

as long as my two grow up and are able to tell me if i have done something to upset or wrong them, and are comfortable with who they are, and are happy, then i will feel like i've done okay. they're 17 and 19 and i havnt had anything TOO awful happen...

I think that too many people are reading into the ''they fuck you up'' theme. It is just ananalogy to emphasise the deepo anxiety we have of creating the ''perfect'' conditions in order to produce the ''perfectly adjusted'' child. Ive had to cut myself some slack as I am a single mum but I do my best under the circumstances. I just think that there is no such thing as perfect parenting.

there is a whole industry based around "parenting". Little did i realise when I became a CAMHS nurse that i would be joining the ranks of "parenting professionals". i thought I would be helping young people with serious mental illness, this is actually only about 20% of my job despite it being what I'm trained to do.

I have 2 dcs and I'm no professional. I love them but I shout, I'm inconsistent, irritable and sometimes disinterested. I find a lot of parenting boring. i can't STAND the helicopter movement of recent years. I dont enjoy socialising with other parents particularly unless they were friends prior to dcs. I find the whole parenting fanaticism thing depressing and soul destroying.

I hope I won't "damage" them by being a real person and being quite adamant and insistent that every weekend I do something for myself, alone, that I enjoy. I hope it's not damaging that dd is expected to entertain herself using her own imagination for a good portion of the day as i won't constantly play with her.

I find I get damaged by over zealous, routine bound, helicopter ultra anxious uber parents. The ones who have to have a rabge of educational developmentally enhancing activities lined up for their kids at all times. The ones who clasp their kids to them in case i offer them a crisp from my packet like I do with dd. Parenting fascism hurts my head. Maybe it's bad for their dcs or maybe they'll be just fine, who knows?

i think the current obsession with parenting is likely to be far more damaging than what's gone before.

Sometimes I think having children is like holding a mirror up to your face, and it's effing awful. But atm I'm coming to view it like- actually this is an opportuinity for me to become a better person. With my flaws magnified a zillion times I can't help but want to change.

With me it's anger- I'm explosive, exactly the way my dad was and is. I didn't realise the extent of what I'd picked up until I had children, and now I desperately don't want to pass it on to them. I don't want to try and be "perfect", but I think we have some responsibility to work at our weaknesses so we can be the best model we can be for our children.

I have a friend who maintains he will never be very successful because he had too happy and idyllic a childhood. He blames his parents for this.

See - even when you do things right you do them wrong ...

I agree with minx. I like parenting theories to an extent, the unexamined life and all that. But it's when the industry induces more guilt and paralysis than inspiration, when you lose all confidence in yourself because your kids don't fit into this routine or stereotype, then it's a problem.

IMHO, your children were given to you to bring up, not anyone else, so above all go with your gut instincts, rather than force your family into someone else's mould. (No pun intended!)

I also know someone like that Quattro-they blame their lack of drive and success on a lovely Enid Blyton childhood!!
I agree with Snublebuss, that it is nothing to do with parenting but with the parent's attitude and behaviours.
Like Minxofmancunia, I think that the most damaging are the parents who are 'devoted' to their DCs-it sends a shiver of dread down my spine. I couldn't have stood parents who were 'devoted' to me-the pressure must be enormous. The sort of parent who won't go out in the evening because they won't trust a babysitter or cries when their DC goes on a residential visit or wants to monitor every mouthful you eat in case it is the 'wrong' food.
Being able to admit that you got it wrong and apologising is quite a good parental trait.

"Being able to admit that you got it wrong and apologising is quite a good parental trait. "

if only my mother agreed.

Slightly off-topic, but I actually believe that being a normal person (loving but occasionally snappy or disinterested, having moods and emotions and being a little bit unpredictable at times) is actually a GOOD thing in parents. How else do children learn that this is what people are really like? Isn't this good training for the day when their teacher shouts even though it wasn't them, or the day their boss complains about them doing something they were told to do? If we are perfectly predictable and fair and reasonable all the time at home how will they learn that NOONE is like this in real life?

This is my excuse for hormonal ranting - and I am sticking to it!!

I like that IrrationalMother

I think you are right as well. I think it is ok to be like that sometimes as that is real life.

If you were like that most of the time then you should worry about it.

Your post has helped me today because I'm really tired today and feel like small things could make me feel like crying. I am not doing as much as normal with the children because of it, and am more disinterested than normal and just want to go on the 'puter a bit and rest. I feel some guilt, which is probably healthy as it reminds me to try not to be like this all the time, but I'm also thinking I'm not Superwoman and I'm allowed to be tired sometimes like everyone else.

im goodenough mum and thats enough

Quattro - I think there's a grain of truth in that. Certainly my mother's father was so darn wonderful adult life has been a massive disappointment - she's never met anyone who measures up (certainly not my own dear father).

Kind of reassures me in a 'oh well, at least I can tell ds my many failings as a mother are For His Own Good' way.

I'm having one of those moments where I imagine DS posting here in 30 years...

I complained about my upbringing bitterly for years, telling my peers about my insanely strict and overprotective parents. Then I had my son in 2008 and am slowly starting to realise what an ungrateful little cow I was.

I wasn't abused or neglected. DH was beaten, thrown our of the house at 15, forced to sign an affidavit as part of his parents' divorce and still won't own a pair of slippers because of the associations they have for hum. However, he now gets on well with both his parents, who, separately, are lovely in-laws and doing grandparents.

If they can produce DH and his nice brother, I might stop reading Oliver James in the Family section (also not a fan - embittered much?) and just get on with it.

Parenting is quite a journey for us parents, but in the end we have tried to ask ourselves what is best for them and love them lots...

Scuse typos, shame on me.

Would it be fair to say that if you're on here werriting about your approach then you're probably at least starting from the right place?

I too love the Adrian Mitchell version of Larkin's gloomy poem; thanks for posting that. It made me smile.

I dunno ruth, think that puts us in the 'spends too much time on the computer ignoring kids' camp

I like both those poems together, because for most of us both are true. My parents fucked me up in some ways and were fabulous in others. I expect that my children will feel much the same. In fact as I parent in a fairly similar way it's highly likely. Of course I try and avoid some of the things my parents did that I think were bad, so I make sure I tell my children regularly that I think they are lovely, and try to be less conditional with my praise, but I expect I do other things that they will complain about in the years to come.

Although I (and two of my three siblings) have had counseling in part because of issues associated with my upbringing, I don't blame my parents for their mistakes. They are who they are, and their actions were a mixture of how they were brought up, their personalities, our circumstances and my personality too. I think on the whole they did fairly well, and now I am a parent I understand much more where they didn't!

oh, I love the adrian mitchell poem. Made me cry and love myself and my children a little bit more. Reading the larkin style stuff and oliver james paralyses me as a parent and I stop being natural in any way. Reading Adrian Mitchell makes me want to hug them, reading larkin/james makes me want to avoind them for fear of messing them up. I know others respond more positively to it I just know I have to avoid.

What minx said.