I'm an introvert, DD is highly extrovert, am finding it really hard to be around her. Please help.....very long, started writing and couldn't stop...sorry

[oneplusone]

DD is a highly extrovert child. She relishes being the centre of attention, loves everybody watching and listening to her, is bossy but manages to do it in a nice way wrt her peers. She is very sociable, needs constant company, always wants to be with friends. She is 5, nearly 6.

I am an introvert. I exist in my head. I need regular longish periods of time on my own to think as i always have loads going on in my head.

I have concluded that DD and I are incompatible. DD wants my head space, but i need it for myself. The holidays magnify the problem, as of course she is around all day instead of being away for 6 hours a day during the week.

For reasons too long and complicated to go into now, i have no help or support during the holidays ie no grandparents to help out, nor any other family. I don't have that many friends i could call on to give me a break from DD, she has lots of friends at school but most have gone away and are busy with family etc right now.

I am at the end of my tether. I feel depressed, lethargic, disillusioned with motherhood, I am clearly not cut out for it, certainly not to be a mother to DD.

I also have 3 year old DS who is completely different. He is far far less demanding and i find it so much more enjoyable spending time with him. The less attention he demands, the more i want to give him my time and attention. With DD, however much attention i give her, it is never enough, she always wants more until i am drained and exhausted.

I feel i am on the verge of just walking out of the door with my bad and passport and not coming back. DH doesn't understand, although i have talked to him about how i feel. He thinks things will get better when DS starts school and i have time to do what i want/go back to work etc.

But i am not in the least bit optomistic about the future. I can't see how i can go back to work even when DS starts school. I used to have a professional job, i can't go back to that as there are no real part time positions, it's just not that sort of profession.

I just feel like i have sacrificed most of the rest of my life due to having children. Before i had them, or even when they were still very young, i naively thought i could go back to work once they were at school and life would kind of go back to how it was pre-DC's! Just writing that now makes me realise just how clueless i was about what impact having children would have on my whole life.

I feel quite bitter that i was not given the slightest inkling by anybody, none of the books etc etc, about how having DC's essentially means giving up my own life, not just temporarily but forever.

I know theoretically I could put DS into full time day care and go back to work full time, with DD in wrap-around care before and after school. I know a lot of mums do that. But i know i personally couldn't. I would be crippled with guilt and probably as bad as i do now but in a different way.

I am sure this is not a problem i alone face, i know so many of you feel similarly, if not perhaps as bad as i do right now. I have wracked and wracked my brains for some sort of solution that i would feel happy and comfortable with, where the DC's would not be the losers, but I cannot think of one. That is why i think i feel such despair, to the point where i have even thought of suicide as an option. I couldn't do it purely because of the DC's, and yet it is because of the DC's that i feel this way. I'm between a rock and a hard place. There is no way out that i can see.

Has anybody solved this awful dilema?

ra29, you are absolutely right. I had a terrible childhood and an awful relationship with my mother, or to be more accurate a non relationship with my mother. I wasn't 'mothered' as a child, my mother always preferred to be with my 2 younger sisters and never spent any time with me, and that is not an exaggeration. I am seeing a therapist and she has said that there is a direct connection; because i have not had any mothering, i am finding it very very difficult to mother my own daughter.

But, that does not explain why i find it so much easier to mother DS? DD just seems to wind me up, whereas with DS I have so much patience, i rarely if ever get cross with him.

I really would like to get to the bottom of why i feel so differently towards them. I feel this yet another mothering taboo, feeling differently about your children. And yet i know it happens as i experienced it as a child. My mother basically completely ignored me in favour of my 2 sisters and my dad was highly abusive towards me and not my sisters.

If I let it, history would repeat itself with my DC's. If I allowed myself I could quite happily spend all my time and attention on DS who I completely adore and find so easy and enjoyable to be around, and pretty much ignore DD who I find such hard work. BUT, the big difference between me and my mother is that I could not be so cruel towards one of my children. However hard I find it, I force myself to divide myself as equally as possible between my 2 DC's and I am proud of myself for that, as only I know how hard it is for me.

My mother neglected me so much that we grew further and further apart so much to the extent that i have chosen to have no contact with her or my dad for the past 3 years. I certainly don't want me and DD to end up estranged like that.

