Parenting when your own childhood was challenging in some ways

[OMGTTC]

Hi all, as the name suggests, DH and I are TTC our first DC. Overall, we’re really excited about this next step, but I’m also really worried about how to support DCs’ emotional development.

For some context, my own DM was at best emotionally immature and, if I were to be less generous, actually emotionally abusive. Over the years, we were threatened with being given away to Barnardo’s, given days and days of the silent treatment, subjected to her rages, given zero privacy (bedroom and bathroom door always open, she’d go through my things and leave ‘embarrassing’ stuff on my bed so I’d know that she knew, if that makes sense).

When our nan got cancer, it was hidden from us until Nan said our mum had to tell us or it might get to the stage where we’d see her with no hair because of chemo with no explanation. So DM’s way of telling us was when she arrived back from the supermarket, she dumped the bags on the floor in the kitchen and just said ‘Nan’s got cancer.’ No conversation, no kind of putting it in a caring, sensitive way.

It got worse as I got older, and I was accused of deliberately failing a uni interview when I didn’t get in to Cambridge, was met with absolute rage when aged 17 I wanted to go on the contraceptive pill, etc. Unsurprisingly, I learnt not to open up to her about anything.

Then when I left uni, she decided we should be close as mother and daughter. By this time, I’d tried to put in some boundaries, and she railed against them, raging at me, bombarding me with messages, telling me I was a cold, unfeeling daughter, which felt unfair as I’d tried very hard to see her side of things and was not doing anything unusual in terms of staying in my uni town for work after graduation.

As a result of all this, I’ve found it very very hard to recognise and trust my emotions. I had zero self awareness and am still going through the work of getting to know myself at the age of 30 - what do I actually like, what are my values?

I feel like my sense of self was crushed at such a young age, or maybe never existed in the first place, and I had no support or nurturing with the emotional side of things. I was fed and clothed, we had presents and holidays and materially were given a huge amount of things, but it feels like everything emotional was missing.

I’ve had a lot of counselling over the years, but now I’m coming to it from a parenting perspective specifically - how can I make sure not to do what was done to me? How can I nurture future DCs’ emotional wellbeing and help them to be confident, secure and self aware?

Thank you for reading if you’ve got this far! 💐

God your mum sounds exactly like mine - especially the leaving things out that she found to make sure I knew she knew about them!

I am now 37 with a 7 year old and a 3 year old, and honestly it comes naturally to me to want their childhood to be the polar opposite. I do sometimes have to consciously stop myself shouting or being too authoritarian with them but otherwise it's really not too tough to model myself as the parent I needed when I was growing up.

Good luck OP.

Thank you for replying @QforCucumber - I’m sorry you had a similar experience. I like your phrase about modelling ourselves on the parent we needed 💐

I suggest counselling on this specific issue now and also if/when problems arise. You don't know yet who your child will be!! They may push buttons you can't yet see/feel.

The very fact you are thinking about this is so positive.

Someone was telling me the key word is 'connection' - so focus firstly on year 1, what can you do to try to build that connection with your baby? You don't have to look further than that just now. Take it in chunks. It gets more complicated if you have more than one, but cross that bridge when you get there.

Thank you @MidnightOnceMore, I’m thinking about going back to counselling. I had a great therapist for a few years and felt I was plateau-ing so we’re having a pause, but I think resuming for some pre-parenting work would be a good idea.

Philippa Perry’s book is really good on how DCs’ behaviour can trigger things in us from our own childhoods, so I’ll definitely try to be as aware of that as possible, and to understand that I might feel a certain way not because of the DC but because somehow it reminds me of something that happened to me when I was their age.

Thank you 💐

I also really like that you mention connection. I didn’t feel connected to my DM at all, and I thought our family was normal because I didn’t know any better. I’ve been reading about the fourth trimester which sounds key to that connection too?

I think I’m going to make a list of advice from this thread. Thank you again 🙂

I would say that my mother was never there for me emotionally.

I think my Dd would say that I’ve never let her down inthis respect.

im sure along the way I’ve made other mistakes, but that’s inevitable. I hope she’ll forgive me for those and know my heart was in the right place.

I strongly recommend this book - "The book you wish your parents had read" by Philippa Berry:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Wish-Your-Parents-Children/dp/0241250994

It has some sections on exactly this situation. One thing I remember is she mentions that you are likely to experience strong emotions that relate to experiences from your own childhood and that it's important to be able to recognise what is about now with your child and what is about you and the past.

While not as extreme, my childhood was similar in terms of absolutely no emotional connection with my parents. I am completely the opposite with my own daughter and it's not something I've deliberately had to do. It came naturally because I was so determined not to put her through what I went through.

I'm a big fan of therapy, so absolutely go back if you think you could benefit, and check out the resources here. But also have faith in yourself. You know the kind of parent you want to be and that's most of the battle - you're certainly not destined to repeat your own mother's mistakes.