But until this issue is aired in public and mums are not judged and criticised for feeling differently about their individual DC, I feel we will never find out the root cause of the problem. Perhaps it is not as big a problem as I think it is. I see it in a similar fashion to falling in love, you cannot control who you fall in love with as an adult, and i think in my case, i simply did not fall in love with DD when she was born, whereas I did with DS. I do love DD, but in a very different way to DS, perhaps i just have to accept that, instead of agonising and trying to change something that is probably impossible to change.

oneplusone - just started another thread about feeling differently about your children! Partly prompted by this thread and partly through dealing with my own feelings now I have two children. I hope it doesn't offend just interested to see if other mumsnetters experience such feelings

Haven't read whole thread but I am with you - I am really struggling with ds1, ds2 comes easily to me, it's horrid not knowing how to break through the impasse.

I've been trying for 6 eyars now

Will go and read thread...

rose, hi, could you post a link to your other thread please? I think this is what bothers me the most, the fact that I feel sooo differently about my 2 children.

Holy, hello and welcome, we're in the same boat. DD is nearly 6, so i guess I've been struggling with it for 3 years, ie since DS was born and i noticed such a profound difference in the way i felt about DS as compared to DD at the same age. And nothing has changed. Therapy i think has helped to a degree, but not in a fundamental way, i still don't feel that instant connection with DD that I felt with DS. And i did see on a tv programme once ages ago that if you don't feel that instant connection at birth, chances are you will never feel it. I think the programme was right.

I am sure it is actually much more common than people think, but because it is so hard to admit to and talk about in rl, it is simply not mentioned and we are all sat here thinking we are the only one's, when in fact it is quite widespread.

In my case, i am sure it is a continuation of a cycle which i am now hopefully breaking. Hopefully when DD grows up and has her children, I will have broken the cycle enough for her to feel equally bonded towards all her DC's.

oneplusone - I think you've actually pointed out the roots of your preference for the younger child. You are, despite your best intentions, recreating your own childhood. Even though the genders are different, it's still eldest frozen out, isn't it?

But that doesn't necessarily do much to solve the problem, of course. You've had therapy, so presumably you've tried the 'just pretend that you enjoy dd and spend time with her' angle? The idea being that if you consciously act as if you like her, you'll actually end up feeling it.

it is the thread entitled 'feeling differnetly towards your children'. It is on this parenting forum. Interestingly nobody has posted yet. I thought it might be a good thread to discuss these taboo feelings

From my point of view although I have bonded with my DS and love him equally, I do find DD a lot easier than I did DS as a baby. Also I am finding it hard to spend quality time with DS at the moment as DD takes up so much of my time

sorry 'favouring one child over another'

You are as you say doing it very differently from your own mother and youre being honest enough to face it and think about it. keep going with the therapy- it is not a quick fix but I think so important not least so you have a space to get some support with such incredibly painful issues.
I think being aware of your feelings about your dd athough hard is actually so much better than if you were acting on them without realising.

ra, you are so right in that having conscious awareness of how one feels is crucial as the awareness is precisely what stops you from acting out the same patterns from your own childhood without realising.

You are right also in that therapy is not a quick fix, but it is the only way to tackle the root cause of the problem which definately has it's roots in my own childhood.

There was a thread on here a while ago in which somebody posted a link to an article about a mother rejecting her first born child after child no.2 was born. In the article it all ended happily ever after as after the initial feelings of rejection, the mother re-established her original close bond with her eldest child. In my case, when i was a child, i had no close bond with my mother to start with, i was closer to my father. Then my 2 sisters were born and probably my mother rejected me like in the article, but then the rejection continued for ever, we never re-established our relationship as there never had been one in the first place. I strongly suspect my mother suffered PND after she had me which very likely stopped her from bonding with me.

I do think love and bonding are two different things. Because i believe my mother did love me, but she never felt that instant strong connection with me and never took any steps to try and work at a relationship with me. She just let me and our relationship 'go', particularly more so once my sisters were born as she seemed to prefer being with them far more than she wanted to be with me. My childhood situation is attempting to repeat itself with me and my DC's but I am refusing to allow history to repeat itself.

I simply could not bear for my DD to go through her childhood feeling as lonely and isolated as i did. So i am taking positive steps to try and make sure i am as close to her as i can be........but it is hard, particularly as aside from childhood issues, our personalities are not best suited to each other.

Rose, i am going to try and find your thread now.

Yes, I agree self-awareness is the key.

I was deeply affected by that article you mention, oneplusone. But I think if you are aware of what is going on and strive to address it then surely that is going to help?

My mother was more or less rejected by my granny in favour of the younger brother and made a huge effort not to repeat the same mistakes with me and my sisters. I'd have to say she was largely successful and it's only since becoming a mum myself that I can appreciate how hard she must have worked to stop history repeating itself.

oneplusone, I'm really moved by your desire to make sure that your daughter doesn't go through what you did as a child. The fact that you are aware of the situation and making such a conscious effort to stop history repeating itself is admirable.

I was wondering what your situation was when you were pregnant with your DD, and when she was born. Were you going through a difficult period? If you were having a hard time (and perhaps suffering from PND?) then that might be an additional explanation for your failure to bond with DD as well as you have with DS.

ttalloo, thank you for your kind words, they mean a lot.

And you ask a very pertinent question. Things were dreadful when i was pregnant with DD. I think i went into shock when i found out i was pregnant as it all happened so quickly; i had been convinced it would take at least 6 months to fall pregnant and to be honest, i simply was not in the least bit ready to be pregnant. DH had been made redundant a few months before i fell pregnant and it took him far longer than either of us expected to find another job. I had recently changed jobs and absolutely hated my new job but felt trapped as i was the sole breadwinner with DH being out of work. We had moved to a new area which i also hated and was also far away from all my friends. Although the birth was fine, the hospital was awful, the nurses and midwives were witches from hell, i had to stay there overnight by myself which was completely unexpected as i had been told that either i would be able to go home after 6 hours or DH would be able to stay with me. I had not read up about breastfeeding beforehand, stupidly thinking it was 'natural' and would therefore somehow just 'happen' easily and effortlessly....the list just goes on and on.

So, yes, looking at it all now, no wonder i had PND, did not enjoy DD one bit, was stressed, anxious and crying the whole time, but putting on a front with other people including DH so nobody knew how bad i was feeling and so got no help. DH and I had not been married that long and had a falling out soon after DD was born over something to do with his mother and he was in a grump with me for ages afterwards and made me feel 100 times worse than i did already. It was a nightmare from start to finish and i honestly feel i only fully recovered from the PND when DS was born, nearly 3 years later. I think the PND was a lot less severe as time went by, but it was always there at a low level, i can see now in hindsight.

After DS was born, i was on cloud 9. I felt the best i had for a long time, had loads of energy and as I said, i think this was when i 'snapped out' of the remaining PND.

Also forgot to add that all throughout DD's pregnancy, i was secretly absolutely desperate for a boy. I was disappointed when DD was born and couldn't feel excited or happy at all. I was numb. I was jealous of other people who had had boys at around the same time i had had DD.

I am glad to say things are very different now. I love and appreciate DD and am glad I had a girl (although she does talk a bit too much still!) and she is a lovely, lively, thoughtful, caring little thing. But it has been a long hard road to get to where i am now and it's still not easy as my initial post shows.

Gosh, no wonder you ended up with such bad PND. You've done really well to get to the point you're at now. Has the thread helped you, do you feel better able to manage with your dd?

That sounds like it was really hard. Also sounds a lot like I felt when my son was little, putting on a 'happy' front to everyone, myself included. I thought DS was a difficult baby but the difficulty was mine- I too was shocked when I found out I was having a boy. I feel so guilty saying it but that was how I felt at the time.
You clearly understand how you've got to this point so half the battle is won- counselling might be a good idea but maybe just with some practical ways of dealing with DD's exuberant nature you can start enjoying her

Roseability here! I namechanged briefly and forgot to change back

goodness OPO your post has struck such a chord I almost crying with relief that I am not the only one to have felt like this.

I too fell pregnant straight away with DS. I had always wanted to be a mother and thought it would be the making of me. It was a way to heal from my past and difficult relationship with my parents. However it was a shock to be pregnant so soon. Like you I had a prefered sex, but for me it was a DD. The whole way through the pregnancy I imagined having a daughter of my own. I realise now it was to replace the mother/daughter bond I have always craved for myself having lost my birth mother and having no bond with my GM who raised me (abusively I feel).