It’s great you’re thinking about this early on and I’m sure you’ll navigate the challenges of parenting well as a result. I, unfortunately, did not and it’s meant that I wasn’t even aware of stuff like how my children’s behaviour can/ does trigger unresolved stuff about my own childhood. It’s made me a not very good parent and I fear I’ve just repeated all the stuff that I hated about how I was parented. As my DC reach the ages I was when I had a tough time as a child, it gets even harder for me.

I read Perry’s book when it came out and it made me cry at how many opportunities I’d missed when my DC were very little to do things differently.

Thank you all for your replies, it’s really moving to hear your different experiences. Philippa Perry’s book is brilliant and I must re-read it. I’ve been reading the Very Short Introduction on child psychology over the weekend and that’s also been very powerful.

@Flockameanie I’m sorry to read your post, that sounds challenging. Have you spoken to your DC about it at all? I found some comfort in Perry’s idea of rupture and repair, which I guess leaves room for us to make mistakes because we’re human. 💐 to you, be kind to yourself.

I think it makes it harder that I still feel a lot of anger towards my DM, and yet we still see her and we’re expected to brush everything under the carpet and crack on like everything’s great and everyone’s happy. There has been absolutely zero acknowledgement that her behaviour was really damaging towards us for many years. To me as the child in the relationship, it would be really meaningful if she recognised what went wrong and just acknowledged that she’d got it wrong for whatever reason. But she hasn’t (or can’t), and so we just have to keep pretending.

I feel actual revulsion at the thought of being pregnant and being around her, or having to watch her hold my (hypothetical) baby. I know that’s not normal, and it makes me feel guilty. I think the anger and revulsion would be worth going back to therapy for.

Sorry, had a BFN when I tested yesterday so I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself!

I also had a similar experience with DM. Not as extreme but a lot of the same themes.

I started counselling when DC1 was 13mo and it helped enormously.

Much better than previous times I've had counselling as I went in to it with very specific goals this time.

You seem very self aware, so if I were you I would go in to parenting with an open mind/blank slate and then look in to counseling if and when things come up for you because honestly you can't predict what those things will be.

You've had some great replies but I just wanted to add, as someone who also had a not so great childhood, that I've found becoming a parent massively healing. Every time I do something differently to my parents and see a positive outcome I feel a little better. I also think being so conscious of avoiding the same mistakes has made me a better parent. Of course it's hard and has thrown up negative emotions too but overall it's been a really positive experience for me. Wishing you lots of luck.

Family trauma is a little funny.

For myself my father was a very violent and abusive man. My family all thought in extremes. There was no middle ground. You could only be an extreme conservative Christian who was a good person. Or a very bad evil-loving atheist liberal. And to be a good Christian you had to be up in everyone's business to "protect" them from the threat of hell. Which is about as awful as you might imagine. Beatings where considerrd for the greater good because it was considered better than eternal fire in the afterlife.

For myself I waited a very very long time to have children. I was with my husband for well over ten years and we were just relaxed and focused on ourselves and in that time I did a lot of soul searching. The way I grew up it took some time to break out of the black and white thinking which was the hardest because even though I thought I wasn't doing it because I was not religious anymore and didn't see things in the traditional sense of my family I still was seeing things in black and white if that makes sense. "Religion bad. Secular good."

I stopped being religious to escape my families annoying intrusive way of life and tried to be relaxed to do everything the opposite of what they did (unintentionally mind you) and became extreme in my own way I guess. When I reached my 30's I became a more balanced person and pulled back the reigns a bit and gradually saw the errors of my ways. It's not really something I think I could have forced though if that makes sense. Self help books helped a lot but I don't think this was something I could have rushed. I lived a life where I was very repressed emotionally, socially and sexually and those ten years where making up for a lot of lost time.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are some things that only time and experience can repair.

Parents aren't perfect people. We've got hurts and traumas and struggles. Whatever you are going through as a parent just know you're doing your best. Of course it's not ideal but anyone who says they are a perfect parent is lying. Even people with good families and nice childhoods find incredible ways to screw up their kids.

Be kind to yourself. Just focus on how you can be there for your children the best you can. The mere fact that you're asking that question is a fantastic sign.

I have a close friend who was emotionally disconnected from her mother.

Her goal as a parent was to ensure that her children were loved.
All her parenting stemmed from this goal.

Unfortunately that also meant that she found it extremely hard to say no to them. It got to the point where she was really struggling with her son because she never put in any boundaries or structure, she felt that loving him meant she never denied him anything.

It is an extreme case, but it is worth remembering that we don't want the pendulum to swing entirely the other way.

I think it makes it harder that I still feel a lot of anger towards my DM, and yet we still see her and we’re expected to brush everything under the carpet and crack on ah @OMGTTC this is where we differ, I intentionally only see my mum a couple of times a year - on neutral ground so we meet at the beach with the kids or a day trip somewhere so when I need to leave I can. My mental health can’t deal with more though she is no longer abusive towards me now or emotionally manipulating I have to be able to leave when I need to or we start getting too in depth into things and I get angrier and angrier

@steppemum

You framed what I was trying to say so much better! Sometimes Trauma has this way of making us try to run from the pain of of our past so hard that we over correct and make the same mistakes in an equal but opposite way. This is what we need to try to avoid when recovering from trauma and mixing it with parenting.