When I had DS, whilst I was delighted to have a boy it was a traumatic birth and I had PND. As you know from stately homes thread this was partly due to childhood issues. Like you this PND was low level right up until I fell pregnant again and found out it was a DD. The day of the twenty week scan and I found out I was having a little girl something 'clicked' and I just wasn't depressed anymore. Looking back I had struggled with spells of depression/anxiety from my teens, I just didn't realise.

This time I too have loads of energy and I have bonded so well with DD. But I feel guilty about DS. I love him dearly and have a lovely bond with him now but I had some real low, low points with him as a baby. I try to forgive myself and he helped me make the incredible journey of accepting my past and moving on but I will always feel guilty.

Sorry to waffle about myself! Just really can identify with some of your feelings and I can assure you if I am admitting them here, we are not the only ones to have felt like this

Being a mother is an incredible journey of self discovery. We learn things (not all good) about ourselves we didn't know before childbearing. Each mother is unique, with her own background and emotions to deal with. NO mother is a blank canvas. We just have to work with that and be the best we can. As long as we recognise our weaknesses and can be sorry for them and the effect they have on our children, then I feel our children will be okay.

You realise you have difficult feelings and emotions about your daughter. As an adult I would not resent my own mother for these kind of feelings. I would just want her to still love me with all her heart despite finding me difficult or having a personality clash with me. Also every mother sometimes feels less than favourable feelings towards her children! They can drive us to the depths of despair yet also fill our hearts with love and pride. Just look at mother lions in the wild when they suddenly turn round and swipe at a playful cub who is bothering her when she tries to sleep!

I am not excusing abuse but we need to allow normal emotions and be able to deal with them in a healthy way. I have a short fuse with DS sometimes. I love him dearly but he can really push my buttons (not his fault at all)! I have to walk away and take deep breaths sometimes. He is an individual whom I have to love and cherish as he is. If aspects of his character annoy me that is okay but I have to deal with this in the right way so as to not try and change him or put him down. It isn't always easy though

I am reading How To Talk So Your Kids Will Listen. There is a lot on it about allowing your kids to express their emotions rather than denying them. Also about not assigning roles to children. Something I am afraid we both suffered as children. I was finding myself taking the 'he will just do as I say' approach. Just like my GM, and I don't want to be like that. The book has good tips

You are unique and will be able to offer things that other mothers cannot. I too have felt that awful soul destroying guilt when you compare yourself to other mothers who seem to have it all.

Just a wee story. The other day I went to M&S for lunch with my kids to get out of the house. My DS was perfectly behaved and my DD slept beautifully in a sling. To an onlooker I might have looked like a perfect mother. At that moment in time I probably was. However those onlookers didn't know that the reason I was there was to get out of the house. My DS had been irritating me all morning to the point where I was having fantasies about giving him a good hiding. We never know what really goes on behind closed doors and in people's heads

sorry back to being Roseability!

oneplusone and roseability, I wish I could give you a big hug. Nobody tells you (and perhaps it's because you'd never believe it) when you are pregnant, or have your newborn, how difficult it can be to cope, and how having children can bring back all sorts of difficult memories. I didn't have a particularly happy childhood (my parents had very rigid views of the kind of Stepford child they wanted - so most things I did got me into trouble), and while I knew I didn't want that kind of childhood for my children, I didn't know how to achieve that. So I've been reading around, and found the Positive Discipline series of books (which I mentioned in my original post) incredibly helpful. They explain that what many people view as bad behaviour in children is actually developmentally appropriate, and it is up to adults to work with and round it, rather than punishing it. So if I'd broken a plate as a child, I'd have been smacked for it and made to feel terrible; if my DS1 does that, he gets a cuddle, then helps me to sweep up the mess and we talk about how we can make sure that doesn't happen again (use both hands, look where you're going, etc.). I've come to terms with the kind of parenting I had - my parents were not bad people, and they were simply doing what they thought was best, and I'm lucky to now have a very good relationship with my mother - but reading about Positive Discipline has made me incredibly sad for the child I was, even to the point of grieving. Until I had children I'd more or less blocked out all these unhappy memories, but now that they have resurfaced I am finding it difficult to handle them. I suppose what I am trying to say is that motherhood is incredibly intense and intensive, and it is not surprising that the experience of having a child of one's own can bring all sorts of emotions to the surface. Nobody, apart from you reading this post, and my DH, knows how I've been feeling, because I don't feel comfortable telling even my closest friends about this - I'd hate for them to think I was bonkers, perhaps - but reading everyone's posts on this thread has shown me that actually, it's not just me. And that has really helped, for which thank you.

But probably, I should have just cast my mind back to O' Level English Lit, where Philip Larkin said it all much better (although I think that he might have written a far more optimistic and cheerful final verse if he'd read Positive Discipline ).

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

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

liath, yes, this thread has helped me enormously. Even if nobody had responded, i think just getting things off my chest helped in itself (although of course i do so appreciate everyone's responses).

hairy, and I think you are right, i just need some practical ways of dealing with DD's exuberance (which is actually really lovely and livens up our house of quiet introverts no end!). She basically needs people and company all the time. Part of the problem has been that because i have been so consumed with my own personal family issues over the past 2/3 years, i have not been socialising much with the other mums at the school and making friends etc. DD has made lots of friends at school, but arranging playdates etc is, at her age, done via the mums. Because i have been 'out of the loop' wrt the mums network, when she is out of school we are on our own quite a lot. And so it has fallen to me to give DD the company and attention she needs so much.

It's a bit better these days as I am feeling better in myself and more able to cope with getting to know the other mums and having friends over or going out to meet friends. And if we are busy with friends for a couple of days then DD seems ok to do her own thing if we then happen to stay home for a day.

When i first started this thread, it was on day 3 of the holidays. Stupidly now i realise i hadn't made any real plans for the first few days of the holidays, thinking me and the DC's would chill out and just wind down into holiday mode etc. But DD is not that sort of person. She wants full on activities and people from day 1. She must have found it hard going from school one day and having all her friends on tap to being at home with just me and DS the next day. She was demanding attention from me all the time and probably missing her friends etc and so no wonder i was a complete wreck by day 3 of the hols which is the day i ended up posting on here.

I am starting to finally realise that DD is a very different personality to me, DH and DS. We are all quite quiet, happy in our own company a lot of the time, not that chatty. DD is totally different. She wants people, action, chatter all the time. I can see now i have learnt a very useful lesson this last few weeks and i think i will be much better able to cope with DD, now that i fully realise what her needs are.

I do have extrovert friends, but of course this is my first extrovert child. Perhaps there are books out there about introvert parents raising an extrovert child and how to cope without going insane!

rose, i can relate to the guilt you feel about the lows you had with your eldest. I am the same. Although things are so much better now between me and DD, i feel so bad about the lows i suffered when she was tiny. She missed out on a lot of the cuddling and loving moments i had with DS at the same age and i feel sad that when DD was a baby i was in such a terrible state, that she did not, I am sure, get some of her emotional needs met by me. She had quite bad eczema as a baby and I am sure this is connected to the anxiety she must have felt at having a mother who was not emotionally able to give her what she needed. I was somehow able to do all the practical things ok ie feeding, changing etc, but i know i did not engage with her emotionally and for that i feel so sad. I think DD's exhuberant personality might make people think that she's fine and there was no damage done to her as a baby because of me, but i know she must have been damaged. It was inevitable.

ttalloo, thank you again for your kind words.
And you are so right in that having children of your own brings back long forgotten memories of your own childhood which can be very hard to handle, particularly when you are having to also meet the needs of your DC's at the same time. It is incredibly tough. And thank you for that poem, I have read if before, in a book by Oliver James. Like you, i don't think the sentiment at the end is the only answer; for me, dealing with my own childhood issues has hopefully made it possible for me to break the negative cycle from my parents and made sure I do not continue the damage inflicted on me by my parents.

ttalloo, have you ever looked at the Stately Homes threads in Relationships? I think you may find them useful, as you mention issues from your own childhood that you sometimes find it hard to deal with. You will find a lot of like-minded people on that thread, including me, so please take a look. x