Thank you all so much for your replies and for sharing your experiences. I started writing a reply tagging everyone and then my phone battery ran out!

The mixing up of the trauma healing with parenting is something I’m very keen to avoid - I can totally see how that would/could happen. I’ll write a proper reply later, sorry for rushing!

Thank you @QforCucumber - our situations are similar in that my DM doesn’t behave like she did any longer either (or she isn’t at the moment, anyway - I have a feeling that me having DC will provoke something from her again). But it’s very hard to let go of how they treated us, isn’t it? DM hasn’t made any attempts to apologise or acknowledge her behaviour, and I don’t think she has the capacity to reflect on it. When things were bad when I left uni, she cried all over me and wanted me to hug her and to tell her I loved her, after all of which she said ‘I know you hate me.’

I think low contact would be beneficial for me too, but that would certainly be met with outrage, especially if/once DC are part of the equation. Well done for taking the steps you’ve needed towards recovery 💐

@OrangeTabbyCat and @steppemum thank you for your posts, this feels really important. I don’t want to overcompensate for my upbringing or wrap my children in cotton wool, I think partly because I’ve experienced DM doing both things, and neither are/were comfortable or OK for me. She would behave as I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, so very angrily, silent treatment etc, but then also want to sit too close to us/touching us, with no regard for our person space or how she’d made us feel, so we didn’t want to be in very close proximity to her. And then she’d be mortally offended that we didn’t want to sit with her physically touching us.

Sorry to digress. But anyway, I agree that dealing with the trauma separately to parenting is really important. I want to do as much as I can before a DC arrives, but totally appreciate that as PPs have said, I won’t know exactly what will come up for me until it happens.

I still find it surreal to call what happened to us ‘trauma’ (or what resulted from what happened to us, maybe). It’s nowhere near as bad as what a lot of people experience. I wonder if it feels less ‘worthy’ to me of being called trauma because it was our ‘normal’, our everyday, and it was so pervasive, happened regularly, etc? It was a volatile atmosphere to grow up in, and we’ve referred to it since as ‘walking on eggshells’. I remember deciding at 17 that I couldn’t grow up to be like my mum.

Thank you for all of your responses 💐

OP - have you come across Dr Nicola LePera on Insta? She talks about this sort of stuff (dealing with the childhood trauma of emotionally crap/ abusive parents). It’s a bit… American… but I’ve found some of her posts insightful.

And I’ve just bought Becky Kennedy’s book ‘Good Inside’ and will probably sign up to do her online workshops. There are a lot on her site that are about ‘reparenting’ and dealing with triggers, etc.

OP, you are right to try your best, as you are doing.

But be aware that no matter what you do, it's possible it won't suit your child and you'll be 'told' about it later - maybe decades later, when you can't change it. We become the parents we would have liked for ourselves. But our children are not us. So don't base your self-worth on 'getting it right' as a parent, just do your best, thoughtfully. Listen to your child and respond to them.

External circumstances also will affect how your child thinks of your parenting. The gulf between life in the 1980s and life today is massive. Expectations are very, very different. There might be such radical change again.

Thank you @Flockameanie yes I’ve got two of her books - How to meet yourself and How to do the work. I know what you mean about the American-ness 😄 but I find her really insightful too, especially her things on attachment.

I’ll have a look at Becky Kennedy, thank you! Her book sounds brilliant 😊

That’s such a good point, @StopStartStop, thank you. I really want to focus on seeing my potential/future children as their own individuals and not an extension of me - I think that a lot of my own issues with DM was her inability to see me as my own person. Thanks so much for bringing that up 🙂

Our situations are similar.

my children are now 18 and 14. Parenting has come naturally, however ‘trying to be the polar opposite’ is also pretty exhausting and I find myself being overly attentive, which is probably compensatory.

Not that I’m a ‘helicopter’ parent - I just mean that I’ve set quite high standards for myself, that frankly they would have survived without.

For example, despite having a pretty responsible job and combining this with running a business, I have always been there when they’ve left for school in the morning, and I’ve always made sure there was an adult in the house (usually me) when they get home.

I have very rarely gone away. Never gone abroad without them, always cooked meals from scratch. Always listened, allowed them plenty of leeway. Just basically been in the house, often wearing an apron, often cooking - despite being university educated and with a very enquiring mind that would much prefer not to be standing in the kitchen mashing potatoes.

18 years on, I’m tired. I have two lovely and very securely attached teenagers, but they do fly the nest eventually (hurrah!) by which point I find I’ve devoted an awful lot of headspace to their emotional well-being, and now they don’t need me so much, it’s both refreshing and alarming not to have to think quite so much.

Youll be a fabulous mum, just don’t wear yourself out.